The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

About the Author – Helen Keller

 

 

• Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia in 1880 and died in 1968.
• She was a famous writer, lecturer, and supporter of disabled people.
• Due to illness in 1882, she lost her sight and hearing at a very young age.
• She became a symbol of courage, determination, and hope for disabled people throughout the world.

Parents

• Her father, Arthur Henley Keller, was an editor and army captain.
• Her mother was Catherine Everett Keller, also called Kate.

Disability

• Helen became blind and deaf after a serious illness during childhood.

Role of Anne Sullivan

• In 1887, Anne Sullivan became Helen’s teacher and caretaker.
• She taught Helen communication through sign language and Braille.
• She patiently trained Helen by spelling words into her hand with fingers.
• Anne Sullivan played the most important role in Helen Keller’s success.

Education

• Helen studied at the Perkins School for the Blind.
• She later studied in Boston and New York.
• She completed her graduation from Radcliffe College.
• She became the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Literary Contribution

• Helen Keller wrote twelve books and many articles.
• At the age of eleven, she wrote “The Frost King.”
• Her famous autobiography, The Story of My Life, was published in 1903.

Awards and Honors

• Helen Keller received many awards and honors.
• She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
• A documentary about her life also received an Academy Award.

Contributions to Society

• She worked for the rights of women and disabled people.
• She was associated with the American Civil Liberties Union.
• In 1924, she joined the American Foundation for the Blind.
• She traveled to more than thirty-five countries and delivered inspiring speeches.

Death

• Helen Keller died on 1 June 1968 at the age of 87.
• She is remembered as a symbol of strength, courage, and determination.

---

Summary and Analysis of The Story of My Life

Introduction

• The book is Helen Keller’s autobiography.
• It describes her childhood struggles as a blind and deaf child.
• The book also highlights the loving guidance of Anne Sullivan.
• It teaches readers the importance of determination, patience, and education.

Extracts in the Syllabus

The selected chapters describe:

• Helen’s early childhood struggles.
• The difficulties faced by her family.
• The support given by teachers and well-wishers.
• Helen’s success over her disabilities.

---

Chapter-wise Summary

Chapter III

• This chapter describes Helen’s childhood experiences and family struggles.
• Helen travels by train with her parents and enjoys the journey.
• Her aunt gifts her a doll.
• The chapter also mentions her meeting with:
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Michael Anagnos

Chapter IV

• This chapter focuses on Anne Sullivan’s arrival.
• Miss Sullivan begins teaching Helen through finger spelling.
• Helen slowly learns words and communication.

Chapter V

• Miss Sullivan introduces Helen to nature and the outside world.
• Helen learns to feel beauty through touch and experience.
• She becomes aware of the world around her.

Chapter VI

• This chapter shows Anne Sullivan’s patience and wisdom.
• She teaches Helen difficult and abstract ideas.
• Helen’s determination and intelligence are clearly shown.

---

Themes of the Story

1. Determination

The story teaches that determination can overcome every difficulty.

2. Importance of Education

Education changes Helen’s life and gives her confidence.

3. Role of a Teacher

Anne Sullivan proves that a good teacher can transform a person’s life.

4. Hope and Courage

Helen Keller becomes a symbol of hope for disabled people everywhere.

---

Main Message

The story teaches that even physically challenged people can live meaningful, successful, and inspiring lives through courage, hard work, and proper guidance.

Text of “The Story of My Life” (an Extract)

CHAPTER III

MEANWHILE the desire to express myself grew. The few signs I used became less and less adequate, and my failures to make myself understood were invariably followed by outbursts of passion. I felt as if invisible hands were holding me, and I made frantic efforts to free myself. I struggled–not that struggling helped matters, but the spirit of resistance was strong within me; I generally broke down in tears and physical exhaustion. If my mother happened to be near I crept into her arms, too miserable even to remember the cause of the tempest. After awhile the need of some means of communication became so urgent that these outbursts occurred daily, sometimes hourly.

My parents were deeply grieved and perplexed. We lived a long way from any school for the blind or the deaf, and it seemed unlikely that anyone would come to such an out-of-the-way place as Tuscumbia to teach a child who was both deaf and blind. Indeed, my friends and relatives sometimes doubted whether I could be taught. My mother's only ray of hope came from Dickens's "American Notes." She had read his account of Laura Bridgman, and remembered vaguely that she was deaf and blind, yet had been educated. But she also remembered with a hopeless pang that Dr. Howe, who had discovered the way to teach the deaf and blind, had been dead many years. His methods had probably died with him; and if they had not, how was a little girl in a far-off town in Alabama to receive the benefit of them?

