Summary
After Helen learned the names of things and how to spell words, her next task was learning how to read. Miss Sullivan taught her this by giving her slips of cardboard, on which were raised letters. She got used to attaching these words to their objects, and arranging them into sentences that she would act out with the objects—dolls, toys, furniture—themselves. This evolved into an ability to read full books.
Helen and Miss Sullivan often had their lessons outdoors, which pleased Helen, who was energized by nature. At a place called Keller's Landing on the Tennessee River, Miss Sullivan taught Helen geography, making raised maps in the river's clay. Helen loves learning, and is enthusiastic about all of her lessons. It is only arithmetic that displeases her: she did not have the patience for math and numbers. Sometimes, Helen's lessons began with an object. When a man gifted her a collection of fossils, for example, Miss Sullivan used them to teach her about dinosaurs, and the gift of a shell provided a lesson about the ocean. Over and over, Helen remarks at how skilled Miss Sullivan was at teaching her. Her knack for making every lesson interesting, her sympathy for Helen's challenging, and her careful and patient guiding of the young girl's mind all left a lasting mark on her. Regarding her teacher, Helen says, "All the best of me belongs to her" (pg. 17).
For Helen's first Christmas with Miss Sullivan living in the house, Helen and Miss Sullivan prepared gifts for everyone else in the family, and Helen was delighted by the prospect of surprising the others. She herself received lots of wonderful presents from friends and family, but her favorite was a little canary given to her by her teacher. She called him Little Tim, and her time with him was happy, until one morning she accidentally left his cage open and he flew out of the house. After that, she did not see him again.
The next life event that Helen recounts is her visit to Boston in May 1888. She went by train with her teacher and her mother, and Miss Sullivan narrated to her everything she saw outside the window. In Boston, Helen went to the Perkins Institute for the Blind, where she quickly made friends with the other blind children, who used the manual alphabet just like her. Also in Boston, they visited numerous historical sites, like Bunker Hill, so Helen could have lessons in history. Helen made many friends in Boston, but she recalls Mr. William Endicott and his daughter most fondly, remembering visiting their home at Beverley Farms.
After the Perkins Institute closed for the summer, Miss Sullivan and Helen went to spend their vacation on Cape Cod at Brewster. Helen had longed to see the ocean for so long because of a book she had read, and it was just as powerful as she imagined. When she went in for the first time, she slipped on a rock and was pulled around by some waves, but her teacher grabbed her before long, and it did not taint her fascination with the sea. Her favorite memories of that summer are sitting on the seashore, smelling the sea air.
In the fall, Helen returned to Alabama full of memories. They spent the autumn at the family's summer cottage, Fern Quarry, on a mountain fourteen miles away from Tuscumbia, where Helen could fully immerse herself in nature and the wild forest. Helen remembers many visitors coming to Fern Quarry, men who would sit around the campfire with her father and tell stories of their bountiful hunting. During one summer spent at Fern Quarry, Helen brought her pony, Black Beauty, and she would spend hours on his back, while Miss Sullivan carefully led him around. She also remembers standing with Mildred and watching trains speed by at the foot of the mountain.
After her first visit to Boston, Helen spent almost every winter in the north. There, she experienced snow for the first time, and was mesmerized by the way the world transformed. Whenever there was a snowstorm, they would stay inside and tell stories, then venture out once the storm stopped to traipse through the snowdrifts or toboggan down the slopes that surrounded the wintry lake where they stayed.
Analysis
Helen's education is characterized by hands-on interaction. She engages with the world around her through touch, taste, and scent, learning not only the names for objects, but also what they can do, how they interact with each other, and how they relate to her. This is very different from the way most students Helen's age would learn; by this time, a typical eight-year-old would be learning in a classroom, memorizing spellers and readers, and doing recitations. Instead, Helen has the world as her classroom, and it often makes her forget that she is even being taught in the first place. This style of learning is similar to how infants and toddlers first experience the world, which makes sense, since following her illness Helen had to learn a new way of navigating her surroundings.
In this memoir, Miss Sullivan is meant to serve as a model for what all teachers—not just teachers of deaf-blind children like Helen—should be. She is patient and never critical, taking the time to work with Helen until she has mastered each step in her process of learning. Most importantly, she is receptive to the way her student's mind works. Because she cannot see or hear, Helen learns best by doing, directly interacting with the things in her world. Miss Sullivan recognizes this right away and incorporates this style of learning into every lesson she gives, providing Helen with interesting, stimulating lessons that instill in her a love of learning. This is the mark of a strong, dedicated teacher, with a passion both for teaching and for the well-being of her student.
In these chapters, readers learn about two more of Helen's animal companions to accompany the earlier story of Bella the dog: Little Tim, her canary, and Black Beauty, her pony. Not for the first time, Helen remarks that some of her happiest memories are moments spent with animals. This is because these creatures understand her automatically; they do not need her to be able to speak, hear, or see in order to connect with her. It is disheartening when Little Tim flies away and leaves her, but by then, Helen has cultivated the mental fortitude to understand that even the best experiences are fleeting, and that the memories she had of him are powerful enough.
As she is educated, Helen's world slowly expands. When she was first stricken with her illness, her world consisted of only the family house and the immediate area surrounding it, as she could not venture too far and had no way of interpreting whatever she encountered. When Miss Sullivan came, Helen's world stretched beyond the house to the nature around her, and places like Keller's Landing and Fern Quarry became part of it. Her first journey up north to Boston then stretches her world far beyond the limits she initially perceived for herself, proving that her ailment cannot set any boundaries to confine her. Things like the ocean and snow were previously only in her imagination, but on these journeys north, Helen can use her education to experience and interpret them at last.
The earlier tree-climbing incident and this incident with the ocean are similar: in both cases, she interacted with something new and learned that while nature can be mystical and beautiful, it is also powerful, and can manipulate her in ways she is does not expect. Her differing reactions in both cases, though, show how much she has matured already. When she nearly fell out of the tree, Helen was scared to climb another one for a long time. When she was knocked over by the ocean, however, she accepted its power and continued to embrace it, turning fear instead into awe. This shows that she is quickly learning how to overcome things that may seem overwhelming.
Another notable instance in these chapters is Helen's summer at the Perkins Institute. She immediately remarks on how wonderful it was to be around children just like her, who know the struggles she faces as a person who cannot see. While Helen has wonderful companions in her family and her teachers, there is something truly comforting about being around people who can not only sympathize, but also truly understand the way Helen operates. She has proved that she does not need to be around people like her—Miss Sullivan's education has given her the ability to understand and be understood by everyone—but it is a source of great comfort and empowerment to learn alongside other children like her for the first time.
