Helen Keller Argumentative Essay

Argumentative Essay

Have you ever heard of someone who was able to earn a bachelor's degree, speak five different languages, fly a plane, and write over twelve books and articles while being both deaf and blind from a young age? Well, this incredible person is Helen Adams Keller, born on June 27th, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. When Helen Keller was only 19 months old, she got sick with an illness believed to be scarlet fever, which left her permanently both deaf and blind. Although Helen Keller is portrayed to be such a successful and inspirational woman in history, society has placed too much credit and emphasis on her accomplishments to create inspiration for others, making it unrealistic to believe she did it on her own.

Helen Keller's

Helen Keller has written multiple books and articles about faith, her life story, and activism for women's suffrage and birth control. The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) stated that "At the age of 19 months, Helen became deaf and blind as a result of an unknown illness, perhaps rubella or scarlet fever. As Helen grew from infancy into childhood, she became wild and unruly." This shows that Helen Keller began to lose her sight and hearing at a young age before she had developed her conscious self-awareness. According to a study published by Psychology Emory, "Based on some recent empirical evidence, five levels of self-awareness are presented and discussed as they chronologically unfold from the moment of birth to approximately 4–5 years of age. A natural history of children's developing self-awareness is proposed as well as a model of adult self-awareness that is informed by the dynamic of early development." This empirical evidence shows that a child only begins to become conscious or self-aware when they are 4-5 years old. Therefore, because of how young Helen Keller was when she became blind and deaf, there is no possible way she could remember the world as it is with sight and hearing, since she was not yet conscious. Even if somebody could describe how something feels or looks, you would never truly be able to understand or vision their description until you've seen it. So it doesn't make sense how Helen Keller is able to write about her life story when she couldn't possibly know what was happening around her all the