You are on page 1of 8

Hellen keller

Helen Keller Lahir27 Juni 1880. Helen Keller, seorang penulis dan peneliti buta asal AS,
terlahir ke dunia. Helen Keller dianggap sebagai tokoh yang telah membuka mata dunia
agar menghormati dan menghargai orang-orang yang buta dan tuli.
Hellen Keller terlahir ke dunia dalam keadaan normal, namun pada usia satu setengah
tahun, ia terserang sakit parah yang mengakibatkan ia kehilangan dan pendengarannya.
Pada usia ke-7 tahun, Keller diajar oleh seorang guru pribadi bernama Anne Sullivan
untuk berkomunikasi dengan bahasa isyarat.
Keller kemudian belajar untuk membaca bahasa Perancis, Jerman, Yunani dan Latin
dalam huruf Braille. Pada usia 20 tahun, Keller berhasil diterima di universitas. Dia
kemudian aktif menulis buku dan menggalang dana untuk mmbantu orang-orang buta.
Buku pertamanya berjudul The Story of My Life telah diterjemahkan ke dalam 50
bahasa. Antara tahun 1946 hingga 1957, Hellen Keller melakukan perjalanan ke 39
negara di lima benua untuk berpidato tentang pengalamannya dan menyerukan
masyarakat agar menghormati hak-hak orang buta. Hellen Keller meninggal tahun 1968
pada usia 87 tahun.

Helen Adams Keller (lahir di Tuscumbia, Alabama, 27 Juni 1880 – meninggal di


Easton, Connecticut, 1 Juni 1968 pada umur 87 tahun) adalah seorang penulis, aktivis
politik dan dosen Amerika. Ia menjadi pemenang dari Honorary University Degrees
Women's Hall of Fame, The Presidential Medal of Freedom, The Lions Humanitarian
Award, bahkan kisah hidupnya meraih 2 piala Oscar[1]. Ia menulis artikel serta buku-buku
terkenal, diantaranya The World I Live In dan The Story of My Life (diketik dengan
huruf biasa dan Braille), yang menjadi literatur klasik di Amerika dan diterjemahkan ke
dalam 50 bahasa. Ia berkeliling ke 39 negara untuk berbicara dengan para presiden,
mengumpulkan dana untuk orang-orang buta dan tuli. Ia mendirikan American
Foundation for the Blind dan American Foundation for the Overseas Blind.

Ia lahir normal di Tuscumbia, Alabama pada 1880. Pada usia 19 bulan, ia diserang
penyakit misterius yang menyebabkannya buta dan tuli. Ia jadi liar dan tidak dapat diajar
pada usia 7 tahun, sehingga orang tuanya bertemu Johanna (Anne) Mansfeld Sullivan
Macy untuk menjadi guru pribadi dan mentor. Annie memegang tangan Helen di bawah
air dan dengan bahasa isyarat, ia mengucapkan "A-I-R" pada tangan yang lain. Saat
Helen memegang tanah, Annie mengucapkan "T-A-N-A-H" dan ini dilakukan sebanyak
30 kata per hari. Helen diajar untuk membaca lewat huruf braille sampai mengerti apa
maksudnya. Helen menulis, "Saya ingat hari yang terpenting di dalam seluruh hidup saya
adalah saat guru saya, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, datang pada saya." Dengan tekun, Annie
mengajar Helen untuk berbicara lewat gerakan mulut, sehingga Helen berkata, "Hal
terbaik dan terindah yang tidak dilihat atau disentuh oleh dunia adalah hal yang dirasakan
di dalam hati." Ia belajar bahasa Perancis, Jerman, Yunani dan Latin lewat braille. Pada
usia 20 tahun, ia kuliah di Radcliffe College (cabang Universitas Harvard), khusus
wanita. Annie menemani untuk spell textbooks, huruf demi huruf, yang diletakkan ke
tangan Helen. Hanya 4 tahun, Helen lulus dengan predikat magna cum laude.

Keller menulis total 12 buku yang diterbitkan dan beberapa artikel.

