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Dear students, I'm Shish pal Chauhan from S. Chauhan Institute of English, Jagadhri, District Yamuna Nagar, haryana State.
Today, I've brought the detailed summary of the chapter 7 of the novel The story of My Life by Helen Keller. This video one of the two.
Let's begin the chapter.
In this chapter, we come to know as to know Helen was able to know the skill of reading.
As soon as Helen learnt a few words to spell, Miss Sullivan gave Helen some slips of cardboard on which a few letters were printed in raised letters. She at once understood that each printed word meant for some object, an action or a quality.
She found the slips of papers which represented ‘doll’, ‘is’ ‘on’ and ‘bed’. She placed each object on its object.
Then she put her doll in the bed with the words ‘is, on, bed’ which she arranged beside the doll, thus making a sentence out of the words. At the same time, she carried the idea of the sentence with the things.
One day, she played a game with her teacher for hours and it delighted her very much. She had arranged the words ‘is, in, and ‘wardrobe’ on the shelf.
From the printed slips, it was a step to the printed book. She took her book ‘Reader for Beginner’ and reached for words. Then she found them in the book and her joy was boundless then. In this way, she began to read.
She had no regular lessons for a long time. Whenever Miss Sullivan taught her, she illustrated it by inventing a beautiful story or a poem.
Whenever anything delighted her, Miss Sullivan would talk it over as if she were a little girl. The subjects that were dreadful for most of the children were dreadful for her.
Miss Sullivan’s sympathy with Helen’s pleasure and desire was superb. It was due to her long association with the blinds. In addition to it, she had a wonderful faculty for description. She also introduced Helen to the technicalities of science little by little. She made every subject so real that Helen could remember it easily.
Miss Sullivan also took her out of doors, preferably in the sunlit woods for studies. Helen says that all of her lessons had been taught to her in close contact of nature. She still remembers the sweet fragrance of the pine trees mixed with the perfume of the wild grapes.
She learned while sitting under the graceful shade of a wild tulip tree that everything has a lesson and a suggestion. She learned that in nature nothing is useless; everything has a purpose. Each and every object of nature has its contribution in educating her.
She counts so many things of nature like noisy throaty frogs, katydids ( a bush cricket). She held them in her hands and after sometime, they forgot their fear. Then she also names some more objects of nature like ‘little downy chickens and wild flowers, the dog wood blossoms, meadow violets and budding fruit trees.
She also felt the soft touch of the fiber and the small seeds of the bursting cotton-balls. She also felt the rustling sound of the wind through the cornstalks, the rustling through the silky leaves of some trees, ‘indignant snorts’ of her pony when both of them caught him in the grassy –land and put some bit in his mouth.
She also remembers the spicy clover smell of his breath. She means to say that she learnt the great lessons of life through her senses mainly through smell and touch.
Sometimes, she would wake up at dawn and go secretly into the garden while the grass and flowers were laden with heavy dew-drops.
She narrates here that she had the wonderful feeling of beautiful motion of the lilies when they swayed in the morning breeze. Sometimes, she felt the faint noise od a pair of wings of an insect inside the flower I terror of being pressed, when she was enjoying the touch of the soft petals of some flowers.
There was another place where she was usually found and it was the orchard where the fruits ripened in early July.
Helen narrates very beautifully how the large peaches would reach themselves into her hand when the ‘joyous breezes’ passed through the trees and the branches laden with the burden of fruit bowed down.
The apples would also fall down at her feet due to the blowing of the wind.
She felt the heavenly joy when she gathered up the fruit in her pinafore (a loose dress like apron worn on a sweater, etc.) and when she pressed her cheeks against ‘the smooth cheeks of the apples’ that were still warm from the heat of the sun. After that she would go back home.
Their favourite walk was to the timber dock (where boats are tied) on the Tennessee River. That dock was used during the civil war to land soldiers. Both of them spent many happy moments playing at learning geography.
Helen used to build dams of pebbles, made islands and lakes. She also dug river beds all for fun. She did not know at that time that she was learning a lesson of geography.
She listened to Miss Sullivan’s descriptions of the round world with wonder. Helen also came to know from her teacher about burning mountains, buried cities, moving rivers of ice and many other strange things.
Her teacher also made raised maps of clay for her. The purpose was to make her feel the mountain ridges and valleys and also follow truth with the touch of her fingers the zigzag course of rivers.
She liked that all but felt difficulty in understanding the division of the earth into zones and poles. She still remembers as to how the poles were represented by the orange sticks.
She did not like to study mathematics. She was not at all interested in the science of numbers. Her teacher tried to teach her to count numbers by stringing beads into groups.
She learnt to add and subtract by kindergarten straws. She had very less patience and, so, she never arranged more than five or six groups at a time.
After finishing it, she would feel relaxed and go at once to join her playmates. In the same play-way method, she studied zoology and botany.
Then she describes that, once, a gentleman sent her a collection of fossils.