THIS INCREDIBLE NOVEL IS WRITTEN BY HELEN KELLER. IN THIS PPT YOU CAN READ A BRIEF AND UNDERSTANDABLE LANGUAGED SUMMARY. NOT ONLY THE SUMMARY BUT ALSO THE WHOLE CHARACTER'S SKETCHES ARE PRESENTED IN THIS PPT, SO THAT YOU CAN KNOW ABOUT THE PEOPLE AND HELPERS OF THIS INCREDIBLE NOVEL.

1. THE STORY OF MY LIFE
BY HELLEN KELLER

2. ENGLISH HOLIDAY
HOMEWORK

3. Helen Keller
American author and
political activist
Helen Adams Keller was an American
author, political activist, and lecturer.
She was the first deaf-blind person to
earn a bachelor of arts degree.
Born: June 27, 1880, Tuscumbia,
Alabama, U.S.
Died: June 1, 1968, Easton, Connecticut,
USA
Cause of Death: Natural causes
Nationality: American
Height: 5'7" (1.70m)
Parents: Arthur H. Keller, Kate Adams
Keller

4. ABOUT NOVEL:
• The Story of My Life, first published in 1903, is Helen
Keller's autobiography detailing her early life, especially
her experiences withAnne Sullivan.Portions of it were
adapted by William Gibson for a 1957 Playhouse 90
production, a 1959 Broadway play, a 1962 Hollywood
feature film, and Sanjay Leela
Bhansali's Black featuring Amitabh Bachchan in the role
of Anne Sullivan. The book is dedicated to
inventor Alexander Graham Bell. The dedication reads,
"TO ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL; Who has taught the
deaf to speak and enabled the listening ear to hear speech
from the Atlantic to the Rockies, I DEDICATE This Story of
My Life."

5. Su m
m a r
y

6. CHAPTER 12

7. CHAPTER 13

9. CHAPTER 14

11. CHAPTER 15
• Helen spent the next summer and winter with her family in
Alabama. Staying at home made her forget about the controversy
over ‘The Frost King’. Helen was scared that people would discover
that the ideas were not her own. To help her, Helen’s teacher Anne
Sullivan encouraged her to write the story of her own life in the form
of an assignment. Helen was 12 years old at that time and used to
write for a magazine called Youth's Companion. Her visit to
President Cleveland’s inauguration, to Niagara Falls, and to the
World’s fair were the big events of 1893. Although she couldn’t see
the Falls, Helen said that their power had a big impact on her. Helen
claimed that beauty and music were like goodness and love to her.
•

12. CHAPTER 16
• By the time Helen was 13, she could fingerspell and read in
raised print and Braille. He could not only speak in English, but
also a little bit of French. Helen began her formal schooling and
preparation for college in for college by taking Latin and Math
lessons. She initially liked Math more, but later grew to love
Latin too.
•
Anne Sullivan taught Helen based on her interests until now.
She used to teach her what she wanted to know and provided
her with experiences. However, when preparing for college,
Helen worked systematically and things that did not gratify her
immediately. She had to achieve her goal of receiving formal
education.
•

13. CHAPTER 17
• In October 1894, Helen went to the Wright-Humason School for
the Deaf in New York City for two years. Miss Sullivan
accompanied her and attended the school as her interpreter.
Helen studied arithmetic, physical geography, French and
German at the school. The school was chosen because it was
the best for continuing the development of Helen’s speech and
lip reading skills. Helen and her teachers were disappointed as
her lip-reading and speech skills were not what they had hoped
and expected to be despite the practice. Helen did not like Math.
In spite of the setbacks, her admiration for geography and
languages helped her form fond memories of her stay in New
York. The only thing she liked about New York was Central
Park. The daily walks in Central park and closeness to nature
were the two things that helped her get closer to her former life
in her country

14. CHAPTER 18
• In 1896, Helen went to Cambridge school for Young Ladies to be prepared to
get into Radcliffe. It was her first experience of attending classes with girls
who could hear and see. At the Cambridge School too, Miss Sullivan was to
attend the classes with Helen as her interpreter. The teachers had never
taught someone like Helen. The subjects that Helen learnt in the first year
were English history, English literature, German, Latin, arithmetic, Latin
composition and occasional themes. Miss Sullivan tried her best to spell into
Helen’s hands everything that was in the books. Although Helen’s sponsors
in London and Philadelphia worked to have the textbooks embossed in
raised print for Helen to read, the books were not ready in time to suit
Helen’s purpose. The Principal and the German teacher learnt to fingerspell
so that Miss Sullivan could take a break. Although they were not as fluent as
Miss Sullivan, Principal Gilman took over teaching Helen English Literature
for the remaining part of the year.
•