Pada usia 11 tahun, Keller menulis bukunya yang pertama dengan judul The King Frost
(1891). Ada tuduhan bahwa cerita ini dijiplak dari The Frost Fairies karya Margaret
Canby. Sebuah investigasi atas masalah tersebut mengungkapkan bahwa Keller mungkin
telah mengalami kasus cryptomnesia, dimana ia memiliki cerita Canby yang dibacakan
untuknya tapi lupa tentang hal itu, sedangkan memori tetap berada di bawah sadarnya.[1]

Pada usia 22, Keller menerbitkan autobiografinya, The Story of My Life (1903), dengan
bantuan dari John Macy dan isterinya, Anne Sullivan. Ini termasuk kata-kata yang Keller
tulis dan kisah hidupnya hingga usia 21, yang ditulis selama waktu kuliahnya.

Pada 1908, Keller menulis The World I Live In (1908) yang memberikan pembaca
wawasan bagaimana perasaannya tentang dunia.[2] Out of the Dark, serangkaian esai
tentang sosialisme, diterbitkan pada tahun 1913.

Autobiografi spiritualnya, My Religion, diterbitkan pada tahun 1927 dan diterbitkan


kembali sebagai Light in my Darkness (Cahaya dalam Kegelapan saya).

http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political
activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
[1][2]
The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation
imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned
to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play
and film The Miracle Worker.

A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war.
A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Wobblies, she campaigned for
women's suffrage, workers' rights, and socialism, as well as many other leftist causes.

Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her family lived on a
homestead, Ivy Green,[3] that Helen's grandfather had built decades earlier.[4] Helen's father,
Arthur H. Keller,[5] spent many years as an editor for the Tuscumbia North Alabamian and had
served as a captain for the Confederate Army.[4] Helen's paternal grandmother was the second
cousin of Robert E. Lee.[6] Helen's mother, Kate Adams,[7] was the daughter of Charles Adams.[8]
Though originally from Massachusetts, Charles Adams also fought for the Confederate Army
during the American Civil War, earning the rank of brigadier-general.[6]

Helen's father's lineage can be traced to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland.[6][9]


Coincidentally, one of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich.[6]
Helen reflects upon this coincidence in her first autobiography, stating "that there is no king who
has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his."[6]

Helen Keller was not born blind and deaf; it was not until she was 19 months old that she
contracted an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain",
which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long
time, but it left her deaf and blind. At that time, she was able to communicate somewhat with
Martha Washington,[10] the six-year-old daughter of the family cook, who understood her signs;
by the age of seven, she had over 60 home signs to communicate with her family.

In 1886, her mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the
successful education of another deaf and blind child, Laura Bridgman, dispatched young Helen,
accompanied by her father, to seek out Dr. J. Julian Chisolm, an eye, ear, nose, and throat
specialist in Baltimore, for advice.[11] He subsequently put them in touch with Alexander Graham
Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised the couple to contact the
Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then
located in South Boston. Michael Anaganos, the school's director, asked former student Anne
Sullivan, herself visually impaired and only 20 years old, to become Keller's instructor. It was
the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship, Sullivan evolving into governess and then eventual
companion.

Anne Sullivan arrived at Keller's house in March 1887, and immediately began to teach Helen to
communicate by spelling words into her hand, beginning with "d-o-l-l" for the doll that she had
brought Keller as a present. Keller was frustrated, at first, because she did not understand that
every object had a word uniquely identifying it. In fact, when Sullivan was trying to teach Keller
the word for "mug", Keller became so frustrated she broke the doll. [12] Keller's big breakthrough
in communication came the next month, when she realized that the motions her teacher was
making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the
idea of "water"; she then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familiar
objects in her world.

