Helen Keller relies on allusion to explain to the reader the extraordinary importance of Miss Sullivan's entry into her life. She compares Miss Sullivan's arrival to the Israelites crossing the Red Sea to escape from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. She uses this reference because it would be understood by most readers at the time, and it helps communicate the magnitude of Miss Sullivan's coming into and changing her life.

Keller again uses a biblical allusion when she writes, after she makes the connection between actual water and Miss Sullivan writing "water" in her hand, that

words ... were to make the world blossom for me, "like Aaron's rod, with flowers."

Aaron's rod miraculously bloomed with flowers and bore almonds showing that his tribe, the Levites, were meant to be God's priests. Words likewise become a fruitful rod for Helen. Aaron's rod was a source of authority, so Keller is also using this allusion as a metaphor or comparison: words blooming in her life gave her authority, such as the ability to write her memoir.

Keller also switches into the third person point-of-view to describe the experience of the deaf child, universalizing it so that the reader understands this is not just her own experience:

the deaf child does not learn in a month, or even in two or three years, the numberless idioms and expressions used in the simplest daily intercourse.

"Numberless" is an example of hyperbole or exaggeration, which emphasizes the uphill battle a deaf child faces in acquiring language.

There are multiple literary devices used in Helen Keller's biography, The Story of My Life.

On the opening page, actually, the second sentence, a simile can be found. A simile is the comparison between two (or more) normally dissimilar things using "like" or "as" to make the comparison.

I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist.

In this sentence, the lifted veil of Heller's childhood is compared to a golden mist.

While typically reserved for poetry, alliteration is also seen in the opening of Keller's book. Alliteration is the repetition of a consonant sound, typically found, within a line (of poetry).

I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present.

Alliteration happens twice within the sentence above. Both the "f" sound in fact and fancy is repeated and the "p" sound in past and present is repeated.

One last example of a literary device found in Keller's novel is imagery. Imagery is the painting of a mental picture derived from the author's use of descriptive language.There are two sentences that provide the reader with rich details with which the reader can create a mental image of:

The woman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy.

and

A few impressions stand out vividly from the first years of my life; but "the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest."

The choice of descriptive words in the pair of sentences (paints, fantasy, vividly, and shadows).

What rhetorical devices are used in The Story of My Life by Helen Keller?

Rhetorical devices are persuasive devices, so the first question we want to ask ourselves is, "what does Keller want to persuade us to think?" I would argue that she is trying to persuade her readers of two main ideas: first, that for a disabled person like her the ability to communicate is incomparably important to living a whole life; second, she wants to persuade people that even a multiply handicapped individual can lead a rich, full life if allowed the opportunity.

Keller focuses on the first idea in the earlier part of her memoir. She wants to accentuate the difference between her life before and after Miss Sullivan taught her manual writing, opening up the world to her. She does this by using allusive language. She compares the life-changing entrance of Miss Sullivan to a miracle. She openly alludes to the Biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea. This is an archetypical tale of going from slavery and bondage to liberation and freedom. It is a story of traveling to a promised land of milk and honey, and Keller does not shy away from the implications of this comparison. As she writes:

Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai, and a power divine touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And from the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, "Knowledge is love and light and vision."

In order to convince her readers of her second point, that she has led a rich, full live since learning to communicate, Keller leans on the rhetorical device of illustration, also called exemplification. She gives many examples of her world opening up to be as full as a non-handicapped person's. She is able, for example, to go to college, and she is also able to enjoy the theater and nature. Her handicaps sometimes make achieving a full life harder than for a fully-abled person, but they don't stop her.

The opening sentences of any written work are among its most important. It is in those sentences that an author has a crucial opportunity to create interest, arouse curiosity, set a tone, and begin to display his or her talent as a writer. The opening sentences of Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life are important in all these ways.  In these sentences, Keller uses a number of literary and rhetorical devices, including the following:

• Foreshadowing, as in the way the opening sentence creates suspense by mentioning Keller’s fear of describing her life:

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.

• Metaphors, as in the reference to “lifting the veil” in the opening paragraph.
• Similes, as in the phrase “like a golden mist” in the opening paragraph.
• Alliteration, or the repetition of similar-sounding consonant sounds, as in the reference to “fact and fancy” in the opening paragraph.
• Balanced or parallel phrasing, as in the just-cited reference to “fact and fancy.”
• Attention to rhythm, as in the phrase “superstitious hesitation,” in which each word has the same number of syllables and the same pattern of accented and unaccented syllables.