Helen Keller: A Story of Vision
Posted: Tuesday, January 26, 2010
by Ellen McCormick
Helen reached out for another piece of cake. Anne grasped her outstretched hand, spread it flat, and began tracing letters on her palm: C-A-. Helen jerked her hand away and groped around for the platter, but Anne had moved it out of her immediate reach. Unable to find it, Helen sat back down; her arms crossed, her eyes brimming with angry tears. Frustration at not being able to ask for what she wanted filled her: frustration also at Anne's insistence on tracing some meaningless pattern on her palm. She was sure that Anne knew what she had reached for… Why wouldn't she just give it to her?
A childhood disease, possibly scarlet fever, left Helen Keller blind, deaf and mute by the age of two. Anne Sullivan, a teacher nearly blind herself, would help Helen from 1882-1937. With her assistance, Helen would break out of the obscurity. The ability to communicate with others would lift the dark blanket that the fever had stretched upon her, and bring her into the world of light, color and sound through her contact with other people.
Anne Sullivan, at first a hired teacher, became a life-long friend for Helen. She was more interested in Helen herself than in the job she had as a teacher. She was the first to hail the bright horizons of Helen's young life, to hope for a brighter future and believe that Helen could overcome seemingly impossible obstacles.
Communication would be essential. If Helen could learn to communicate, she would be able to interact with others at the deepest level of the soul; she would be able to express her love, appreciate more fully the love she received, and share in the personal experiences of others, at the same time contributing her own.
The question remained... How could Anne help Helen learn to communicate when she could never see nor hear? It would be a long process that demanded the best from both of them. Anne would bring to the fore all her ingenuity, determination and constancy… and above all, her interest and love for Helen. Helen would meet this with her own effort, patience and willingness to learn.
Anne brought Helen into contact with the world around her little by little, first helping her identify objects through association, tracing the pattern of letters on Helen's hand before giving her the object. W-A-T-E-R. Then the cool wet feeling of a few drops of water on the palm of her hand. Helen made the association; she learned that things have a name, and that she could express herself when she learned what the different letter patterns signified. This took arduous mental effort, but the desire to express herself and enter into communion with other people, with the world around her, drove Helen forward. Through Anne's patient work, she would soon begin expressing actions and abstract concepts in addition to names. Over a period of several years, with the help of Anne Sullivan and other teachers, she would learn how to speak, read Braille, and understand other people by feeling their lip movements and throat vibration as they spoke.
Helen excelled far beyond the accomplishments previously known to anyone with similar disabilities. During her adult life she wrote, lectured, sharing her personal experience of being blind, and aiding the American Foundation for the Blind. She communicated to others what she herself had received from Anne Sullivan: hope and understanding. Even prior to grasping the concepts of words, spelling and signing, Helen grasped what is most fundamental to communication: relationship, the constant presence of another – Anne Sullivan. Even in moments when Helen lost patience Anne's methods of teaching, jerking her hand away and not even trying to understand what Anne was telling her, Anne succeeded at expressing what was most important: her own presence and desire to help Helen, to accompany her in her hardship, and to be Helen's connection with the world around her, her doorway to communication.
Helen Keller, who remained enfolded in physical darkness until her death, became a beacon light for those around her and those who would come after her. Her life, as well as her works, is a testimony to the best that is in man: to patience and determination, love and self-giving. All of us, when faced with life challenges, whether physical handicaps or social, moral, and spiritual difficulties, can look toward that star and follow Helen's lead. No obstacle is impossible when there is someone to help. No darkness can overcome the light of love.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Welcome to searchwarp! Very good information here.
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