I've always taken particular interest in Helen Keller, but I haven't had the chance to read about her until this year. Now, I'm reading her book, The Story of My Life.The book starts from the very beginning of her life. This is a photograph of her when she was a child. Unfortunately, although she was born with all of her senses, she suffered through some type of disease, possibly scarlet fever, that caused her to lose her sight and hearing at nineteen months. I'm finding this book to be absolutely remarkable and sweet at the same time, since it discusses her extreme happiness at discovering the simplest facts of nature. She had a difficult time to connect words with objects, but eventually, she was able to touch water and realize that it was called water, and she could touch her doll and know that it's called "doll." It's quite impressive for me that she managed to learn words fairly quickly simply through touch.
One part that made me feel more sympathetic towards Keller was when she mentioned how children who can see and hear can learn language much more quickly. They hear people speak all the time and can catch idioms. Keller, however, can only learn when people talk directly to her with sign language, so the only time when she learns is when someone who already knows sign language comes to her and speaks to her. Luckily, however, she remembers learning how to speak very quickly before she became deaf-blind, and therefore she was a quick learner of sign language.
I just finished the first part of the book. This edition is "The Restored Classic," so I'm assuming that the first 120 pages are her actual book, while the rest is what is only part of this edition. Now I'm reading Miss Sullivan's journal entries, the next section.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, Keller's actual book only tells of her life up to the age of 22, so it's a lot less than I anticipated. I was interested in what she did in her deaf-blind rights movement, but that comes later in her life.
Keller wrote around page 86 about her education at Radcliffe College, and I found it amusing to find a connection with this point in her life. She knows the information in her classes, but she found that the examinations covered everything that she DIDN'T study. Meaning that she studied everything that wasn't on the test. That happens to me more often than I'd like.
Near the end of the section, Keller explains that she recognizes her handicap, but if she were to let it overwhelm her, she'd go into a pit of darkness and emptiness. Rather than doing this, she finds happiness in the fact that others do not have such a handicap. A phrase that touched me was "I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness."
So as I mentioned, I'm reading Miss Sullivan's letter entries now. It goes back to the beginning of Keller's life, and here's another connection. When Keller was little, she was a rebellious child. She refused to listen to commands, and she would go on rampages. Regardless, Miss Sullivan could tell that Keller was a bright child and had a unique personality that could take her far in life. My mom likes to tell how I acted like that and had a similar hidden characteristic.
Here's a clip of The Miracle Worker, the TV show based on Helen Keller's life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMOjCohQbXY I love how rebellious Keller was as a child. She obeyed in repeating words back eventually, starting with "cake" and "doll," but she loses her wildness slowly, step by step. When Sullivan tries to kiss her in this episode, she wipes away the kiss, even though she is happy to feel a baby chick hatching in her hands.
ReplyDeleteReading about Keller's life from Sullivan's perspective is possibly even more astonishing. In fiction, and even in most non-fiction books I would think, the story is only written from on point of view. But with The Story of My Life, I can understand how Keller viewed her childhood AND how Sullivan viewed it. Sullivan's story is more analytical, whereas Keller's was more of simply stating what happened.
I'm finding Sullivan's story to be more intriguing, simply because it has to do more with psychology. She explains the process of teaching Keller, as a little child, the meaning of words, and how to teach her by example and by repeating phrases over and over again. I never really considered it in the way she described it. As a child, a boy learns sentences very quickly when someone says it to him, but he can't repeat the sentences back. A boy can hear "I would like some water" but he can only repeat back "want water" since that uses more basic words that get the same point across. Sullivan had to teach Keller words by saying full sentences and by expressing what each word meant by movements, expressions, or by pointing at something. I was surprised to read that Keller learned 200 words in a matter of two or three months. Although some of her skills were not as mastered as others at her age, she managed to learn concepts and words very quickly.
Although free reading is done, I'm going to keep reading this. Psychology greatly interests me, and this will expand my knowledge on the growth of the child's brain.