Helen Keller

Summary 

This is a story about a girl who lived in the US, and when she was 18 years old, she got extremely ill and nearly died after everything happened. When she recovered, she was completely deaf and blind.

It was very difficult for her to learn how to talk because most babies listen to people talking around them and learn how to talk from that. However, as she was deaf, that was not possible. The other alternative for deaf people is to learn how to lip-read so that they can understand what everyone is saying, but as she was blind, that was not a possibility either. 

The girl could not see what other people were doing, but she had remembered a few words. For water, she would say waa waa, but for most things, she had to use signs for simple things like yes, no, come, and go. Although she had a clever brain and wanted to do and say what every other child was doing, she used to get very angry when she couldn't explain what she meant or couldn't understand what other people were saying to her.

Then Anne Sullivan entered Helen's life. She was a very devoted teacher, and she knew the feeling of being blind; as she was blind for a very long time herself, she thought the best way to teach the girl would be finger spelling so that she would give her anything and she would spell it to her and Helen would spell it back. She had become extremely sensitive to her touch. She could soon tell the difference between one letter and another. The teacher started to give her objects, but Helen didn't know what they meant. She very quickly grew bored and stopped trying. Her teacher didn't know what to do.

So, one day, her teacher took her outside, gave her a mug, and took her to the water pump. Then she filled the mug with water, and the mug overflowed. Her teacher spelt water on her other hand. Her face lit up. She understood that everything has a name, and the cold, wet stuff is called water.

She started touching everything, and her teacher would just spell it out to her. She was so happy that words finally had meaning for her. She understood actions like running, standing, and sitting, and she understood the feeling of things like hard, soft, etc. 

She had a very clever mind, so whenever people said anything, her teacher would spell it out for her. She was learning very fast. She started to write and try to stay in lines, and she began to type as well. She also began to read braille books.

The next thing for her to do was learn how to speak out loud. She could understand by keeping her hands on their lips or their throat so she could have a conversation with people without the fingerspelling method. This method required a lot of patience.

At some point, she could read, write, and speak in English, French, and German. She was determined to go to university. When she was 20 years old, she sat for her entrance exam at the College of Radcliffe, one of the best colleges in the US. The papers were in braille. She didn't know what she had written, but that was the chance she had to take. She got into university. 

Her teacher was with her all through university, and she was a girl who lived in a dark world. At the tender age of 7, she held many university honours. She went on to inspire many other blind people and lived until she was 88 years old.