Helen Keller Written Primary Source Activity

Excerpt from The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

1. The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a doll.
The little blind children at the Perkins Institution had sent it and Laura Bridgman had
dressed it; but I did not know this until afterward. When I had played with it a little
while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-l-l." I was at once
interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in
making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride. Running
downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not
know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my
fingers go in monkey-like imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this
uncomprehending way a great many words, among them pin, hat, cup and a few verbs
like sit, stand and walk. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I
understood that everything has a name.

One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big rag doll into
my lap also, spelled "d-o-l-l" and tried to make me understand that "d-o-l-l" applied to
both. Earlier in the day we had had a tussle over the words "m-u-g" and "w-a-t-e-r."
Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is mug and that "w-a-t-e-r"
is water, but I persisted in confounding the two. In despair she had dropped the subject
for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity. I became impatient at her
repeated attempts and, seizing the new doll, I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly
delighted when I felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor
regret followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the still, dark
world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment or tenderness. I felt my teacher
sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I had a sense of satisfaction that the
cause of my discomfort was removed. She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going
out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a
thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure.

2. As soon as I could spell a few words my teacher gave me slips of cardboard on

which were printed words in raised letters. I quickly learned that each printed word
stood for an object, an act, or a quality. I had a frame in which I could arrange the
words in little sentences; but before I ever put sentences in the frame I used to make
them in objects. I found the slips of paper which represented, for example, "doll," "is,"
"on," "bed" and placed each name on its object; then I put my doll on the bed with the

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 words is, on, bed arranged beside the doll, thus making a sentence of the words, and at
the same time carrying out the idea of the sentence with the things themselves.

One day, Miss Sullivan tells me, I pinned the word girl on my pinafore and stood in
the wardrobe. On the shelf I arranged the words, is, in, wardrobe. Nothing delighted
me so much as this game. My teacher and I played it for hours at a time. Often
everything in the room was arranged in object sentences.

From the printed slip it was but a step to the printed book. I took my "Reader for
Beginners" and hunted for the words I knew; when I found them my joy was like that
of a game of hide-and-seek. Thus I began to read….

It was my teacher's genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first
years of my education so beautiful. It was because she seized the right moment to
impart knowledge that made it so pleasant and acceptable to me. She realized that a
child's mind is like a shallow brook which ripples and dances merrily over the stony
course of its education and reflects here a flower, there a bush, yonder a fleecy cloud;
and she attempted to guide my mind on its way, knowing that like a brook it should be
fed by mountain streams and hidden springs, until it broadened out into a deep river,
capable of reflecting in its placid surface, billowy hills, the luminous shadows of trees
and the blue heavens, as well as the sweet face of a little flower.

Any teacher can take a child to the classroom, but not every teacher can make him
learn. He will not work joyously unless he feels that liberty is his, whether he is busy
or at rest; he must feel the flush of victory and the heart-sinking of disappointment
before he takes with a will the tasks distasteful to him and resolves to dance his way
bravely through a dull routine of textbooks.

3. In 1890 Mrs. Lamson…who had just returned from a visit to Norway and Sweden,
came to see me, and told me of Ragnhild Kaata, a deaf and blind girl in Norway who
had actually been taught to speak. Mrs. Lamson had scarcely finished telling me about
this girl's success before I was on fire with eagerness. I resolved that I, too, would
learn to speak. I would not rest satisfied until my teacher took me, for advice and
assistance, to Miss Sarah Fuller, principal of the Horace Mann School. This lovely,
sweet-natured lady offered to teach me herself, and we began the twenty-sixth of
March, 1890.

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 Miss Fuller's method was this: she passed my hand lightly over her face, and let me
feel the position of her tongue and lips when she made a sound. I was eager to imitate
every motion and in an hour had learned six elements of speech: M, P, A, S, T, I. Miss
Fuller gave me eleven lessons in all. I shall never forget the surprise and delight I felt
when I uttered my first connected sentence, "It is warm." True, they were broken and
stammering syllables; but they were human speech. My soul, conscious of new
strength, came out of bondage, and was reaching through those broken symbols of
speech to all knowledge and all faith.

No deaf child who has earnestly tried to speak the words which he has never heard--to
come out of the prison of silence, where no tone of love, no song of bird, no strain of
music ever pierces the stillness--can forget the thrill of surprise, the joy of discovery
which came over him when he uttered his first word…It is an unspeakable boon to me
to be able to speak in winged words that need no interpretation. As I talked, happy
thoughts fluttered up out of my words that might perhaps have struggled in vain to
escape my fingers.

All teachers of the deaf know what this means, and only they can at all appreciate the
peculiar difficulties with which I had to contend. In reading my teacher's lips I was
wholly dependent on my fingers: I had to use the sense of touch in catching the
vibrations of the throat, the movements of the mouth and the expression of the face;
and often this sense was at fault. In such cases I was forced to repeat the words or
sentences, sometimes for hours, until I felt the proper ring in my own voice. My work
was practice, practice, practice. Discouragement and weariness cast me down
frequently; but the next moment the thought that I should soon be at home and show
my loved ones what I had accomplished, spurred me on, and I eagerly looked forward
to their pleasure in my achievement.

4. I am frequently asked how I overcome the peculiar conditions under which I work
in college. In the classroom I am of course practically alone. The professor is as
remote as if he were speaking through a telephone. The lectures are spelled into my
hand as rapidly as possible, and much of the individuality of the lecturer is lost to me
in the effort to keep in the race. The words rush through my hand like hounds in
pursuit of a hare which they often miss. But in this respect I do not think I am much
worse off than the girls who take notes. If the mind is occupied with the mechanical

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 process of hearing and putting words on paper at pell-mell speed, I should not think
one could pay much attention to the subject under consideration or the manner in
which it is presented. I cannot make notes during the lectures, because my hands are
busy listening. Usually I jot down what I can remember of them when I get home. I
write the exercises, daily themes, criticisms and hour-tests, the mid-year and final
examinations, on my typewriter, so that the professors have no difficulty in finding out
how little I know. When I began the study of Latin prosody, I devised and explained
to my professor a system of signs indicating the different meters and quantities.

I use the Hammond typewriter. I have tried many machines, and I find the Hammond
is the best adapted to the peculiar needs of my work. With this machine movable type
shuttles can be used, and one can have several shuttles, each with a different set of
characters--Greek, French, or mathematical, according to the kind of writing one
wishes to do on the typewriter. Without it, I doubt if I could go to college.

Very few of the books required in the various courses are printed for the blind, and I
am obliged to have them spelled into my hand. Consequently I need more time to
prepare my lessons than other girls. The manual part takes longer, and I have
perplexities which they have not. There are days when the close attention I must give
to details chafes my spirit, and the thought that I must spend hours reading a few
chapters, while in the world without other girls are laughing and singing and dancing,
makes me rebellious; but I soon recover my buoyancy and laugh the discontent out of
my heart. For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the
Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in
my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of
hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I
gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the
widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory.

How did the excerpt help you to understand how Helen Keller was able to overcome obstacles?
Describe the techniques, technologies, emotions and/or individuals that helped her to achieve a
goal.

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