15. CHAPTER 19
• Helen looked forward to her second year at Gilman’s school.
However, she was confronted with unexpected difficulties that
year which caused her a great deal of frustration. She had to
study mathematics without the needed tools. The classes were
larger and it was not possible for the Cambridge teachers to
give her special instructions. Anne Sullivan had to read all the
books to her. Helen had to wait in order to buy a Braille writer
so that she could do her algebra, geometry and physics.
•
When the embossed books and the other apparatus arrived,
Helen’s difficulties began to disappear and she began to study
with confidence. However, Mr. Gilman thought that Helen was
overworked and was breaking down. He insisted that I was
overworked, and that I should remain at his school three years
longer. He made changes in her studies.

16. • . A difference of opinion between Mr. Gilman and Miss Sullivan
resulted in Helen’s mother withdrawing Helen and Mildred
from the Cambridge school. Helen went on to continue her
studies under a tutor. Helen found it easier to study with a tutor
than receive instructions in class.
•
When Helen took her exam in June 1899, she faced many
difficulties, as the administrative board of Radcliffe did not
realize how difficult they were making her examinations. They
did not understand the peculiar difficulties Helen had to go
through. However, Helen, with her grit and determination,
overcame them all.
•

17. CHAPTER 20
• Helen Keller took the entrance exams for Radcliffe College in 1899
just after her 19th birthday. She became the first blind-deaf college
student in the fall of 1900. She had thought of college romantically,
that it would be a time to reflect and think about her subjects.
However, her college life was different from her fellow students. She
had to use her hands to listen rather than take down notes. The
speed at which the lectures took place made it difficult for Keller to
understand and remember everything that was taught. Ms. Keller and
Ms. Sullivan worked hard at Radcliffe College. Ms. Sullivan attended
all of Ms. Keller's classes and helped with reading. Radcliffe was not
prepared for deaf or blind students at that time. Many of the other
students had never met a deaf and blind person. Although she
enjoyed college, Ms. Keller thought that schedules of the students
were too hectic and gave no time to sit and think. She also wrote, "we
should take our education as we would take a walk in the country,
leisurely, our minds hospitably open to impressions of every sort."
•

18. CHAPTER 21
• In this chapter, Helen Keller goes back to tell readers about her
initial experiences with reading. Helen first read when I was
seven years old. That was her first connected story in May
1887. There were only a few books in raised print, which Helen
read repeatedly until a time when the words were so worn and
pressed that she could scarcely make them out.
•
During her visit to Boston, she was allowed to spend a part of
each day at the Institution library, and here she used to wander
from bookcase to bookcase and take down whatever her
“fingers lighted upon”. When she discovered the book ‘Little
Lord Fauntleroy,’ Miss Sullivan read it to her and the book
became Helen’s “sweet and gentle companion” throughout her
childhood.

19. • From there she read many books and she loved "Little Women"
because it gave her a sense of kinship with girls and boys who could
see and hear. She also loved ‘The Jungle Book’ and ‘Wild ‘Animals I
Have Known’ as she felt a genuine interest in the animals themselves,
they being “real animals and not caricatures of men”. She was
fascinated by Greek literature and it was Iliad that made Greece her
“paradise”. According to her, great poetry did not need an interpreter
but a responsive heart. Macbeth and King Lear impressed her most
among Shakespeare’s works. She read the Bible for years “with an
ever-broadening sense of joy and inspiration”. She said she loved it as
she loved no other book.
Helen also expresses her love for history apart from her love for
literature. The first book that gave her a real sense of the value of
history was Swinton's "World's History," which she received on her
thirteenth birthday. Among the French writers, she liked Molière and
Racine best. Literature was Helen’s Utopia, where she faced no
barrier of the senses. The things that she had learned and the things
that were taught to her seemed of ridiculously little importance
compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities."