When I was about six years old, my father heard of an eminent oculist in Baltimore, who had been successful in many cases that had seemed hopeless. My parents at once determined to take me to Baltimore to see if anything could be done for my eyes.

The journey, which I remember well, was very pleasant. I made friends with many people on the train. One lady gave me a box of shells. My father made holes in these so that I could string them, and for a long time they kept me happy and contented. The conductor, too, was kind. Often when he went his rounds I clung to his coat tails while he collected and punched the tickets. His punch, with which he let me play, was a delightful toy. Curled up in a corner of the seat I amused myself for hours making funny little holes in bits of cardboard.

My aunt made me a big doll out of towels. It was the most comical, shapeless thing, this improvised doll, with no nose, mouth, ears or eyes–nothing that even the imagination of a child could convert into a face. Curiously enough, the absence of eyes struck me more than all the other defects put together. I pointed this out to everybody with provoking persistency, but no one seemed equal to the task of providing the doll with eyes. A bright idea, however, shot into my mind, and the problem was solved. I tumbled off the seat and searched under it until I found my aunt's cape, which was trimmed with large beads. I pulled two beads off and indicated to her that I wanted her to sew them on doll. She raised my hand to her eyes in a questioning way, and I nodded energetically. The beads were sewed in the right place and I could not contain myself for joy; but immediately I lost all interest in the doll. During the whole trip I did not have one fit of temper, there were so many things to keep my mind and fingers busy.

When we arrived in Baltimore, Dr. Chisholm received us kindly: but he could do nothing. He said, however, that I could be educated, and advised my father to consult Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, of Washington, who would be able to give him information about schools and teachers of deaf or blind children. Acting on the doctor's advice, we went immediately to Washington to see Dr. Bell, my father with a sad heart and many misgivings, I wholly unconscious of his anguish, finding pleasure in the excitement of moving from place to place. Child as I was, I at once felt the tenderness and sympathy which endeared Dr. Bell to so many hearts, as his wonderful achievements enlist their admiration. He held me on his knee while I examined his watch, and he made it strike for me. He understood my signs, and I knew it and loved him at once. But I did not dream that that interview would be the door through which I should pass from darkness into light, from isolation to friendship, companionship, knowledge, love.

Dr. Bell advised my father to write to Mr. Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institution in Boston, the scene of Dr. Howe's great labours for the blind, and ask him if he had a teacher competent to begin my education. This my father did at once, and in a few weeks there came a kind letter from Mr. Anagnos with the comforting assurance that a teacher had been found. This was in the summer of 1886. But Miss Sullivan did not arrive until the following March.

Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai, and a power divine touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And from the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, "Knowledge is love and light and vision."

CHAPTER IV

THE most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old.

On the afternoon of that eventful day, I stood on the porch, dumb, expectant. I guessed vaguely from my mother's signs and from the hurrying to and fro in the house that something unusual was about to happen, so I went to the door and waited on the steps. The afternoon sun penetrated the mass of honeysuckle that covered the porch, and fell on my upturned face. My fingers lingered almost unconsciously on the familiar leaves and blossoms which had just come forth to greet the sweet southern spring. I did not know what the future held of marvel or surprise for me. Anger and bitterness had preyed upon me continually for weeks and a deep languor had succeeded this passionate struggle.

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. "Light! give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.

I felt approaching footsteps. I stretched out my hand as I supposed to my mother. Someone took it, and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her who had come to reveal all things to me, and, more than all things else, to love me.

The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a doll. The little blind children at the Perkins Institution had sent it and Laura Bridgman had dressed it; but I did not know this until afterward. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-l-l." I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this uncomprehending way a great many words, among them pin, hat, cup and a few verbs like sit, stand and walk. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a name.

One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big rag doll into my lap also, spelled "d-o-l-l" and tried to make me understand that "d-o-l-l" applied to both. Earlier in the day we had had a tussle over the words "m-u-g" and "w-a-t-e-r." Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is mug and that "w-a-t-e-r" is water, but I persisted in confounding the two. In despair she had dropped the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity. I became impatient at her repeated attempts and, seizing the new doll, I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor regret followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the still, dark world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment of tenderness. I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was removed. She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure.

