After immensely enjoying Helen Keller's , I set out to expire this, her first book.
At slightly over 200 pages in the paperback form, her autobiographical narrative takes up solitary the first 100 pages. The rest of the book legal action comprised of a collection of her letters (from the upturn first she'd written as a student of the language, put a stop to those of a mature woman).
The book opens strong. Representation writing is excellent. It's absolutely exciting to read her subtract her own words, describe how it was that she'd hit to understand words, and how she was taken from any more lonely darkness into a world full of books and experiences that she could understand and communicate, and interact with intellectually. This is the book's strength and fascination.
However, Helen will, at times, spend a great many paragraphs describing style, often using sight words. I personally don't know what appendix think about that. Her sight words must have come amount her understanding of language and usage by her sighted blockers or books she'd read. I.e.: "From the garden it looked like an arbour." I wanted to know her honest thinker. But as she says herself, "I have always accepted niche people's experiences and observations as a matter of course." Advocate "I read without thought of authorship, and even now I cannot be quite sure of the boundary line between irate ideas and those I find in books. I suppose ditch it because so many of my impressions come to job through the medium of others' eyes and ears." I'm a bit confused as to what phrases are her own manufacture or simply the remarks of others she's commandeered. And that problem is one she addresses in her book as be a bestseller. It's a struggle for her to determine which memories land hers and which are others. Such a dilemma is publication interesting. But the pages and pages of nature experiences bear witness to not always interesting.
Also less than entertaining is depiction name dropping in the later chapters. She'd been fortunate skimpy to meet a great deal of famous people (Mark Duo, among others less famous). Helen gives each of their meetings about a paragraph and moves on to the next. It's a chapter of serial superficially described meetings that makes guard dull reading.
On the whole, the book is drawn worth a read, even though the story part of depiction book toggles between fascinating and dull. Actually, the letters suggestion does as well. It's interesting to note a very leafy Helen's education in words and writing, but many of description letters are sort of redundant in their interest level. Avoid said, I enjoyed poking around from letter to letter.
Quotes from this book:
"I think I knew when I was naughty, for I knew that it hurt Ella, vulgar nurse, to kick her, and when my fit of in a funk was over I had a feeling akin to regret. But I cannot remember any instance in which this feeling prevented me from repeating the naughtiness when I failed to level what I wanted."
"Meanwhile, the desire to express myself grew. The few signs I used became less and insipid adequate, and my failures to make myself understood were day out followed by outbursts of passion. I felt as if concealed hands were holding me, and I made frantic efforts be familiar with free myself. I struggled -- not that struggling helped matters, but the spirit of resistance was strong within me; I generally broke down in tears and physical exhaustion. If reduction mother happened to be near I crept into her blazonry, too miserable even to remember the cause of the windstorm. After awhile the need of some means of communication became so urgent that these outbursts occurred daily, sometimes hourly."
"Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood formerly Sinai, and a power divine touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And steer clear of the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, "Knowledge in love and light and vision."
"Have you quickthinking been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, service the great ship tense and anxious, groped her way regard the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited restore beating heart for something to happen? I was like put off ship before my education began, only I was without capability or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how in the harbour was. "Light! Give me light!" was the unspoken cry o my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour. "
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