The Curious, Clever, and Violent Childhood of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker

One of the greatest human beings who ever lived is Helen Keller. She learned to interact and communicate with the world while being blind and deaf. She even wrote several books, including one about her life called The Story of My Life. However, during her childhood she only communicated with her family members using crude gestures. Her teacher, Ann Sullivan, learned many things about Helen while teaching her. In the Miracle Worker, Helen Keller is characterized as a curious, clever, and violent person.

As a child Helen was curious. Every young and inexperienced kid wants to feel the world and remember all the sights, the sounds and the scents. Being both deaf and blind, Helen tries to communicate by touching and tasting everything. For example, she eats from everyone’s plate and feels people’s faces and recognizes them by the way their face is shaped. In a way, she sees by feeling things. Helen is also a kinesthetic learner, first by feeling the object, then having someone spell it out in sign language for her to feel. She was curious because curiosity is a natural instinct of humans, especially young humans, to find out why something is or is not the way it is, which is one of the reasons why humans are the smartest sentient beings on the planet.

Being both smart and a self-learner, Helen was a clever girl, albeit being bereft of two of her senses. When Annie first taught Helen the word “doll”, she was surprised that Helen spelled it back to her when she felt the doll. She was clever when she locked her teacher in the room and concealed the key in her mouth. Although Helen was blind and deaf, she figured things out by herself, such as near the end of the movie when she realized that water has a meaning and is a thing. However, because she did not like the way Annie taught, she often slapped and hit her.

Helen was often violent and misunderstood by Annie. Before she learned to respect her teacher, Helen often tried to get as far away from Annie as possible. When Annie tried to teach Helen to eat properly, Helen tried to escape, threw her spoon, ate by using her hands and splashed water on Annie. Because she was deaf and blind, Helen probably got frustrated at not being able to see the world like most other people. When she played with her doll she tried to feel its eyes while simultaneously pushing the baby out of the crib. In her childhood experience, Helen’s disabilities have changed her in many ways, making her curious, clever and violent.

Overall, Helen Keller was inquisitive, shrewd, and fierce in character. Her curiosity led her to discover many things about life. Her cleverness allowed her to learn a lot. Her violence made her bold and passionate about her own views. Being one of the greatest humans that ever lived, Helen Keller is a true prodigy of all time.