The Life Of Helen Keller, 1970s - Film 30519

If you could neither see nor hear, how would you learn? How would you know the difference between day and night? Or right and wrong? In her own words, this is the story of Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf, and the remarkable woman who came into her life determined to bring light. Helen Keller was born in Alabama in 1880, and until she was 19 months old, she was a normal, healthy, happy child. Then she became stricken with a strange disease that left her deaf and blind. Unable to see, unable to hear, she became, she said, a phantom, living in a no-world. Later, she described herself in these words. With appalling suddenness, she moved from light to darkness and became a phantom. The world ceased to have a voice for her. Silence swooped upon her mind and lay over all the space she traveled. The sunlight that had kept her running with a sense of direction was extinct. The birds in her heart ceased to sing because she could not echo back their joy. When she was six, her father took her to a doctor who recommended they see Alexander Graham Bell, the man who invented the telephone. Bell had long been interested in problems like Helen's. He suggested they contact a school in Boston, the Perkins Institute for the Blind, and try to arrange for a teacher for Helen. On March 3, 1887, sent by the Perkins Institute, Ann Sullivan arrived in Alabama to try to teach Helen Keller. The new teacher was young. She seemed inexperienced. She wore strange glasses. What was wrong with her eyes? Ann Sullivan herself was partially blind. She had grown up in a time when blindness was thought to be a punishment from God. Born in poverty, Ann Sullivan was one of three children of Irish immigrants. After her mother died of tuberculosis, her father deserted the children. The child grew up in the state poorhouse. Her sight was so poor, she was considered unteachable. It was felt she would never be able to read or write. But when the poorhouse guardians visited, the child stumbled toward them and pounded them with her fists. I want to learn! I want to learn! So Ann had been taught at the Perkins Institute. But when she came to Alabama, she had no experience as a teacher. How was one to teach someone who was little more than an animal the mystery of letters, of words, of values? With nothing to guide her but patience and a determined will, Ann Sullivan set about her task. She first attempted to teach Helen her first word, doll, by giving her one and spelling out letters into her hand. Helen misunderstood, and believing Ann wanted to take the doll back, she became uncontrollable. The next days were desperate struggles. It had been with Helen only two days when the child in a rage knocked out two of Ann's teeth. Most of all, Ann was revolted at Helen's behavior at the table. Phantom was in the habit of picking food out of her own plate and the plates of others with her fingers. Annie Sullivan would not put up with such behavior. And a fight followed, during which the family left the room. Finally, Ann succeeded in compelling her to eat with a spoon. Young Ann Sullivan did not yet know how to reach her pupil, but she was sure the gateway was obedience, through which love and knowledge could enter the mind of the child. She knew that if Helen was to become a person, she had to be treated like a person, made to learn to respect herself as a person. Day after day, week after weary week, Ann spelled out into Helen's hand everything that they did all day long. But blind and deaf, with no knowledge of words, the child could not comprehend the meaning of these strange tappings. A month passed, patient and resolute, and kept at her task. One day she tried to teach Helen the words mug and water. Helen kept mixing up the two, became impatient, confused. She was about to fly into one of her rages. Feeling a change was needed. Ann took her to the water pump. Pumping wildly, she spelled out the word water repeatedly in Helen's hand, poured some down Helen's hand and wrist. W-A-T-E-R, W-A-T-E-R. Suddenly, Phantom understood the meaning of the word. Caught up in the first joy she had felt since her illness, she reached out eagerly to Annie's ever ready hand, begging for new words. Captain Keller! April 5th, 1887. Light had penetrated darkness. Phantom had vanished to be replaced by the girl who knew that she was Helen Keller. Now there were two beings calling themselves Helen and Teacher. Surely such moments of delight contain a fuller life than an eternity of darkness. The first words she understood were like the first effects of the warm beams that start the melting of the winter snow. Flake by flake. A patch here, another there. After she learned many nouns, then came the adjectives, and the melting was more rapid. Only gradually did Helen begin to ask questions of the simplest kind. She had not conceived of such things as what, where, how, and why. The lessons were not only in reading and writing. Helen planted seeds, felt plants and animals, was quickened by an ever-awakening sense of wonder. One of Annie Sullivan's first procedures was to teach Helen how to play. Helen had not laughed since she became deaf. She put the child's hand on her bright face, spelling laugh, then gently tickled her into a burst of mirth that gladdened the hearts of the family. She did it again and again, after which she guided Helen through the motions of romping, hopping, skipping, the animation of new discoveries that wrapped Helen like light. With Ann Sullivan's help, Helen learned to write and became a writer herself, with teacher always at her side. She went through college and graduated with honors. Phantom was far behind her. The story of Helen Keller, the miracle of the girl who had been blind and deaf, but who had somehow learned to communicate, spread through the world. When she published her book, The Story of My Life, Mark Twain wrote her, I am most charmed with your book. You are a wonderful creature, you and your other half together, Miss Sullivan I mean, for it took the pair of you to make and complete a perfect whole. Gradually, Helen came to understand that in order to teach her, in order to fill her quick, restless, demanding mind, teacher was forced to read so much, she was gradually losing the little sight she had left. Concerned over what should happen to teacher in her old age, Helen and Ann Sullivan took to the lecture circuit to tell others of the miracle that was her life. Now Helen Keller began to realize that she could teach. She could bring light to others. She began to work at simplifying the alphabet for the blind. She urged the passage of new laws, requiring hospitals to put drops of medicine in the eyes of newborn babies, saving many from blindness. Helen Keller rose from phantom to become one of the foremost women of the world, a friend and correspondent with the greatest people on earth. From her own teacher, she had learned the joy of teaching and traveled the world reminding people everywhere of the color and the excitement and the beauty in the world around us. Once Ann Sullivan was asked if she had her life to live over again, would she follow the same path? Would I be a teacher? Sure. We do not, I think, choose our destiny. It chooses us. When she died, the Bishop of Washington called her one of the great teachers of all time. In the long history of teaching, this is a shining moment. When light penetrated darkness, a phantom vanished and a person marched forth. The gift of Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan to the world is to constantly remind us of the wonder of the world around us and how much we owe those who have taught us what it means. For there is no person that is unworthy or incapable of being helped. And the greatest service any person can make is help another reach their true potential.