CBSE Class 10 Answered

Chapter 1 

Helen explains that she is not comfortable writing about her life as it will bring to light her struggles. She briefs about some of the earliest incidents in her childhood and her birth year. She writes about her family including her grandparents. In the first chapter, Helen also tells her readers about the illness that made her deaf and blind.

Chapter 2 

The second chapter describes Helen’s initial attempts to communicate as a deaf and a blind person. She used primitive signs and always clung to her mother. However, despite trying to communicate in her own way, she realised that she was different from others. When he failed at copying them, she vented her frustration on her nurse and others in the family. Martha, the cook’s daughter, was someone who understood her signs. There was also an old dog named Belle who was Helen’s constant companion along with Martha. The chapter also describes how the nurse saved Helen from getting burnt. During this time, Helen learnt the use of a key and locked her mother in the pantry. Miss Sullivan was also locked up in the teacher room and had to come out from the window. Helen shared a very loving relationship with her father. The chapter also tells us about Helen’s relationship with her little sister, Mildred.

Chapter 3 

Helen describes her increasing frustration in this chapter because of not being able to communicate with others. She explains how she struggled and misbehaved and about her physical and mental breakdown. Helen describes how her mother read about how a child like her could be educated. The chapter describes the Kellers’ train journey to Baltimore and their coming in contact with Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who was instrumental in bringing Miss Sullivan in Helen’s life.

Chapter 4 

The fourth chapter introduces Miss Sullivan; her arrival in the Keller household as Helen’s teacher. Miss Sullivan gave Helen a doll to play and tried spelling d-o-l-l in her hand, which at once caught Helen’s fancy. The chapter should be carefully read as it explains the different words Miss Sullivan tried to teach Helen.

Chapter 5 

This chapter describes how Miss Sullivan took her out in nature to teach her. They went to the banks of the Tennessee River where sitting on the warm grass Helen learned her lessons from her teacher. In this chapter, Helen also experienced some rough weather and learned that nature can sometimes be unkind too.

Chapter 6 

In this chapter, Helen understands the different between normal children acquiring language and deaf children going through the same drill. She realised that while a normal child could catch new words that they heard on the wing, it was a slow and often a painful process for a deaf child. The journey of learning words and their usage was long and often full of nerve-wrecking obstacles. In this chapter, Helen tells her readers about how Miss Sullivan taught her new words and how she asked many questions about them. However, there came a time when she also learnt about words that were abstract and couldn’t be explained by her teacher only through the sense of touch. The word ‘love’ was one such word that Helen took a while to fathom but she did understand the meaning of love when her teacher explained her to ‘think’ while doing her bead exercise.