When Helen realized she was different from others, it was a huge turning point in her life. This is what she noticed that set her apart from everyone else.
"I do not remember when I first realized I was different from other people; but I knew it before my teacher came to me. I had noticed that my mother and my friends did not use signs as I did when they wanted anything done, but talked with their mouths. Sometimes I stood between two persons who were conversing and touched their lips. I could not understand, and was vexed." (27)
"I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things. In the wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another. Its people, scenery, manners, joys, tragedies should be living, tangible interpreters of the real world. The lecture-halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and the wise, and I thought the professors were the embodiment of wisdom. If I have since learned differently, I am not going to tell anybody."(85)
This was when Helen Keller entered Radcliffe College. She felt as if she could accomplish anything she put her mind to; she finally felt like a typical person.
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Despite her being handicapped, Helen realized that she was very fortunate to be able feel the happiness she did, when others felt no happiness.
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"...I realize now what a selfish, greedy girl I was to ask that my cup of happiness should be filled to overflowing, without stopping to think how many people's cups were quite empty. I feel heartily ashamed of my thoughtlessness. One of the childish illusions, which it has been hardest for me to get rid of, is that we have only to make our wishes known in order to have them granted. But I am slowly learning that there is not happiness enough in the world for everyone to have all that he wants; and it grieves me to think that I should have forgotten, even for a moment, that I already have more than my share, and that like poor little Oliver Twist should I have asked for 'more'..."(196)
"The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mine and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the worlds of some loved poet touch deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts."(85).
These two quotations are Helen's opinions of college after she had been there for a little while. Her thoughts changed and college turned out to be different from what it seemed.
" But I soon discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young inexperience became beautifully less and 'faded into the light of common day'. Gradually I began to find that there were disadvantages in going to college." (85).
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Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880. Helen was pronounced deaf and blind after she suffered an illness at the age of 19 months. Helen's parents were directed to the Perkins Institute for the Blind, where Anne Sullivan became Helen's mentor. Sullivan, who was a former student at the school and also visually impaired, taught Helen to communicate by feeling other people's throats and lips and also by spelling out letters in her palm. Helen attended 5 different schools throughout her life and received magna cum laude at Radcliffe college. She became an advocate for others with disabilities and co-founded Helen Keller International (HKI) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Helen wrote 12 books overall some including, The Frost King, The Story of My Life, Out of the Dark, and My Religion. She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968. (Helen Keller)
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"True, her view of life is highly coloured and full of poetic exaggeration; the universe, as she sees it, is no doubt a little better than it really is. But her knowledge of it is not so incomplete as one might suppose. Occasionally she astonishes you by ignorance of some fact with no one happens to have told her... Many of the detached incidents and facts of our daily life pass around and over her unobserved; but she has enough detailed acquaintance with the world to keep her view of it from being essentially defective"(230) (Anne Sullivan)
This was Anne Sullivan's opinion of Helen Keller. She believed that Helen was pure and innocent but also very aware and smart.
The Story of My Life
Helen Keller
(Ivy_Green1)"...I realize now what a selfish, greedy girl I was to ask that my cup of happiness should be filled to overflowing, without stopping to think how many people's cups were quite empty. I feel heartily ashamed of my thoughtlessness. One of the childish illusions, which it has been hardest for me to get rid of, is that we have only to make our wishes known in order to have them granted. But I am slowly learning that there is not happiness enough in the world for everyone to have all that he wants; and it grieves me to think that I should have forgotten, even for a moment, that I already have more than my share, and that like poor little Oliver Twist should I have asked for 'more'..."(196)
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"Anne Sullivan Macy" . 23 Nov 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Anne_Sullivan>.
"Braille" . 23 Nov 2008 <http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html>.
Helen_Keller-Kid" 24 Nov 2008 <http://5thsocialstudies.pbwiki.com/Helen+Keller>.
"Ivy Green1" Photograph. 23 Nov 2008 <http://helenkeller.yottadot.org/ >.
"Keller_18995t" . 23 Nov 2008 <http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=3147>.