Question

There were many reasons for Helen Keller's embittered childhood. What were they and how were they overcome?

Answer 1

When Helen she was 19 months old she lost her vision and hearing to an unknown illness. She was suddenly plunged into silence and darkness.

Her condition made her extremely dependant on her mother and she used a crude sign language to communicate her wants. Gradually, she realised that she was different from the other people. When she was unable to understand what others spoke, her frustration and anger grew. When her sister was born, Helen thought of her as an intruder who had taken her place in her mother’s life.

She became a very rude and an unruly child due to her inability to communicate. She tyrannised their household with her temper tantrums. When Helen was about six years old, her father wrote to Mr. Anagnos, the director of the Perkins Institution in Boston requesting for assistance to educate Helen. Miss Anne Sullivan entered Helen’s life as her teacher and changed it forever

Miss Sullivan began teaching Helen by manually signing into her hand. She brought Helen out of darkness and uncertainty and connected Helen with the outside world. She was instrumental in
teaching her to think and to make a connection between the abstract and the physical world. The two were together for forty-nine years.