We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. 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. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away. ¹

I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.

I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them–words that were to make the world blossom for me, "like Aaron's rod, with flowers." It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of the eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come.

CHAPTER V

I RECALL many incidents of the summer of 1887 that followed my soul's sudden awakening. I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the name of every object that I touched; and the more I handled things and learned their names and uses, the more joyous and confident grew my sense of kinship with the rest of the world.

When the time of daisies and buttercups came Miss Sullivan took me by the hand across the fields, where men were preparing the earth for the seed, to the banks of the Tennessee River, and there, sitting on the warm grass, I had my first lessons in the beneficence of nature. I learned how the sun and the rain make to grow out of the ground every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, how birds build their nests and live and thrive from land to land, how the squirrel, the deer, the lion and every other creature finds food and shelter. As my knowledge of things grew I felt more and more the delight of the world I was in. Long before I learned to do a sum in arithmetic or describe the shape of the earth, Miss Sullivan had taught me to find beauty in the fragrant woods, in every blade of grass, and in the curves and dimples of my baby sister's hand. She linked my earliest thoughts with nature, and made me feel that "birds and flowers and I were happy peers."

But about this time I had an experience which taught me that nature is not always kind. One day my teacher and I were returning from a long ramble. The morning had been fine, but it was growing warm and sultry when at last we turned our faces homeward. Two or three times we stopped to rest under a tree by the wayside. Our last halt was under a wild cherry tree a short distance from the house. The shade was grateful, and the tree was so easy to climb that with my teacher's assistance I was able to scramble to a seat in the branches. It was so cool up in the tree that Miss Sullivan proposed that we have our luncheon there. I promised to keep still while she went to the house to fetch it.

Suddenly a change passed over the tree. All the sun's warmth left the air. I knew the sky was black, because all the heat, which meant light to me, had died out of the atmosphere. A strange odour came up from the earth. I knew it, it was the odour that always precedes a thunderstorm, and a nameless fear clutched at my heart. I felt absolutely alone, cut off from my friends and the firm earth. The immense, the unknown, enfolded me. I remained still and expectant; a chilling terror crept over me. I longed for my teacher's return; but above all things I wanted to get down from that tree.

There was a moment of sinister silence, then a multitudinous stirring of the leaves. A shiver ran through the tree, and the wind sent forth a blast that would have knocked me off had I not clung to the branch with might and main. The tree swayed and strained. The small twigs snapped and fell about me in showers. A wild impulse to jump seized me, but terror held me fast. I crouched down in the fork of the tree. The branches lashed about me. I felt the intermittent jarring that came now and then, as if something heavy had fallen and the shock had traveled up till it reached the limb I sat on. It worked my suspense up to the highest point, and just as I was thinking the tree and I should fall together, my teacher seized my hand and helped me down. I clung to her, trembling with joy to feel the earth under my feet once more. I had learned a new lesson–that nature "wages open war against her children, and under softest touch hides treacherous claws."

After this experience it was a long time before I climbed another tree. The mere thought filled me with terror. It was the sweet allurement of the mimosa tree in full bloom that finally overcame my fears. One beautiful spring morning when I was alone in the summer-house, reading, I became aware of a wonderful subtle fragrance in the air. I started up and instinctively stretched out my hands. It seemed as if the spirit of spring had passed through the summer-house. "What is it?" I asked, and the next minute I recognized the odour of the mimosa blossoms. I felt my way to the end of the garden, knowing that the mimosa tree was near the fence, at the turn of the path. Yes, there it was, all quivering in the warm sunshine, its blossom-laden branches almost touching the long grass. Was there ever anything so exquisitely beautiful in the world before! Its delicate blossoms shrank from the slightest earthly touch; it seemed as if a tree of paradise had been transplanted to earth. I made my way through a shower of petals to the great trunk and for one minute stood irresolute; then, putting my foot in the broad space between the forked branches, I pulled myself up into the tree. I had some difficulty in holding on, for the branches were very large and the bark hurt my hands. But I had a delicious sense that I was doing something unusual and wonderful, so I kept on climbing higher and higher, until I reached a little seat which somebody had built there so long ago that it had grown part of the tree itself. I sat there for a long, long time, feeling like a fairy on a rosy cloud. After that I spent many happy hours in my tree of paradise, thinking fair thoughts and dreaming bright dreams.

