The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

Name of Book: The Story of My Life (autobiography)

Author: Helen Keller

Number of pages: 225

This book is an autobiography of Helen Keller, the first deaf and blind person to get a college degree. She was born on June the 27th of 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her father was Arthur H. Keller, a captain in the Confederate Army and her mother was Kate Adams. Helen became blind and deaf at the age of two, as a result of a severe illness. The fact that she became blind and deaf made her stubborn, naughty and even aggressive because she didn't know how she could express herself and because nobody could understand her. "Meanwhile, the desire to express myself grew. The few signs I used became less and less adequate and my failures to express myself were invariably followed by outbursts of passion. I felt as if invisible hands were holding me, and I made frantic efforts to free myself." When Helen was 6 years old her father heard about a successful oculist who lived in Baltimore. Straight away her parents decided that she should be taken to the oculist to see if anything could be done for her vision. When they arrived the doctor said that he couldn't help Helen but he helped in finding a good teacher for her. In 1887, when Helen was almost 7 years old, her teacher, Miss Sullivan arrived and began teaching her to communicate, read, and write. One of Helen's personality traits was that when she started understanding the world around her, she got very enthusiastic about learning and she wanted to learn new words everyday. Only about a year after the learned to communicate with others by spelling words into other people's palms, she started learning how to read and write and even speak! Later, she learned to read and write in French, German, Greek and Latin. Another of Helen's personality traits was that she always believed that she would succeed and that belief helped her a lot when she was having trouble with learning something. When she entered her dream college (the Radcliffe College) in 1900 when she was having struggles with learning algebra and geometry, she was full of hope and enthusiasm and this helped her succeed.The book didn't talk a lot about her physical appearance but from pictures and a bit of description in the book I know that she had light brown curly hair and blue eyes.