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Question
There were many reasons for Helen Keller's embittered childhood. What were they and how were they overcome?
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Solution
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.
RELATED QUESTIONS
Read the following extract and complete the activities given below :
A1 Compare the old and new house and complete the table :
| Points | Old House | New House |
| Surrounding | razzle-dazzle | – |
| Size of the house | – | big |
I was thirteen, the year we moved to the Cantonment at Allahabad. In stark contrast to the razzle-dazzle of the city’s commercial areas like Katra and Chowk, the Cantonment was a quiet, orderly place with broad tree-lined roads that still carried the names of long-dead Britishers. Our bungalow was on a sleepy by-lane called MacPherson Road. When we first saw it, my brothers and I were delighted. It was by far the biggest house we had ever lived in. The task of furnishing those huge, echoing rooms daunted mother.
“Is a slightly smaller house not available?” she asked father, “We do not have enough curtains for this place. And the furniture seems a little inadequate. Why did they have to plan the kitchen at such a distance from the dining-room? It is like doing a route march. And who is going to help me keep this place clean and dusted?”
Her misgivings and objections were undoubtedly valid. But, seeing our crestfallen faces, she sighed and gave in. We made extravagant promises to help in the household chores. Keep our rooms tidy. Put away our toys and books. She smiled with amused disbelief, her mind already working out how many meters of curtain-cloth would be needed and so on.
A2 Complete :
Complete the following list of objections that the mother had with the new house :
(i) Inadequate _______
(ii) Do not have _______
(iii) Kitchen at a distance from _______
(iv) A very big _______
A3 Personal response:
Do you agree with the objections raised by the mother? Explain.
Make sentence of your own using the following expression.
overcome:
State whether the following statement is True or False:
Oberon transforms Bottom's head into that of an ass.
Read the passage and name the following.
He led the defense of Troy for nine years.
Read these lines and answer the questions given below.
Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed,
Here ‘Lays’ means______
Neerja was sent to London based on______.
______ over heard her father’s talking on the phone about the robbery.
Who disguised himself as an old man?
Why did Meena call the official 'Appa'? Do you think we need to be a family to care for others?
What did Bala teach Nithin?
