Helen Keller

Chapter 1 Summary

The Story of My Life is the autobiography of Helen Keller, written in her third year at Radcliffe College. Though the autobiography of a 22-year-old might not interest most people, Helen's was very popular when it was first published in 1903. Helen had been blind and deaf since before the age of two, yet she had earned a place at Radcliffe College among hearing and seeing young women.
Helen was born near Tuscumbia, Alabama on June 23, 1880, into a well-connected family. Her father, Arthur H. Keller, had been a Confederate Captain who was related to Robert E. Lee. Helen's mother, Kate Adams Keller, was a well-read young woman from an intellectual family.
Arthur had two sons from a previous marriage, but Helen was Kate's first child, so she was fussed over, as many first children are. There were several family stories about how outgoing and...

Chapter 2 Summary

For the next five years of her life, Helen lived in isolation. She developed a limited sign language, which her mother Kate understood. Helen learned to do a few chores – for instance, she would fold and put away her clothes – and she understood when her mother wanted something from upstairs.
A small vocabulary of signs was not enough, however. As Helen grew, so did her need to express herself. She began to have tantrums that she was unable to prevent or control. She felt something like regret after they passed.
Because of her rages, Helen's household tended to let her have her way whenever possible. Her one playmate, Martha, the daughter of the Keller's cook, understood Helen's signs, and generally allowed Helen to "tyrannize" her. The two girls played in the kitchen, fed the hens and turkeys and loved to hunt eggs outdoors...

Chapter 3 Summary

Helen's desire to express herself grew, and so did the severity of her tantrums. It got to the point that she raged every day or several times throughout the day. Most of her family and friends felt that nothing could be done for her. Tuscumbia was so far away from any school for the blind and deaf, that most people in her world were not aware of any such resources. Kate (her mother) read about a blind and deaf student named Laura Bridgman, though, and that gave her some hope for Helen.
In the summer of 1886, Helen's parents took her to a famous eye doctor in Baltimore. She enjoyed everything about the trip – the train, the new people and the change of routine. "During the whole trip," she writes, "I did not have one fit of temper; there were so many things to...

Chapter 4 Summary

Anne Sullivan came to teach Helen on March 3, 1887. Right away, Sullivan began to teach Helen to fingerspell using the manual alphabet. Helen enjoyed it as a game, but that is all it was to her at first.
Several weeks later, Helen became frustrated when Sullivan tried to teach her the difference between "mug" and "water." In a rage, Helen threw and broke a new doll. To cool Helen's temper, and perhaps to give herself a break, Sullivan took her pupil outdoors for a walk. The two came upon someone getting water from the pump. Just as she spelled everything else, Sullivan spelled "water" into Helen's hand, and something clicked. Helen suddenly understood that the spellings were names of things. The rest of that day was spent learning names for people close to her and the names of things in her surroundings. When she...

Chapter 5 Summary

The rest of the summer, Helen built her vocabulary. The more it grew, the more she felt like part of the world. Most of her lessons that summer came from the nature. She had a child's natural fascination with the miracles all around her - how the rain and sun help plants grow, how animals get food. Helen also learned to fear the power of nature. One day that summer, she was in a tree, waiting for her teacher to return with lunch, when a storm suddenly arose. It was a long time before she climbed a tree again. When she did, it became one of her favorite pastimes.

Chapter 5 Analysis

Helen's telling of this story is another example of the theme of her mixed blessings. One can feel that Helen considered herself lucky, because she could take none of the miracles of...

Chapter 6 Summary

Helen needed to move from knowing names of concrete things and actions, to knowing how to recognize and communicate abstractions. Her next big step came, again, as she was trying to solve a problem. Helen was concentrating very hard, and Anne Sullivan tapped Helen's forehead, emphatically spelling, "THINK!" Helen says she knew "in a flash" that "think" was the name for what she was doing. She worked for a long time, she says, before she could understand the meaning of the word "love."
Anne Sullivan reasoned that normal children learn language by being exposed to it constantly. Thus, she "spoke" to Helen constantly, using the manual alphabet to help Helen learn the words and figures of speech people used in speaking to each other. It was a long time before Helen could initiate much conversation, but as Sullivan continued to give her language...

Chapter 7 Summary

As soon as she could fingerspell some words, Helen began learning to read, using slips of cardboard with words printed in raised letters. At first, she would attach the correct words to objects and spell out sentences about them, such as "doll is on bed," or "girl is in wardrobe." She would play like this for hours.
The first book Helen read from was "Reader for Beginners." Like any child learning to read, she started out just finding words she knew. It was like a game of hide-and-seek, and each word she found thrilled her.
Helen did not have formal lessons yet, so all of her learning felt like play. Most of her reading and studying happened outdoors, where Helen kept learning more about the world around her. She and her teacher often walked to Keller's Landing by the Tennessee River. Though she...

Chapter 8 Summary

Nine months after Anne Sullivan came to Tuscumbia, Helen had her first real Christmas celebration. For the first time, she was a giver, as well as receiver, and she enjoyed the anticipation. On Christmas Eve, the Tuscumbia schoolchildren had their Christmas tree, and Helen was invited to participate. She was allowed to present the children their gifts. Helen also had gifts to open under that tree, which only made her more excited for "real Christmas" to come.
Helen hung her stocking and tried to stay awake to catch Santa Claus leaving presents, but finally fell asleep. She was the first to wake up Christmas morning and was astounded to find presents everywhere. Her favorite present came from Anne Sullivan - a canary named Little Tim. Helen learned to care for him herself. Unfortunately, a big cat got him when she left Tim's cage...

Chapter 9 Summary

In May 1888, Helen visited the Perkins Institute in Boston. The trip was "as if a beautiful fairy tale had come true." As soon as she arrived, Helen met other children who knew the manual alphabet. She immediately had friends and felt she had come home to her own country. She felt great pain, though, when she realized that all of her new friends were blind. However, when she realized they were "happy and contented," her sorrow passed.
Helen enjoyed several history lessons in Boston. She visited Bunker Hill one day and Plymouth the next. She was interested most in Plymouth Rock, because she could touch it. She did not know then, she says, that the Pilgrims had persecuted others; she only knew then that they traveled to Plymouth for their own religious freedom.

Chapter 9 Analysis

Helen compares her first train trip and her...

Chapter 10 Summary

After visiting Boston, Helen and her teacher vacationed at Cape Cod with a friend, Mrs. Hopkins. The first time she was in the ocean, Helen was pulled under and badly frightened. She asked Anne Sullivan, "Who put salt in the water?" After that, she enjoyed being splashed by the waves from her seat on a large rock. For a few hours, she took possession of a horseshoe crab. She dragged it to the Hopkins home from the beach, but it escaped the first night.

Chapter 10 Analysis

The story of Helen's scare in the ocean reminds us that, though she is extremely capable, she would be lost without guidance and help. She had an independent child's spirit, the kind that would drag a crab home by its legs, but she could never be as independent as she might like.