42 pages • 1 hour read
Helen KellerThe Story of My Life
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1902A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Keller marks the arrival of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, as the turning point of her life. On March 3, 1887, shortly before she turned seven, Keller welcomed Miss Sullivan into her household.
On this auspicious day, Keller was aware of the unusual activity in the house and assumed that something was going to happen. As she writes about waiting on the porch, Keller reflects on the anger and bitterness that had begun to consume her life. She compares her state before her education as that of a ship sailing in a dense fog. That attitude changed with Miss Sullivan’s arrival, which Keller describes as “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 (27).
Keller’s first lesson is accompanied by a doll that Miss Sullivan brought as a gift from the blind children at the Perkins Institute. With this doll, Miss Sullivan begins to teach Keller spelling and the meaning associated with objects, from “d-o-l-l” to “w-a-t-e-r.” Keller relishes the opportunity to learn this new method of communicating and understanding that “everything has a name” (28). But when she is unable to comprehend the difference between “m-u-g” and “w-a-t-e-r,” she lashes out in anger and breaks the new doll upon the floor. Her teacher sweeps the broken doll pieces aside, then takes Keller for a walk in the sunshine. When Miss Sullivan places Keller’s hand under a water spout and spells the word, Keller realizes what it means. She feels renewed, that some of the barriers that had impeded her knowledge and her soul had been removed.
For the first time, Keller feels remorse and repentance for destroying the doll, trying in vain to put the pieces of the doll back together. Although it is beyond repair, the realization that Keller arrives at because of her actions begins to change the way she looks at the world.
Chapter 5 Summary
Keller learns about nature from her teacher, including the sun, rain, how food grows, and how animals exist. These ventures into nature with Miss Sullivan give Keller a strong sense of place within the world, a far cry from the frustration and bitterness that she had struggled with before her teacher came.
One day, Keller also learns how much danger nature can inflict upon the world. On a walk with Miss Sullivan, the two stop to rest briefly under a cherry tree. With her teacher’s help, Keller climbs the tree and enjoys the cool air. As Miss Sullivan leaves to bring lunch from the house, Keller experiences the terror of being alone and exposed to the elements when a sudden storm rolls in. As the tree shakes and sways from the storm, Keller hides in the fork of the tree. Thinking that the tree is about to fall, Keller feels her teacher grab her hand and bring her safely to the ground.
Keller states that it was quite some time before she ever climbed a tree again and that a mimosa tree in full bloom helped her to overcome her fears. She compares the mimosa tree to the “tree of paradise […] transplanted to earth” [34]. Keller spends many hours in her tree dreaming of the future.
Chapter 6 Summary
Language, meaning, and reality characterize Keller’s experiences in this chapter. She relates how eager she was to learn as much language as she could but confesses to having great difficulty understanding more abstract terms. Miss Sullivan tries to help Keller grasp the meaning of the word “love,” but Keller cannot figure out why the smell of flowers or the brightness of the sun do not qualify as “love.”
Miss Sullivan relies on examples from nature to explain to Keller the meaning of an abstract concept like “love.” When Keller realizes how to consider this idea, she says, “The beautiful truth burst upon my mind — I felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirits of others” (37). In this regard, she feels more connected to the world around her.
Despite these new understandings, and despite her teacher’s great love and respect for her, Keller acknowledges an undeniable reality of her situation. Being deaf has prevented her from learning a language and its native idioms, like hearing children can.
The honest truth is that her blindness and deafness would always overshadow her ability to converse with others, and she says it was quite some time before she felt confident enough to take part in a conversation with others. Hearing and visual signals are a vital part of communications between people, and her lack of ability to see and hear forever mark her as different. Instead of giving in to bitterness and anger, Keller begins to accept the realities of her world.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
The arrival of Miss Sullivan and her impact on Keller’s attitude and way of seeing the world dominate these chapters. With her teacher’s help, Keller can learn language by spelling words out on hands, and she begins to understand the concept of meaning. Abstract ideas, however, take longer for her to comprehend, but when she does start to learn the significance of a word such as “love,” Keller’s world opens up.
While Miss Sullivan’s teaching brings light and hope to Keller, it also illuminates the harsh realities of Keller’s life, that her condition does limit her in some ways. In particular, Keller focuses on how hard it is for the blind or deaf to learn a language as they miss out on understanding idioms and on reading facial expressions. As these are primary ways in which people understand words and meaning, Keller and people like her are disadvantaged. How much more difficult is it for one who is both blind and deaf? For Keller, it marks the challenges that she will always have when she tries to communicate with people. Rather than have fits of temper, Keller takes a more reflective stance on the realities facing her in life.
