Story of My Life

Helen Keller
"The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am
filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrast between the two lives which it connects."
- Helen Keller
Helen Adams Keller was born June 27, 1880, in the northwest Alabama city of Tuscumbia. Her father was a retired confederate
army captain and editor of the local newspaper; her mother was an educated young woman from Memphis. When Helen was
nineteen months old, she was afflicted by an unknown illness, possibly scarlet fever or meningitis, which left her deaf and blind.
Helen was extremely intelligent and tried to understand her surroundings through touch, smell and taste. However, she began to
realize that her family members spoke to one another with their mouths instead of using signs as she did. Feeling their moving
lips, she flew into a rage when she was unable to join in the conversation. By the age of 6, Helen later wrote in her
autobiography, “the need of some means of communication became so urgent that these outbursts occurred daily, sometimes
hourly.”
Anne Sullivan came to Tuscumbia to be Helen’s teacher on March 3, 1887. Later Helen called this day her "soul's birthday."
Perkins director Anagnos had been wise to choose the strong-willed Sullivan, for few young women would have persevered
through the tempestuous first weeks of the relationship. Helen hit, pinched, and kicked her teacher and knocked out one of her
teeth. Sullivan finally gained control by moving with the girl into a small cottage on the Kellers’ property. Through patience and
firm consistency, she finally won the child’s heart and trust, a necessary step before Helen's education could proceed.
Sullivan started with the techniques developed by Samuel Gridley Howe when he worked with Laura Bridgman 50 years earlier.
As Howe did, she fingerspelled the names of familiar objects into her student’s hand. However, Sullivan innovated by
incorporating Helen’s favorite activities and her love of the natural world into the lessons. Helen enjoyed this “finger play,” but
she didn’t understand until the famous moment when Sullivan spelled “w-a-t-e-r” while pumping water over her hand. Keller
later wrote:
Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery
of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over
my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! … Everything had a name, and each
name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life.
Helen wrote of the days that followed, “I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the name of every object that I
touched; and the more I handled things and learned their names and uses, the more joyous and confident grew my sense of
kinship with the rest of the world.” Sullivan fingerspelled to her constantly, and coached her in the give-and-take of conversation.
Many people believe that Keller’s love of language, her great articulateness and grace as a writer and public speaker were built
upon this foundation.
In May of 1888, Sullivan brought Helen to Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, where a new world of friendship began for
Helen: “I joined the little blind children in their work and play, and talked continually. I was delighted to find that nearly all of
my new friends could spell with their fingers. Oh, what happiness! To talk freely with other children! To feel at home in the great
world!” After that visit, Helen spent nearly every winter studying at Perkins: “In the school where Laura Bridgman was taught I
was in my own country.” Helen studied French, arithmetic, geography, and other subjects. She especially enjoyed the library of
embossed books and the tactile museum’s collection of bird and animal specimens.
In the fall of 1891, Helen wrote a story she called “The Frost King” as a birthday gift for Perkins director Michael Anagnos.
Delighted, he published it in the Perkins alumni magazine. Soon Anagnos was informed that Helen’s tale was very similar to a
previously published story. It appears that Helen had read the original many months earlier and recreated the story from her
memory, believing it was her own creation. The accusation of plagiarism was extremely wounding to the 11-year-old girl and her
teacher, and in 1892 Helen and Sullivan left Perkins and did not return. Fortunately, Keller later forgave Perkins for her
unhappy experience. In 1909, she donated many braille books to the Perkins library, and in 1956 she officiated at the dedication
of the Keller-Sullivan building when it became home of the school’s Deafblind Program.
Throughout her life, Helen Keller devoted her energies to humanitarian pursuits, advocating for economic justice and the rights
of women and of people with disabilities. Keller asserted her right “to feel at home in the great world” and through her eloquence
and tireless activism, she fought for the same right on behalf of all people. Helen Keller’s influence was great and her
accomplishments won her worldwide respect, yet she always remained humbly grateful to her great teacher Anne Sullivan and
her Perkins predecessor Laura Bridgman.

The Story of My Life Summary
The Story of My Life was written while Helen Keller, then in her early twenties, was a student at Radcliffe College. It is a moving
story of the education of a child with the extreme handicap of being deaf and blind. The book begins with a rather vague
description of young Helen’s earliest memories, before she became deaf and blind at the age of nineteen months, but most of it
narrates her teaching by Anne Sullivan of the Perkins Institute for the Blind.
The Story of My Life is far from the cry for help that it might easily have been. The tone is one of joy. Keller emphasizes her early
love of language. She recalls learning to speak before she lost her ability to see or hear and her desperate attempts to reawaken
this ability. Throughout the book, there is a strong emphasis on her love of language, especially the written word, which was,
after all, one of the few ways she had of relating to the outside world.
The major emphasis of A Story of My Life is on the work of Sullivan, whom Helen always in this book refers to as Teacher. As
subsequent writings made clearer, Sullivan’s methods were far from orthodox at the time. She communicated with Helen mostly
by use of the manual alphabet, although lip-reading with fingers was also attempted. At the time, oral communication was
almost universally stressed among educators of deaf children.
When this book was written, Keller had already published a few articles and was doing well at Radcliffe (she was graduated with
honors in 1904). Keller makes it clear that she cannot speak intelligibly, and stresses that she probably never will. In fact, when
Keller became a social activist later in life, she made a number of attempts to improve her speech, although her double disability
made this difficult. After her graduation, she was regularly accompanied by Sullivan on lecture tours. Sullivan acted as an
interpreter as well as an additional speaker on educational methods.
The Story of My Life is a tale of triumph over difficulties that would be insurmountable to most children. Keller went on to
become a noted author, speaker, and political activist, advocating human rights for people not only with physical disabilities but
also with social problems. Many of her later works were largely autobiographical, but there was always an emphasis on the
inherent power of the individual to journey through life with hope. The Story of My Life is the first chapter in such a journey.