CHAPTER VI

I HAD now the key to all language, and I was eager to learn to use it. Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.

At first, when my teacher told me about a new thing I asked very few questions. My ideas were vague, and my vocabulary was inadequate; but as my knowledge of things grew, and I learned more and more words, my field of inquiry broadened, and I would return again and again to the same subject, eager for further information. Sometimes a new word revived an image that some earlier experience had engraved on my brain.

I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word, "love." This was before I knew many words. I had found a few early violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher. She tried to kiss me: but at that time I did not like to have any one kiss me except my mother. Miss Sullivan put her arm gently round me and spelled into my hand, "I love Helen."

"What is love?" I asked.

She drew me closer to her and said, "It is here," pointing to my heart, whose beats I was conscious of for the first time. Her words puzzled me very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched it.

I smelt the violets in her hand and asked, half in words, half in signs, a question which meant, "Is love the sweetness of flowers?"

"No," said my teacher.

Again I thought. The warm sun was shining on us.

"Is this not love?" I asked, pointing in the direction from which the heat came. "Is this not love?"

It seemed to me that there could be nothing more beautiful than the sun, whose warmth makes all things grow. But Miss Sullivan shook her head, and I was greatly puzzled and disappointed. I thought it strange that my teacher could not show me love.

A day or two afterward I was stringing beads of different sizes in symmetrical groups–two large beads, three small ones, and so on. I had made many mistakes, and Miss Sullivan had pointed them out again and again with gentle patience. Finally I noticed a very obvious error in the sequence and for an instant I concentrated my attention on the lesson and tried to think how I should have arranged the beads. Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis, "Think."

In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea.

For a long time I was still–I was not thinking of the beads in my lap, but trying to find a meaning for "love" in the light of this new idea. The sun had been under a cloud all day, and there had been brief showers; but suddenly the sun broke forth in all its southern splendour.

Again, I asked my teacher, "Is this not love?"

"Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out," she replied. Then in simpler words than these, which at that time I could not have understood, she explained: "You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play."

The beautiful truth burst upon my mind–I felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirits of others.

From the beginning of my education Miss Sullivan made it a practice to speak to me as she would to any hearing child; the only difference was that she spelled the sentences into my hand instead of speaking them. If I did not know the words and idioms necessary to express my thoughts she supplied them, even suggesting conversation when I was unable to keep up my end of the dialogue.

This process was continued for several years; for the deaf child does not learn in a month or even in two or three years, the numberless idioms and expressions used in the simplest daily intercourse. The little hearing child learns these from constant repetition and imitation. The conversation he hears in his home stimulates his mind and suggests topics and calls forth the spontaneous expression of his own thoughts. This natural exchange of ideas is denied to the deaf child. My teacher, realizing this, determined to supply the kinds of stimulus I lacked. This she did by repeating to me as far as possible, verbatim what she heard, and by showing me how I could take part in the conversation. But it was a long time before I ventured to take the initiative, and still longer before I could find something appropriate to say at the right time.

The deaf and the blind find it very difficult to acquire the amenities of conversation. How much more this difficulty must be augmented in the case of those who are both deaf and blind! They cannot distinguish the tone of the voice or, without assistance, go up and down the gamut of tones that give significance to words; nor can they watch the expression of the speaker's face, and a look is often the very soul of what one says.

Glossary

Oculist: /ɒkjʊlɪst/ An ophthalmologist or optician

Egypt… Sini: About Prophet Moses story about Ten Commandments recived on Mt. Sinai

Honeysuckle: (Lonicera caprifolia) is a group of flowering shrubs or vines

Languor: /ˈlaŋɡə/ Tiredness or inactivity, especially when pleasurable

Plummet: /ˈplʌmɪt/ fall or drop straight down at high speed

Hearth: /hɑːθ/ the floor of a fireplace

Spout: /spaʊt/ a tube or lip projecting from a container, through which liquid can be poured

Verbatim: /vəːˈbeɪtɪm/ in exactly the same words as were used originally

Aaron’s rod, with flowers: Biblical story of Moses brother Aaron

Textual Questions of “The Story of My Life”

Q1. How does Helen Keller struggle with her physical impairments in her early childhood?

