Helen Keller, How You So Smart, Girl?

What I find most interesting about George’s essay on Helen Keller is that people criticized her for not being able to experience the world, and thus not being able to form her own opinions about the world. I’ll say honestly that I had no idea that Helen Keller wrote so many books and essays, or anything at all. Keller makes an excellent point that we can only know things that happen outside our immediate environment through texts, but the things that happen directly in front of her can only be known by descriptions of others. Keller is more equipped to know about the rest of the world than she is to know her own surroundings. Her location is subject to the terministic screens of whoever describes it to her. However, I don’t agree that this makes her necessarily unable to know of the world or be informed. She is more aware of things in the world than I could ever expect her to be, which I think is why some people would be critical. They can’t understand how she could come to her conclusions, so they assume it must be a sham. I believe that having a disability like that is one way to open a person to truths most people take for granted. Most people take their sight and hearing for granted, along with many other things.