20. CHAPTER 22
• Books and reading were not the only things that Helen enjoyed.
When Helen was not reading, she enjoyed outdoor activities.
She liked swimming, canoeing, and sailing. She also loved trees
and used to feel close to them so much so that she believed she
could hear their sap flow and see the sun shining on the leaves.
Helen felt that each one of us had the ability to understand the
impressions and the emotions experienced by mankind from
the beginning. Blindness or deafness could not rob us of our
memory in the subconscious about the green earth. This, she
termed as the sixth sense which can see, feel and hear.
•

21. CHAPTER 23
• In the last chapter, Helen thanks the ones who have helped her
throughout her life. She uses kind words to praise them. She
also expresses her disdain for the newspaper reporters whom
she calls “stupid and curious”. They were extremely unkind to
her. She speaks about her understanding of religion and
equates God with love. She credits Bishop Brooks for helping
her grow spiritually.
•

22. Characters

23. • Helen Keller
• Helen Keller is the protagonist and author of this
memoir, telling the story of her life up to age 22. Born
in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Helen was stricken with a
disease that left her both deaf and blind early on in life,
and she struggled to express herself until her teacher,
Anne Sullivan, came to work with her when she was
seven years old. From then on, Helen's life became a
story of progress and success, as she constantly
surmounted obstacles and became the first deaf-blind
person to obtain a Bachelor's degree.

24. • Anne Sullivan
• Johanna Mansfield Sullivan Macy, known as Anne
Sullivan, came into Helen’s life on third of March 1887.
She herself had been blind in her youth, and after her
vision was partially restored, she decided to dedicate
her life to teaching others like her. Through Miss
Sullivan's patient teaching that was perfectly tailored
to Helen's interests and needs, Helen achieved great
success, the likes of which no one expected from her.

25. • Kate Adams
• The mother of Helen Keller and Mildred Keller. She
was a very caring lady who tried her best to
understand Helen and taught her a lot of things.
Throughout Helen's life, she was a constant advocate
for her daughter, determined to find opportunities for
her despite her handicaps.

26. • Arthur H. Keller
• The father of Helen and Mildred, and a captain in
Confederate Army prior to his work as a newspaper
editor. His family is descended from Casper Keller, a
native of Switzerland, who settled in Maryland. Helen
loved her father, and remarked that he was a
particularly good storyteller. She also commented on
his fondness for hunting. Arthur died in the summer of
1896.

27. • Mildred Keller
• The younger sister of Helen Keller. For a long time,
Helen regarded her little sister as an intruder on her
mother's attention. Eventually, the two developed a
close relationship, though Mildred was never truly
able to understand Helen's finger language. Mildred
also attended the Cambridge School with Helen for six
months.

28. • Martha Washington
• The daughter of Helen's cook, Belle, and a good friend
of Helen's in the early days of her illness, when few
others could understand her. The two got up to great
mischief and adventurous exploration of their
surroundings.

29. • Mr. Anagnos
• Michael Anagnos was the Director of Perkins Institute
for the Blind, as well as a good friend of Helen's in her
early life. Her story, "The Frost King," was intended as
a birthday present to him, but after it was uncovered
that the story had been unwittingly plagiarized, his
relationship with her was tainted.

30. • Dr. Alexander Graham Bell
• He was the inventor of the telephone and a teacher of
the deaf. Helen dedicated her autobiography to Dr.
Alexander Graham Bell, and spent much time with him
throughout her life. Dr. Bell was the one who took
Helen to the World's Fair for the first time.

31. • Mr. Gilman
• Mr. Arthur Gilman was the Principal of the Cambridge
School for Young Ladies. He was a generous person
who learned to use manual alphabet to have a
conversation with Helen. He was very serious about
his students and cared deeply about Helen's education,
but when he reduced her course load and extended
her time at the school following her illness, Helen's
mother withdrew her and put her in private tutoring.

32. • Merton S. Keith
• Keith was an instructor in Cambridge who carried
oversaw Helen’s preparation for Radcliffe after she
withdrew from the Cambridge School. He instructed
Helen in Algebra, Greek, Latin, and Geometry.

33. • Bishop Brooks
• Brooks was a very joyful person in Helen's life who
told her to think beyond the boundaries of caste and
religion. He taught Helen that love is a universal
religion.