Ans:  “The Story of My Life” in an autobiographical story of Helen Keller’s struggle with her physical impairments. Keller suffers with her physical impairments when she was only two years old.  In this play Keller reminds her struggle in her early childhood due to physical impairments. She depicts her struggle due to her physical impairments. She suffers in her early childhood with visual, speech and hearing mutilations. She also depicts her relation with her teacher Anne Sullivan who helps her to survive.

Keller became blind and deaf in her early childhood at the age of nineteen months. The story depicts the challenges which Keller faced with her physical impairments in her life. She also credits all those who have helped her in her life as a child with disabilities. She also writes about her triumph over her disabilities. This shows us the sufferings of a person who has been denied with sound and sight that also in childhood. This also teaches us lesson that how normal people can help the disabled people.

Keller is a source of inspiration for all who struggle with her physical impairments.

Q2. How does Helen describe the day Miss Sullivan came to the family home?

Ans. Ms. Anne Sullivan is best known as Helen Keller’s teacher and companion who connected her with the outside world. Miss Sullivan was not only successful in bringing Helen out of darkness and uncertainty but also was instrumental in making her think and thereby helping her make a connection between the abstract and the physical world. Miss Sullivan and Helen Keller were together for forty-nine years.

Helen describes the day Miss Sullivan came to the family home as:  “THE most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old.”

On the afternoon of that exciting day Keller stood on the veranda and waiting for her teacher to come.  Her mother shows her with the help of signs about the coming of the Miss Sullivan. She did not guess what to happen but guessed ‘that something unusual was about to happen’.

Q3. Describe how Helen Keller was initiated, language.  

Ans. Helen Keller was initiated to language with the help of her teacher Miss Sullivan. Her experiences with Anne Sullivan helped her to learn sign language, rules, writings, and behaviors.  Anne Sullivan taught her the letters of alphabets. Anne Sullivan makes Helen Keller able to learn words and communication.

The two incidents narrated by Keller how she initiated language by Miss Sullivan are:

            “The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a doll. The little blind children at the Perkins Institution had sent it and Laura Bridgman had dressed it; but I did not know this until afterward. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-l-l." I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride.”

            “One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big rag doll into my lap also, spelled "d-o-l-l" and tried to make me understand that "d-o-l-l" applied to both. Earlier in the day we had had a tussle over the words "m-u-g" and "w-a-t-e-r." Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that "m-u-g" is mug and that "w-a-t-e-r" is water…”

Q4. Describe the two lessons in nature that Helen learns after ‘souls awakening’.

 Ans. Helen enjoyed the nature in the company of her teacher Miss Sullivan. She leans both the magnificent as well as ferocious aspects of the nature. The Munificent aspect of nature delights her.  But she learnt that nature could be also is ferocious which terrifies her.

Keller recalls about the natures beneficing and magnificent aspect as: “I RECALL many incidents of the summer of 1887 that followed my soul's sudden awakening. I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the name of every object that I touched; and the more I handled things and learned their names and uses, the more joyous and confident grew my sense of kinship with the rest of the world.”

   Keller says about the furious aspect of nature when one day she was with her teacher on walk. She writes as “But about this time I had an experience which taught me that nature is not always kind.”  The weather grew warm and humid. They stood under the cool shad of a tree. With her teacher’s help Helen sat amidst the branches. Miss Sullivan went to fetch lunch and Helen was all alone.  Helen felt paralyzed and frightened until Miss Sullivan came and helped her. Helen had learnt a new lesson that “Nature wages open war against her children and under softest touch hides treacherous”. 

Exercise 2 – True / False

1.      Helen undergoes a period of emotional agitation due to her physical impairments. — True

2.      In her childhood, Helen does not want to communicate with others. — False

3.      The parents are indifferent to the child. — False

4.      The journey to the oculist is a difficult one for the child. — False

5.      The absence of eyes in the doll is not noted by the child. — False

6.      Miss Sullivan comes to the Keller home when Helen is ten years old. — False

7.      The narrator uses the word “light” for the eventful day of Miss Sullivan’s arrival. — True

8.      The first word that her teacher teaches Helen is “water.” — True

9.      Miss Sullivan points to Helen’s heart in response to the question “What is love?” — True

10.  Helen learns to recognise words because Miss Sullivan speaks to her loudly. — False

---

Exercise 3 – Match the Disabilities with their Meanings

1.      Dyslexia — (C) Difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters and symbols.

2.      Autism — (E) A developmental disorder affecting social interaction and communication.

3.      Down’s Syndrome — (B) A genetic disorder associated with growth delays and intellectual disability.

4.      ADHD — (A) Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

5.      Achromatopsia — (D) Colour blindness or inability to see colours.

Answers:

