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 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Keller relates her overall gratitude to her teacher’s aptitude for teaching a young child in such a manner that the child never felt as if she were learning lessons. This feeling originated when Keller learned how to read Braille. Once she learned to read in this fashion, she began to do so voraciously.
All of Keller’s lessons took place outside in nature. She compliments Miss Sullivan for designing her educational and life lessons in such a fashion that Keller did not view them as work. It is through these means that Keller begins to think that “Everything has a lesson and a suggestion. ‘The loveliness of things taught me all their use’” (41).
Keller describes in minute detail the natural world and its influence on both her studies and her understanding of life. She recalls a favorite walk to Keller’s Landing, the old wharf near the Tennessee River once used in the Civil War. Here, Miss Sullivan taught her geography, making raised maps out of clay.
Although she admits that math, botany, and zoology were not her strongest subjects, Keller does share her interest in fossils prompted by a collection of tiny mollusk shells sent to her as a gift. Fossils opened up for Keller a larger understanding of the breadth and width of the earth.
Keller notes, “I learned from life itself” (45), primarily with Miss Sullivan’s assistance. She credits Miss Sullivan’s gentle, sympathetic nature and her “loving tact” (45) for helping Keller to view education as something beautiful. She notes that any teacher can teach, but not every teacher can help a pupil learn. Miss Sullivan is the exception, a teacher whose “being is inseparable from my own, and that the footsteps of my life are in hers” (46).
Chapter 8 Summary
Keller recounts her first Christmas with Miss Sullivan in Tuscumbia. With her teacher’s help, Keller was able to prepare gifts for her family members and friends and was so filled with anticipation that she almost let slip the identity of her surprises.
On Christmas Eve, Keller was invited to the schoolchildren’s tree, where she “danced and capered around the tree in an ecstasy” (47). She was allowed to hand out the presents under the tree to the children. She notes that she was so excited to give the gifts to the others, she forgot about her presents.
Keller remembers that it took a long time to fall asleep that night, as she wanted to catch Santa Claus when he arrived. She woke up the next morning and awakened everyone with Christmas greetings. Keller found gifts everywhere, but no gift was as cherished as the gift of a canary from Miss Sullivan.
Named Little Tim, the canary allowed Keller to have her first pet and to learn the responsibility of caring for him, cleaning his cage, and feeding him. But one day, she left the canary’s cage on a window seat as she went to get him water for a bath. Upon returning, she felt a cat brush by her legs, and as she reached into the birdcage, she realized that her bird had been killed.
Chapter 9 Summary
Keller recounts her trip to Boston in 1888 with her mother and Miss Sullivan. She carefully follows the descriptions Miss Sullivan gives her of the various places they pass. With her rag doll, Nancy, Keller travels to the city she comes to know as “the City of Kind Hearts” (54).
At the Perkins Institution for the Blind, Keller meets other children like her for the first time, and although she is at first thrilled, she also sorrows for the fact that these children have the same conditions and struggles that she does. Still, she notes that it was “a joy to talk with other children in my language!” (51), as until that point in time, she felt as if she were trying to speak a foreign language.
In Boston, Keller visits Bunker Hill and the Plymouth Rock, both sites representing her first history lessons. She imagines the soldiers marching up Bunker Hill as she climbs the monument, and upon touching Plymouth Rock and tracing the “1620” engraved on it, she feels as if the Pilgrims’ adventures and deeds are tangible.
Keller talks about the friends she made on her trip, in particular, Mr. William Endicott and his daughter, and her visit to their home. She recounts her delight in their rose garden, their large dogs, their horse, and the beach where she felt sand for the first time. Endicott’s kindness to Keller leaves her with warm memories of Boston.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
With the help of Miss Sullivan, Keller’s world is expanded both regarding learning a language and learning the lessons that can be found anywhere and everywhere in life.
She experiences Christmas differently for the first time, enjoying giving gifts and engaging in a process that had seemed closed and remote to her in the past. Again, she credits her teacher for changing her way of viewing life.
On a trip to the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, Keller’s world expands even more. She meets and communicates with other children like her for the first time, reveling in the joy of being able to “talk” to others and be understood. She also reflects on the sadness of so many children afflicted in the same manner as she.
In Boston, Keller makes friends with the Endicotts who invite her to their home and entertain her with the natural beauties of their property, leaving Keller with an excellent impression of New England.
