Even when I was growing up in Indonesia, the figure of Helen Keller was tremendous. There are children’s books written about her, as there still is to this day. It doesn’t fit the other children’s books that I knew which were mostly derived from Aesop’s fables, but I didn’t know the extent of Keller’s struggles as a blind and deaf person until I read her autobiography. The fact that this book was written at all, and the fact that Keller wrote more books after is a simple miracle.
Helen Keller was not born blind and deaf — she only contracted her disabilities in her 19th month after an illness which might have killed her. Her sensory abilities being limited, her only means of communication was through alphabets written on her hand. It was not until she contracted the help of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, who followed her all her life that she accelerated her education. Keller became the first blind and deaf person who graduated from university.
For those who expect her struggles with blindness and deafness, perhaps this book is not for them. But there are moments where we get glimpses of this — the brightness of the sun when she goes outside, so bright that she can feel the brightness through her blindness. I also wonder how she actually got through with “seeing” in the novel, and I imagine what she might have seen through her imagination may be different from what we know in reality. Helen lives in her own world — alone, and through the knowledge of books and her remaining senses to guide her. She takes comfort in nature and perhaps enjoy it more than anybody else who take their senses for granted.
It is her mastery of language that made Helen special — she can read in a few languages and was an obsessed bibliophile. It was remarkable to hear how her teacher became her translator through her lectures, that what her teacher heard is transferred into the sign language on her hand. It was also remarkable to learn how she learned how to speak. Although she never really mastered speech in her lifetime, she had a good crack at it by imitating the simple sounds anybody makes through the vibrations of their throats. You can hear how Helen Keller speaks in this link.
It does make you question, if you have the same disabilities, whether you’re able to achieve these feats. Graduating through university is a daunting enough task for many people, let alone being deaf and blind. But it is a reminder that even somebody who lacks the sense of sight and sound is able to move mountains, so why can’t you?
