Hellen Keller

Helen Keller

Helen Keller can be seen as a remarkable role model for the entire human race. Her story is one that everyone has heard of and one that is taught to most children during their elementary school days. Her story is so influential and serves as a good example of achieving success when one tries hard enough.

The story of Helen Keller is the story of a child who, at the age of 18 months, was suddenly shut off from the world, but who, against overwhelming odds, waged a slow, hard, but successful battle to reenter that same world. The inarticulate, little, deaf and blind girl grew into a highly intelligent and sensitive woman who wrote, spoke, and labored incessantly for the betterment of others.

Keller's big breakthrough in communication came one day when she realized that the motions her teacher, Anne Sullivan, was making on her palm, while running cool water over her hand, symbolized the idea of "water." When she began to discover that there was a whole world out there, she nearly exhausted Sullivan by demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world.

Annie Sullivan taught Helen to speak using the Tadoma method of touching the lips and throat of others as they speak, combined with finger spelling letters on the palm of the child's hand. Later Keller learned Braille, and used it to read not only English but also French, German, Greek, and Latin. By her persistence, she went on to bring forth her intellectual and emotional abilities. Despite the social obstacles of her time, she became the first deaf/blind person to graduate from college. From then on, Helen became a powerful a symbol of triumph over adversity and she has a definite place in the history of our time and of times to come.

You can’t be free unless you see. In Helen’s case, she couldn’t see. On top of that she also couldn’t hear or speak. Her world was limited to her familiar surroundings: her home, her parents. All of us are in similar situations. Though we may not be physically blind or deaf, we choose to be emotionally blind and deaf. We can be hardened by our bad experiences, our embarrassments and our failures. We may think, “What use is it trying to succeed in a world that only serves to beat us down?” I know I sometimes feel that way.

Helen’s experience tells us that