Helen Keller's First Glimpse

I invite you to see the first steps from darkness to light as Helen Keller perceived them helped by her lifetime companion and teacher, Annie Sullivan.

At the age of one year and a half, Helen Keller ran an extremely high fever that lasted for days and nights, and caused her blindness and deafness; the most likely cause of the fever was meningitis or scarlet fever. As Helen grew, she could not see the world or hear it. She was able to "feel" sound through vibrations in the ground or air. Her family realized she needed help to be able to communicate with the world and that wa going to become reality due to finger spelling.

Finger spelling is a system of communicating for the deaf and blind where each letter of the alphabet is shown by a different hand position. For those who have both disabilities, the letters are felt in the palm of the hand. The basic system was invented by Spanish monks; they used this system to communicate with each other when they were under a vow of silence.

After a careful consideration, the teacher Annie Sullivan (at the age of twenty) accepted the challenge of opening the world for Helen. Annie understood part of Helen’s condition as she’s been herself through a similar hardship. At the age of three, Annie Sullivan was infected with trachoma, this is an eye infection caused by a bacteria. As her eyes became worse, she began to wear a pair of dark glasses to protect her sensitive eyes from sunlight.

On the 3rd of March 1887, Annie stepped off the final train in the small southern town of Tuscumbia Alabama.

When her eyes first laid on Helen, she saw a six years old girl whose hair hung about her in tangles, a dress and pair of stockings filthy and torn, and brown shoes tied with white strings. It wasn’t as if the Keller’s couldn’t afford better …

To Annie, Helen seemed as a wild animal. She saw that Helen’s hands were her eyes; the world would open to Helen through touch. Annie’s first morning in the Keller’s home was spent finger spelling the word "doll" into her palm. Helen had discovered a doll in Annie’s suitcase. She took Helen’s hands and patted the head of the doll and then finger spelled the letters d-o-l-l in Helen’s palm. Annie’s goal was to teach her little student to connect the word "doll" with the object.

What happened was that Helen copied her teacher’s hand movements but did not associate the movement with the doll. The key to opening Helen’s world was to connect the object with its name. The girl’s curiosity was piqued as Annie continuously finger spelled in Helen’s hands. The young student tried to finger spell into her dog’s paws (this was actually a game) to help her practice even more.

When Helen misbehaved, Annie would not "talk" to her. As you can easily imagine, this was torture to Helen! The little girl would be back in her world of silence and darkness. She learnt that if she wanted companionship, she’d have to behave.

Helen was learning more and more words every day but was not connecting them with their objects. Annie had been working with Helen for a month but her young student did not understand that things and actions were different and words simply had no meaning for her. The morning of April the 5th 1887, over a month after Helen and Annie had met, Annie had an idea. She took Helen’s hands and led her to the outside water pump. Annie showed the little student how to hold the mug under the water. Annie pumped the water into the mug and over Helen’s hands, then Annie spelled "w-a-t-e-r" into her little palms - slowly at first, then faster. Helen dropped the mug and her face lit up, Annie spelt the same word -"w-a-t-e-r" - over and over again in Helen’s palms. Helen understood! Every object that she knew had a name!

Helen run around touching everything and Annie spelled the name of the object Helen touched. On April the 5th 1887 Helen Keller learnt thirty new words!

In her autobiography she described that night as one where "for the first time I longed for a new day to come." By the end of the summer she learned 625 words and in a year’s time her vocabulary consisted in 900 words. Helen would come to call Annie "Teacher" her entire life.

Six year old Helen in her black silent world "saw light" and "heard sounds" with her hands for the very first time! She learnt to speak, to read in four different languages, write and type on a typewriter and a braillewriter. She fought for the right of women to vote, racial equality, child labor and unfair work practices. She met kings, emperors and presidents; all she wished was the world to accept her as equal as the seeing and the hearing. She proved to the world that not only could she do anything that she set her mind to but that the disabled could do the same!