![]() 12)įear clutches at Helen’s heart because she is alone and she senses a thunderstorm is about to place her in danger. I knew it, it was the odour that always precedes a thunderstorm, and a nameless fear clutched at my heart.” Helen Keller (Chapter 5, pg. ![]() I knew the sky was black, because all the heat, which meant light to me, had died out of the atmosphere. This moment of understanding stands out in Helen's memory as one of the highest points in her education. She at last makes the connection when Miss Sullivan places one of her hands under a water spout, and spells w-a-t-e-r into the other. Before this point, she had imitated Miss Sullivan spelling words into her hand without understanding how they were connected to the objects she gave her. ![]() This quote encompasses the moment when Helen finally realizes what she is learning. “Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten–a thrill of returning thought and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.” Helen Keller (Chapter 4, pg. Miss Sullivan's arrival gave Helen the ability to navigate in spite of this darkness, empowering her to set her sights on lofty goals that she would one day be able to reach. Without the ability to communicate with and understand those around her, she was entirely in the dark, similar to being on a ship shrouded in fog without any sense of direction. In this quote, Helen masterfully employs metaphor to explain what the world was like for her before she began her education. “Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was.” Helen Keller (Chapter 4, pg. This truth is important to Helen's own story, because she does not allow herself to be set back by the condition that befalls her. Potential is in no way afforded or limited by the circumstances of one’s birth because, in one way or another, we are all connected to both kings and slaves. Keller is suggesting in her usual poetic way one of the essential truths of being: we are all connected. Less than a page into the book, Helen Keller offers this brilliant metaphor that boils down the essential quality of being human and puts a sharp sword into every single argument supporting purity of blood. The best told stories lead to therapeutic application of liberal dosages of a healing balm spiced with strokes of thematic juxtapositions and catholic combinations.“…there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.” Helen Keller (Chapter 1, pg. ![]() We cannot make sense of what we discover in absence of attempted identification and positing resolution of conflicts that ongoing quarrels encumbers our conceptual inventory with stabs of guilt and slices of self-loathing. We only find important parts of our self, if we engross in thoughtful rumination, explication, and analysis. Storytelling includes granting oneself leave to engage in subjective digressions, selection, and prioritizing. There can be no story told without psychological investigation. No raw truths will ever be discerned must less shared by the storyteller to an audience of soul brothers in absence of the author’s resolute effort to shape the pliable clay of human discord, anguish, and incomprehensible wanting into a decipherable fable while aiming to distill moral truths. “Objectively hammering out a grim list of chronological facts with a dispassionate voice is a Scribner’s task writing the story of a person’s own life calls for one to see the icon that lies behind deluge of facts.
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