Monday, August 1, 2011

What did Helen mean when she said, "Knowledge is love and light and vision" in The Story of My Life?

As a young girl, Helen Keller became deaf and blind due to an illness. Her life was plunged into darkness. Her parents were determined to seek help for her. They wanted Helen to get an education and to learn how to communicate. They sought expert after expert to find help. They were eventually told to contact Mr. Anagnos, who ran a school for the blind. It was through him that they found Annie Sullivan, the woman who became Helen's teacher. Miss Sullivan helped lift Helen from the darkness she had lived in for years. Helen looked back on this and described it using a metaphor:



Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai, and a power divine touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And from the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, "Knowledge is love and light and vision."



Helen compared her emergence from darkness to the Hebrew people escaping from Egypt. She also referred to Moses, who encountered God on Mount Sinai. She metaphorically heard a voice speaking to her. Through knowledge, Helen discovered "love and light and vision."

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