Due to a protruding left eye, Keller was usually photographed in profile. Both her eyes were
replaced in adulthood with glass replicas for "medical and cosmetic reasons".[13]

Starting in May, 1888, Keller attended the Perkins Institute for the Blind. In 1894, Helen Keller
and Anne Sullivan moved to New York to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, and
to learn from Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf. In 1896, they returned to
Massachusetts and Keller entered The Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining
admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College, where she lived in Briggs Hall, South House. Her
admirer, Mark Twain, had introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers,
who, with his wife, paid for her education. In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated from
Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She maintained
a correspondence with the Austrian philosopher and pedagogue Wilhelm Jerusalem, who was
one of the first to discover her literary talent.[14]

Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion to Helen Keller long after she taught her. Anne married
John Macy in 1905, and her health started failing around 1914. Polly Thompson was hired to
keep house. She was a young woman from Scotland who didn't have experience with deaf or
blind people. She progressed to working as a secretary as well, and eventually became a constant
companion to Keller.[15]

Keller moved to Forest Hills, Queens together with Anne and John, and used the house as a base
for her efforts on behalf of American Foundation for the Blind.[16]

After Anne died in 1936, Keller and Thompson moved to Connecticut. They traveled worldwide
and raised funding for the blind. Thompson had a stroke in 1957 from which she never fully
recovered, and died in 1960.[1]

Winnie Corbally, a nurse who was originally brought in to care for Polly Thompson in 1957,
stayed on after Thompson's death and was Keller's companion for the rest of her life

Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered as an advocate
for people with disabilities, amid numerous other causes. She was a suffragist, a pacifist, an
opponent of Woodrow Wilson, a radical socialist and a birth control supporter. In 1915 she and
George Kessler founded the Helen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization is
devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition. In 1920 she helped to found the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Keller and Sullivan traveled to over 39 countries, making several
trips to Japan and becoming a favorite of the Japanese people. Keller met every U.S. President
from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson and was friends with many famous figures,
including Alexander Graham Bell, Charlie Chaplin and Mark Twain.

Keller was a member of the Socialist Party and actively campaigned and wrote in support of the
working class from 1909 to 1921. She supported Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs in
each of his campaigns for the presidency.

Keller and her friend Mark Twain were both considered radicals at the beginning of the 20th
century, and as a consequence, their political views have been forgotten or glossed over in
popular perception.[18] Newspaper columnists who had praised her courage and intelligence
before she expressed her socialist views now called attention to her disabilities. The editor of the
Brooklyn Eagle wrote that her "mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her
development." Keller responded to that editor, referring to having met him before he knew of her
political views:

At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember
“ them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I ”
am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence
during the years since I met him...Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! Socially blind and
deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the
physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to prevent.[19]

Keller joined the Industrial Workers of the World (known as the IWW or the Wobblies) in 1912,
[18]
saying that parliamentary socialism was "sinking in the political bog". She wrote for the IWW
between 1916 and 1918. In Why I Became an IWW,[20] Keller explained that her motivation for
activism came in part from her concern about blindness and other disabilities:

I was appointed on a commission to investigate the conditions of the blind. For the
“ first time I, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond human control, found
that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial conditions, often caused by the
selfishness and greed of employers. And the social evil contributed its share. I found
that poverty drove women to a life of shame that ended in blindness. ”
The last sentence refers to prostitution and syphilis, the former a frequent cause of the latter, and
the latter a leading cause of blindness.

Keller wrote a total of 12 published books and several articles.

One of her earliest pieces of writing, at age 11, was The Frost King (1891). There were
allegations that this story had been plagiarized from The Frost Fairies by Margaret Canby. An
investigation into the matter revealed that Keller may have experienced a case of cryptomnesia,
which was that she had Canby's story read to her but forgot about it, while the memory remained
in her subconscious.[1]

At age 22, Keller published her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1903), with help from
Sullivan and Sullivan's husband, John Macy. It includes words that Keller wrote and the story of
her life up to age 21, and was written during her time in college.

Keller wrote The World I Live In in 1908 giving readers an insight into how she felt about the
world.[21] Out of the Dark, a series of essays on socialism, was published in 1913.

Her spiritual autobiography, My Religion, was published in 1927 and re-issued as Light in my
Darkness. It advocates the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the controversial mystic who
gives a spiritual interpretation of the Last Judgment and second coming of Jesus Christ, and the
movement named after him, Swedenborgianism.

