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Analyzing Helen Keller's Excerpt From 'The Story Of My Life'

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Helen Keller is a name that almost everyone in our country knows. She is famous, not only for her unfortunate and extremely limiting disabilities, but for the unrelenting effort she put forward to overcome them. Despite being both blind and deaf, she was eager to learn. In this excerpt from The Story of My Life, Keller tells the story of the day that the fire for learning was lit inside of her. Through her writing, Keller uses tone, perspective, and emotional appeal to present her feelings to readers. Throughout the passage, Keller's tone changes. In the beginning, the tone is heavier and frustrated, because this is how Keller was feeling at the beginning of the story. She was having trouble understanding the concept of words, and the way that they related to the world around her. Keller became extremely frustrated with her own limitations, and even threw down a new doll that her tutor had given to her, shattering it into a multitude of pieces. Later in the passage, Keller describes her joy at going outside, and from that …show more content…

In this passage Keller attempts to let readers see the world from her perspective. For example, in the first paragraph, Keller expresses that she was unable to fell a strong connection to anything, because she could not see or hear. Later in the passage, she also expresses that she could not form thoughts, because she did not know any words. In the end, she also expresses how delighted it made her feel to make the connection between the objects she could feel and the letters that were written on her palm She was eager to give everything around her a name, to be able to express the way that she was feeling. All of these things help readers to have some feeling of the way that Keller felt, and the struggles that she went through. This makes readers appreciate the ending of the passage even more, because they can relate to Keller's

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