On one of the
best American examples of turning adversity into triumph—and a whole lot more.
Thanks in no
small measure to The Miracle Worker,
both the 1957
William Gibson play and the 1962 Academy Award-winning
film, I’d argue that most Americans have a good sense of the amazing life
and story of Helen Keller. Left deaf and blind by an illness that hit her when
she was just 19 months old, during a period (the early 1880s) when such childhood
disabilities were even more affecting and challenging (to say the least) than
they remain in our own era, Keller could very easily have become simply a
tragic story of lost potential and family struggles, one of many in a
century when childhood mortality rates were strikingly high. But thanks to
dedicated parents, one truly pioneering
and impressive teacher, and her own perseverance, Keller instead became, in
the course of her nearly nine full decades of life, one of the nation’s foremost
authors, lecturers, and activists.
The specifics of
how Keller learned to overcome her disabilities and becoming a highly
functioning member of society (indeed, one who functioned at a higher level
than almost all of her peers, of all physical abilities), which of course are
the famous heart of The Miracle Worker,
would be inspiring in any era; again, in her own late 19th century
childhood they were that much more impressive still. It’s important to
reiterate that she did not accomplish those triumphs on her own; or, rather,
that two equally impressive women, her
mother Kate Adams Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan, significantly
contributed their own inspiring perspectives and perseverance to her life and
triumphs. Taken together, the lives and efforts of these three women exemplify
not only the most ideal response to a tragic (or at least very adverse)
situation, but also the degree to which community and collaboration
consistently offer the best possibilities for hope and progress in the face of
such adversities.
Yet I would also
highlight one more individual and unique, and to my mind equally inspiring,
aspect of Helen Keller’s life and identity: her
socialism. While that political and social philosophy was not, in the late
19th and early 20th century moments when Keller first
connected to it, nearly as controversial here in the United States as it became
in the mid-20th century and remains in our own contemporary moment, neither
of course was it in the American mainstream. (At least not overtly—as I have
blogged elsewhere, the
Pledge of Allegiance was authored in 1892 by an avowed socialist, to cite
one subtle such presence.) But to my mind, what makes Keller’s socialism so
impressive has nothing to do with political debates, and everything to do with
what it reflects in her own trajectory: the fact that, having dealt with and
overcome some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable, Keller gravitated
toward a philosophy that was grounded in significant measure in sympathy for,
and a focus on alleviating the condition of, all those in desperate situations.
It would be easy to imagine Keller embracing the
“self-made” mantra that was at the core of many Gilded Age American narratives,
but she went instead in the exact opposite direction: recognizing in response
to her own challenges and triumphs that any and all such successes depend on
community and support.
Next inspiring
response to adversity tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?
10/24 Memory Day
nominee: Annie
Edson Taylor, the Civil
War widow and retired schoolteacher who capped an impressive and inspiring
subsequent life of travel and adventure by becoming, at the age of
63, the first person to go over Niagara
Falls in a barrel.
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