When Keller visited Akita Prefecture in Japan in July 1937, she inquired about Hachikō, the
famed Akita dog that had died in 1935. She told a Japanese person that she would like to have an
Akita dog; one was given to her within a month, with the name of Kamikaze-go. When he died
of canine distemper, his older brother, Kenzan-go, was presented to her as an official gift from
the Japanese government in July 1938. Keller is credited with having introduced the Akita to the
United States through these two dogs.
By 1939 a breed standard had been established and dog shows had been held, but such activities
stopped after World War II began. Keller wrote in the Akita Journal:

If ever there was an angel in fur, it was Kamikaze. I know I shall never feel quite the
“ same tenderness for any other pet. The Akita dog has all the qualities that appeal to

me — he is gentle, companionable and trusty.[22][23]

Later life
Keller suffered a series of strokes in 1961 and spent the last years of her life at her home.[1]

On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, one of the United States' highest two civilian honors.[24] In 1965 she was elected to the
National Women's Hall of Fame at the New York World's Fair.[1]

Keller devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind.
She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, at her home, Arcan Ridge, located in Easton, Connecticut.
A service was held in her honor at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and her ashes
were placed there next to her constant companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson.

Portrayals
Keller's life has been interpreted many times. She appeared in a silent film, Deliverance (1919),
which told her story in a melodramatic, allegorical style.[25]

She was also the subject of the documentaries Helen Keller in Her Story, narrated by Katharine
Cornell, and The Story of Helen Keller, part of the Famous Americans series produced by Hearst
Entertainment.

The Miracle Worker is a cycle of dramatic works ultimately derived from her autobiography,
The Story of My Life. The various dramas each describe the relationship between Keller and
Sullivan, depicting how the teacher led her from a state of almost feral wildness into education,
activism, and intellectual celebrity. The common title of the cycle echoes Mark Twain's
description of Sullivan as a "miracle worker." Its first realization was the 1957 Playhouse 90
teleplay of that title by William Gibson. He adapted it for a Broadway production in 1959 and an
Oscar-winning feature film in 1962, starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. It was remade for
television in 1979 and 2000.

In 1984, Helen Keller's life story was made into a TV movie called The Miracle Continues.[26]
This film that entailed the semi-sequel to The Miracle Worker recounts her college years and her
early adult life. None of the early movies hint at the social activism that would become the
hallmark of Keller's later life, although The Walt Disney Company version produced in 2000
states in the credits that she became an activist for social equality.

The Bollywood movie Black (2005) was largely based on Keller's story, from her childhood to
her graduation. A documentary called Shining Soul: Helen Keller's Spiritual Life and Legacy
was produced by the Swedenborg Foundation in the same year. The film focuses on the role
played by Emanuel Swedenborg's spiritual theology in her life and how it inspired Keller's
triumph over her triple disabilities of blindness, deafness and a severe speech impediment.

On March 6, 2008, the New England Historic Genealogical Society announced that a staff
member had discovered a rare 1888 photograph showing Helen and Anne, which, although
previously published, had escaped widespread attention.[27] Depicting Helen holding one of her
many dolls, it is believed to be the earliest surviving photograph of Anne.[28]

Posthumous honors

Helen Keller as depicted on the Alabama state quarter

In 1999, Keller was listed in Gallup's Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century.

In 2003, Alabama honored its native daughter on its state quarter.[29]

The Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama is dedicated to her.[30]

There are streets named after Helen Keller in Getafe, Spain and Lod, Israel.[31]

A pre-school for the deaf and hard of hearing in Mysore, India, was originally named after Helen
Keller by its founder K. K. Srinivasan.

On October 7, 2009, a bronze statue of Helen Keller was added to the National Statuary Hall
Collection, as a replacement for the State of Alabama's former 1908 statue of Jabez Lamar
Monroe Curry. It is displayed in the United States Capitol Visitor Center and depicts Keller as a
seven year old child standing at a water pump. The statue represents the seminal moment in
Keller's life when she understood her first word: W-A-T-E-R, as signed into her hand by teacher
Anne Sullivan. The pedestal base bears a quotation in raised letters and Braille characters: "The
best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt
with the heart."[32] The statue is the first one of a handicapped person and of a child to be
permanently displayed at the U.S. Capitol.[33][34][35]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller

You might also like