The Story of My Life

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.