The Mysteries of Helen Keller

By Jazmin Boswell and Zhaohan Zhang

The year was 1880 when one of the most influential disability rights activists was born in the small but cozy town of Tuscumbia, Alabama. It would be nineteen months later when she would contract some sort of illness, which many professionals presume to be the highly infamous scarlet fever to which she would lose both her hearing and her eyesight. From then on, she would go on to make history with such accomplishments as writing fourteen books and hundreds of essays and speeches, flying a plane, and being the first blind and deaf person to ever get a college degree. This person, of course, is the very well-known Helen Keller, but how did she accomplish these things? What course of action led Mrs. Keller to adopt all these abilities despite having one of the most challenging disabilities? I don't think this is entirely truthful, so let's look at the points.

How does a blind person learn to communicate or write? They have to learn through the association of hearing; they hear the words and feel whatever an object or the symbols are based on braille. Now, how does a deaf person learn to communicate or write? Typically, they learn through the association of sight. They can see an object or word and simply have someone write the word of what that object is. In modern cases of blind deafness, they learn by hearing or seeing objects, which is paired with the advanced education system of the modern day. But back in 1880, the technology was hardly what you would consider strong, plus she went completely blind and deaf at the age of 19 months, barely a toddler. The ability to learn such methods as braille, which she knew would be near if not impossible to learn. To add to this, how would she learn things like the alphabet? She needs to know what the letters are to make coherent sentences and ideas, which again is REALLY difficult and nearly impossible for someone who can't learn through the association of anything. 

This brings us to one of Mrs. Keller's most significant accomplishments. She wrote 14 books, starting with her own Autobiography, "The Story of My Life," which, to be perfectly honest, is really well written; however, the task itself is challenging. She wrote these with either your typical standard typewriter or occasionally a braille typewriter which if she knew what letters were or how to understand braille then the task became easier especially because she did have editors ; however, the initial writing process should've been impossible to learn as a blind and deaf person. 

To keep adding to her accomplishments, we can bring up her operating multiple kinds of vehicles, starting simply with a bike. She did learn to ride a bike, although it was a tandem one, meaning there were 2 people on the bike. Let's elaborate on how it would be significantly more challenging for a blind, deaf person. First, let's assume Mrs. Keller wasn't in the front—great. She doesn't need to steer, making it far more manageable. She then is the stoker in the back, primarily known as the engine. As the stoker, she must provide the necessary power for the captain and the bike. The bike itself is easy to pedal, but the ability to determine how much power you need to put without direct communication or the ability to see your surroundings makes it extremely difficult. Along with this is the fact that the stoker needs to have near-perfect balance and stability to ensure the bike doesn't fall. I don't know if you've ever closed your eyes trying to balance. It is much more complicated because of how much your body utilizes micro-adjustments. While most of your balance comes from your inner ear, your eyes allow you to assess what's happening to help prevent you from falling over and keeping balance. This is a simple example if you can't believe it. More impressively, Helen Keller flew a plane for 20 minutes, an accomplishment less than 1% of the modern population has ever done. A student from Cody Highschool, Tony Salgado, a pilot certified by the FAA with his Private Pilots License, mentions how "if she simply touched the joystick and she put zero input into the altitude, direction, and speed of the plane, did she really fly it?" With an inability to see, it would be impossible to fly a plane. You can learn the controls, but you need your eyes to send the information to your brain to know what you're doing. Assume that any occurrence of turbulence shows how someone like Helen Keller, who is blind and deaf, could not fix that situation. She would need to guess and likely fail with a minuscule chance to succeed.

It was theorized that Helen Keller had an IQ of 160, very similar to Einstein’s, so it would make sense how she was the first deaf and blind person to graduate college, but the story is a little deeper than that; first of all, very impressively she graduated from Radcliffe College with a bachelors in art and with Cum Laude meaning third in her class. however, the classification of Helen Keller's IQ was calculated based on her growth from 0 to 19 months before she lost sight and hearing. Given this reasoning, this is a largely inaccurate measurement. Sure, she must have been wiser if she had completed all of these achievements, but the ability to achieve these makes it seem a little far-fetched.

Let's talk about the possibility of her becoming blind and deaf from Scarlets Fever; statistics for children who are less than two years of age and surviving the disease are next to none. 97% of children less than two years pass away, but 17 of the survivors recovered and became partially blind, but the chances of children becoming deaf were even slimmer. Meningitis is another possibility for the contracted disease. Meningitis is an inflammatory sickness that spans the spinal cord and brain tissues. Many people called her "brain dead" as a child because of the sinus issues she had developed at 19 months of age.  

Instead, we propose a couple of theories about Helen Keller's existence. Well, first of all, there's the idea that she isn't real at all. Her story was fabricated entirely for some reason. This could make some sense as these achievements are all significantly impressive and provide a change in the field of deafblindness and disability rights. That could be why it was made to create a way to pave the future for change. Another theory is that she was a real person who was actually deaf and blind. Still, all of these achievements were fabricated to make Helen Keller be seen in a different positive light. These theories highlight and advocate for a change in the status quo and how humans think about people's situations, but some theories are more questionable. 

For one, Helen Keller was also a very well-renowned political activist, and she wrote a few books and essays about her political philosophies and life. Well, her political views also tie in and happen to be very similar to her lifelong companion, Mrs. Anne Sullivan; they would advocate for socialism, suffrage, and disability rights, very standard stuff for someone who teaches people with disabilities and someone who is, well the theory comes from the idea that all these political thoughts books and even the creation of the American Civil Liberties Union was all orchestrated by maybe Anne Sulivan or someone else and used someone who had completed such outstanding tasks to push their individual agendas or even to just simply help make a good agenda. 

Whether or not Mrs. Helen Keller is real or a fabricated story

that can be answered; she is deceased, after all. This question will remain a mystery for the time being. Still, by analyzing these accomplishments and looking through a veil of absurdity, you start to see cracks in what may or may not be the truth.