34. • Mr. William Endicott
• A friend of Helen's who lived near Boston at Beverly
Farms.

35. • Miss Sarah Fuller
• The teacher who began teaching Helen to speak by
allowing her to feel the movements of her own lips and
tongue. Helen took eleven lessons with Miss Fuller.

36. • Mrs. Sophia C. Hopkins
• A friend with whom Helen and Miss Sullivan stayed
during their summer at Brewster. Mrs. Hopkins read
many books to Helen, one of which was presumably
"The Frost Fairies."

37. • Mr. John P. Spaulding
• A close friend of Helen's, who died around the same
time as her father.

38. • Mr. J.E. Chamberlin
• A friend of Helen's, at whose home they stayed during
their months in Wrentham, Massachusetts.

39. • Dr. Edward Everett Hale
• A close friend of Helen's, to whom she wrote letters
often.

40. • John Albert Macy
• Editor of The Story of My Life, and a close friend of Miss
Sullivan's and Helen's during Helen's time at Radcliffe.
He was a Professor of English at Harvard.

41. Extra
Questions

42. • 1Explain how and why Helen’s emotions toward
Miss Sullivan undergo a radical transformation
between the time they first meet until Annie finally
establishes a connection with the young girl.
• As a very young, handicapped child before Annie
arrives, Helen Keller inhabits a dark world populated
by suspicion, rage, and childish immaturity that she
has grown used to openly expressing without fear of
censor from either herself or her parents. Those
intense emotions come from living in a world of
silence and darkness. While her family attempted to
communicate with her through body language, Miss
Sullivan was the first person in Helen's life who made a
concerted effort to teach her how to understand and
be understood. Thus, while Helen was unsure about
her at first, they eventually established a deep
connection that strengthens as Helen matures and
controls her emotions.

43. • In what ways is the quality of writing in Helen's
memoir just as important as its content?
• Helen's autobiography is, of course, meant to tell the
story of her life by relaying important events,
interactions, and steps in her education. However,
readers learn equally as much about Helen's growth
through the quality of her writing. Helen writes
beautifully, with descriptive language that paints a
picture for her readers. This is particularly remarkable
because of her long journey to achieve this stylistic
success. It is reflective of her deep love of literature
and the work that Miss Sullivan and her other teachers
have done to bring her writing up to the same
standard as people who can see and hear.

44. • How is Helen's education different from a typical
child's, and what commentary does this make on
the U.S. education system?
• Unlike most children her age, Helen did not spend her
time sitting in a classroom with many other children,
reciting vocabulary, or practicing writing on a slate.
She learned through hands-on interaction with the
world, with informal lessons perfectly catered to her
interests and abilities. This, of course, is in part
because she had one-on-one tutoring, which is not
feasible for many children. However, Helen's success in
a personalized education plan suggests that the U.S.
education system at this time in history was too rigid
and structured, and that children can learn far more
from teachers who allow them to ask questions and
experience life than from teachers who stick carefully
to a given textbook or curriculum.

45. • Why was college not everything Helen hoped it would
be? How did she benefit from it anyway?
• Like many students, Helen had an incredibly romanticized
idea of college being a place of endless knowledge, a
"universal Athens," as she calls it in Chapter 20. She
believed her college education would be spent learning how
to think and process the world, constantly asking questions.
However, college, with its lectures and homework, was so
fast-paced that Helen found she spent all her time just
attempting to retain the vast amounts of information being
presented to her. She rarely had time to think and extract
meaning from her studies. Still, though, she appreciated her
chance to attend Radcliffe, because it allowed her to study
alongside girls her age with sight and hearing; it allowed
her to maximize her potential. In the end, college for Helen
was about exposure to different kinds of knowledge that
she would eventually use and interpret throughout the rest
of her life.

46. • Why was Helen so traumatized by the "Frost King"
incident?
• When Helen was accused of plagiarism, she was
deeply affected because she had not believed her mind
could betray her in such a way. From the moment she
began learning to communicate, Helen valued
language and words above everything else, and took
pride in being able to write and speak on her own. The
idea that her mind could store and steal someone
else's words without her awareness scared her, and for
a long time thereafter she was afraid to write at all, for
she was sure that the same thing would happen again.

47. Submitted
to: Mrs.
Ranjeet Kaur
Mam