Helen Keller

Helen Keller was a very special girl who needed a superb teacher. By the time she was seven years old, she still couldn’t speak, read or write. This was because Helen couldn’t see or hear. With these severe restrictions on her communication, Helen’s behavior was often unbearable. She was stubborn and angry, and often broke things when she wasn’t understood.

Anne Sullivan was brought in to help Helen. Anne was a teacher and former student at a school for the blind in Boston. She had had eyesight problems early in life as well so she could relate to Helen’s difficulties. Her first goal was to stop Helen’s troublesome behaviour. Helen would need this valuable preparation in order to learn language. She would also need lots of love. When Anne and Helen first met, Anne gave Helen a big hug.

Helen would have to learn to understand words spelled on her hand. Anne’s technique was simple and straightforward. She would put an object into one of Helen’s hands and spell the word into her other hand. She started with dolls. She would let Helen play with the doll, and then spell the letters “D-O-L-L” into her hand. Helen thought this was a game. She had a precise description of her excitement in her book, The Story of My Life: “Running downstairs to my mother, I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation.”

Then one day, Anne took Helen out to the well. Anne put Helen’s hand under the water. As the water flowed over one hand, Anne spelled “w-a-t-e-r” into the other hand. Then suddenly, Helen had a burst of understanding; the movement of the fingers meant the cool water flowing over her hand. This precious knowledge gave her hope and joy. Finally, the world of words was opening up to her.

Now that Helen understood the key to language, she was very eager to learn more and use it as much as she could. Children who can see and hear learn language easily but for Helen, it was a gradual and sometimes painful process. However, the results were amazing.

As Helen’s knowledge and vocabulary expanded, she asked more and more questions. This soon led her to discover more complex words and changed her thinking processes. Trying to learn the word “love” was an experience that she remembered well. This is how she described it in her book, The Story of My Life:

“I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word ‘love’. This was before I knew many words. I had found a few early violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher … Miss Sullivan put her arm gently round me and spelled into my hand, ‘I love Helen.’ ‘What is love?’ I asked. She drew me closer to her and said, ‘It is here,’ pointing to my heart … Her words puzzled me very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched it.”

The meaning of love was still not apparent to Helen but she kept on trying to understand. “I smelt the violets in her hand and asked, half in words, half in signs, a question which meant, ‘Is love the sweetness of flowers?’ ‘No,’ said my teacher.”

Helen then felt the warmth of the sun shining on them. She pointed up and asked if that was love. When her teacher said that it wasn’t, she was confused and disappointed. “I thought it strange that my teacher could not show me love.”

The word “think” was also a difficult one for Helen but she had a breakthrough while working on a simple task. She was making necklaces with the help of Miss Sullivan when she noticed that she had made some mistakes. Uncertain about how to fix them, she stopped to think carefully. As she did this, Miss Sullivan touched Helen’s head and spelled the word “think” into her hand. “In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head.”

It was the first time Helen understood such a complex word – a word for something she couldn’t touch. At that moment, her mind returned to the word “love”. As she thought about its meaning again, the sun came out. She pointed to the sun and asked her teacher again if that was love. Anne answered Helen by explaining that love was like the sun and clouds in a way.

“You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain … You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play.”  In that vivid moment, Helen finally understood the beautiful truth of word “love”.