The Story of My Life · Chapter
Personality explained
This chapter explores Helen Keller's personality, character, and the unique ways she interacts with the world.
What happens
This chapter explores Helen Keller's personality, character, and the unique ways she interacts with the world. It highlights her humor, courage, perseverance, pure-mindedness, and the balance between her logic and sympathy. The chapter also discusses her sense of touch, her methods of communication, and her determination to do everything others do, as well as she can.
Themes in this chapter
Overcoming Adversity
Helen's determination to learn to speak and attend college despite advice against it exemplifies her perseverance against challenges.
Identity and Self-Expression
The chapter explores how Helen's unique personality, humor, and courage define her identity and her way of expressing herself.
Language and Communication
Discusses Helen's use of the manual alphabet, her gestures, and her reliance on touch and smell to understand the world.
Love and Friendship
Helen's forgiving nature and her definition of love as 'what everybody feels for everybody else' highlight her capacity for love and friendship.
Characters to notice
- Helen Keller
The subject of the chapter; her personality, humor, courage, and determination are explored in depth.
- Anne Sullivan
Helen's teacher and constant companion, who guides her understanding of the world and is noted for her wisdom and humor.
- Charles Dudley Warner
A friend who wrote about Helen's pure-mindedness in Harper's Magazine in 1896.
- Joseph Jefferson
Explained phrenology bumps to Helen, leading to her quip about fighting difficulties.
- Mrs. Laurence Hutton
A friend Helen visited, during which she defined toleration.
- Albert H. Munsell
The artist who let Helen experiment with a wax tablet and stylus when she was twelve.
- Mark Twain
Quoted as saying the two most interesting characters of the nineteenth century are Napoleon and Helen Keller.
Key passages
“I believe she is the purest-minded human ever in existence. … The world to her is what her own mind is. She has not even learned that exhibition on which so many pride themselves, of 'righteous indignation.'”
Charles Dudley Warner believed Helen Keller to be the most pure-minded person alive, and that her world is a reflection of her own mind, lacking the pretense of righteous indignation.
This quote from Charles Dudley Warner in Harper's Magazine illustrates Helen's innocence and purity of character.
“If he had only known what a good dog she was, he wouldn't have shot her.”
When a policeman shot her dog, Helen forgave him, saying he would not have done it if he had known the dog's good nature.
Demonstrates Helen's forgiving and compassionate nature.
“Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.”
Helen defined toleration as the mind's greatest gift, requiring as much effort as balancing on a bicycle.
Shows Helen's insightful and metaphorical way of thinking.
“Yes, but I like to play also, and I feel sometimes as if I were a music box with all the play shut up inside me.”
When asked if she liked to study, Helen replied that she also likes to play, comparing herself to a music box full of play.
Reveals Helen's playful and imaginative side.
“Well, he seems to have done all the essential things.”
When told that all we know of Shakespeare is that he was baptized, married, and died, Helen quipped that he had done all the essential things.
Example of Helen's wit and humor.
“I never fight, except against difficulties.”
When Joseph Jefferson said she had a prizefighting bump on her head, Helen replied that she only fights against difficulties.
Highlights Helen's determination to overcome obstacles.
