Helen Keller
A determined woman who overcame
tremendous struggles.
Who Influenced Helen?
Growing up both blind and deaf created many struggles for Helen. The breaking point with her family happened when she was six years old and tripped over the cradle that her sister was lying in. Neither Helen or Mildred got her but many family friends said that Helen should be institutionalized. Kate, Helen's mother refused though.
Soon after the incident, Kate was reading a book by Charles Dickens on the education of Laura Bridgman, who was a blind-deaf child as well. She had been taught to communicate by the director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. But their name was not mentioned throughout the book.
Helen was taken to an eye doctor where they found out the news that the family had been dreading for years, there was nothing that could be done that could restore Helen's eyesight. They thought there was hope just like Laura Bridgman but there wasn't.
Her eye doctor encouraged them to get advice from Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. This was because Bell's wife and mother were both deaf, so throughout his life he invented several assistive devices to help people hard of hearing.
Alexander Graham Bell knew of Laura Bridgman as well but did not know the director. Together, Bell and Keller wrote to the Perkins Institute and found out the director's name, Anne Sullivan. At that moment, Anne and Helen's relationship began to form.
Alexander Graham Bell was such an influence on Helen Keller's life because if it were not for him, Helen would have never met Anne Sullivan and she could have spent the rest of her life as the 'wild child.'
Helen Keller and Mark Twain had a friendship throughout her entire life. He always stood by her side and defended her with any critiques she received. Below is a letter written by Mark Twain to Helen Keller on St. Patrick's Day in 1903.
Riverdale - on - the Hudson
St. Patrick's Day, 1903
Dear Helen:
I must steal half a moment from my work to say how glad I am to have your book and how highly I value it, both for its own sake and as a remembrance of an affectionate friendship which has subsisted between us for nine years without a break and without a single act of violence that I can call to mind. I suppose there is nothing like it in heaven; and not likely to be, until we get there and show off. I often think of it with longing, and how they'll say, "there they come--sit down in front." I am practicing with a tin halo. You do the same. I was at Henry Roger's last night, and of course we talked of you. He is not at all well--you will not like to hear that; but like you and me, he is just as lovely as ever.
I am charmed with your book--enchanted. You are a wonderful creature, the most wonderful in the world--you and your other half together--Miss Sullivan, I mean, for it took the pair of you to make complete and perfect whole. How she stands out in her letters! her brilliancy, penetration, originality, wisdom, character, and the fine literary competencies of her pen--they are all there.
- Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that "plagiarism" farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul--let us go farther and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances in plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second hand, consciously or unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them any where except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.
When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten thousand men--but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his but there were others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone, or any other important thing--and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite--that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.
Then why don't we unwittingly reproduce the phrasing of a story, as well as the story itself? It can hardly happen--to the extent of fifty words--except in the case of a child; its memory tablet is not lumbered with impressions, and the natural language can have graving room there and preserve the language a year or two, but a grown person's memory tablet is a palimpsest, with hardly a bare space upon which to engrave a phrase. It must be a very rare thing that a whole page gets so sharply printed on a man's mind, by a single reading, that it will stay long enough to turn up some time or other to be mistaken by him for his own.
No doubt we are constantly littering our literature with disconnected sentences borrowed from books at some unremembered time and how imagined to be our own, but that is about the most we can do. In 1866 I read Dr. Holmes's poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole his dedication, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my "Innocents Abroad" with. Ten years afterward I was talking with Dr. Holmes about it. He was not an ignorant ass--no, not he; he was not a collection of decayed human turnips, like your "Plagiarism Court," and so when I said, "I know now where I stole it, but who did you steal it from," he said, "I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anyone who had!"
To think of those solemn donkeys breaking a little child's heart with their ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole histories, their whole lives, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions were one solid rock of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and never suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they think they've caught filching a chop! Oh, dam--
But you finish it, dear, I am running short of vocabulary today.
Every lovingly your friend,
Mark
Mark
Twain
Alexander G. Bell
Polly Thompson
In 1915, Helen and Anne began looking for someone to help since they had become so busy with Helen's social activism. They came across a young woman, Mary (Polly) Thompson, that lived a few blocks down from them on Long Island in Forest Hills, New York. Polly grew up I Glasgow, Scotland but was sent to the United States in 1913 to look for a job as a governess. Her family was not able to provide for her like they needed to with her father dying when she was only twelve, leaving his wife and four children. Soon after Polly arrived, she began working with Anne and Helen for the rest of her life.
In 1918, Helen, Anne, and Polly who were known as the 'Three Musketeers' traveled to Hollywood to film the movie, Deliverance, a silent film about Helen Keller's life. Around the year 1922, Anne's health began deteriorating quickly when she came down with bronchitis which left her unable to speak above a whisper. Because of this, she was forced to stop working with Helen and Polly. Anne died on October 20, 1936. After that tragic point in their lives, Helen and Polly permanently moved to Arcan Ridge, in Westport, Connecticut.
Polly Thompson traveled the world with Helen to thirty-five countries including Japan, Australia, South America, Europe, and Africa. During the years of traveling around the world, Polly suffered a stroke; the doctors advised her to stop and remain at home, but she refused. Once her health was semi-better, the two went right back traveling again. However, she suffered another stroke in 1957 which she was never able to recover. She died on March 2, 1960. Her ashes were placed across the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C next to Anne Sullivan's. The last eight years of Helen's life, Winnie Corbally, a nurse, took Polly's place.
In 1960, Helen suffered a stroke and retired from the public eye. She spent the rest of her life in Connecticut where her and Polly had moved to. She died on June 1, 1968; Senator Lister Hill of Alabama spoke at her funeral quoting, "She will live on, one of the few, the immortal names not born to die. Her spirit will endure as long as man can read and stories can be told of the woman who showed the world there are no boundaries to courage and faith."
Helen Keller also inspired other people throughout her life by overcoming so many struggles that the average person can take for granted. Follow the link below to see a few of her many quotes that she continues to be famous for today.