1-C, 2-E, 3-B, 4-A, 5-D

---

Exercise 4 – Styles of Walking

1.      To walk with difficulty — Hobble

2.      To walk on the tips of one’s toes — Tiptoe

3.      To move without a fixed purpose — Wander

4.      To walk with long steps — Stride

5.      To walk slowly because one is tired — Trudge

6.      To walk slowly and noisily without lifting feet — Scuffle

7.      To go quietly or secretly — Sneak

8.      To walk quietly while looking for something — Prowl

9.      To move quickly and suddenly — Dash

10.  To make a sudden movement towards something — Lunge

---

Exercise 5 – Use of Expressions with “Out”

1.      What was so terrible that he couldn't come out with it in his usual candid manner?

2.      The village is out of bounds to the soldiers in the camps.

3.      Out of the blue, a deer came in front of my car.

4.      Scuba diving without an oxygen tank is out of the question.

5.      What a restaurant! The food was out of this world.

6.      It’s good to see old Mr Shah out and about again.

7.      The news report was out and out fake.

8.      I cannot help you because I am out at the elbows these days.

---

Exercise 6 – Pandemic Vocabulary

1.      A disease passing between humans and animals — Zoonotic disease

2.      Rapid spread of disease in a short time — Outbreak

3.      Pandemic limited to one area — Epidemic

4.      Spread among people without known contact — Community Spread

5.      Infected person without symptoms — Asymptomatic

6.      Spread through tiny liquid droplets — Droplet transmission

7.      Separation to prevent disease spread — Quarantine

8.      Immunity developed in a large population — Herd immunity

---

Grammar – Exercise 7

Direct to Indirect Speech

1.      Mira said, “I am going home.”
→ Mira said that she was going home.

2.      Aisha said, “I have been to London.”
→ Aisha said that she had been to London.

3.      Seerat said, “My parents are going to Jammu.”
→ Seerat said that her parents were going to Jammu.

4.      She told me, “I can’t swim.”
→ She told me that she couldn’t swim.

5.      He said, “I went on a picnic yesterday.”
→ He said that he had gone on a picnic the previous day.

6.      The mother said to the children, “How brilliant you are!”
→ The mother exclaimed that the children were very brilliant.

7.      The teacher said, “The earth moves around the sun.”
→ The teacher said that the earth moves around the sun.

8.      I said to her, “Honesty is the best policy.”
→ I told her that honesty is the best policy.

9.      Pinky said, “I didn’t have any breakfast this morning.”
→ Pinky said that she had not had any breakfast that morning.

10.  Kamal said, “I will paint a picture tomorrow.”
→ Kamal said that he would paint a picture the following day.

---

Grammar – Exercise 8

Indirect to Direct Speech

1.      Mrs Shah said that she had lost her bag.
→ Mrs Shah said, “I have lost my bag.”

2.      The man said that she was a college friend of his father’s.
→ The man said, “She is my father’s college friend.”

3.      Somu told the shopkeeper that he wanted to return the clock as it was defective.
→ Somu said to the shopkeeper, “I want to return this clock because it is defective.”

4.      The judge commanded them to call the accused into the courtroom.
→ The judge said to them, “Call the accused into the courtroom.”

5.      Salman said that he and his sister were going to the circus.
→ Salman said, “My sister and I are going to the circus.”

6.      Monty said that he hoped Pinky was all right.
→ Monty said, “I hope Pinky is all right.”

7.      The coach said that the players had to come for practice every morning.
→ The coach said, “Players, you have to come for practice every morning.”

8.      She said she was seeing her brother the following day.
→ She said, “I am seeing my brother tomorrow.”

9.      She asked me how they would get there.
→ She said, “How will we get there?”

10.  The guest requested them to give him a cup of coffee.
→ The guest said, “Please give me a cup of coffee.”