The Story of My Life: Part I: Chapters 12-23

by Helen Keller
This account of Helen Keller's life is divided into three parts: Part I is Keller's autobiography, which she published in 1903; Part II is a selection of Keller's letters; and Part III consists of supplementary materials by Keller's teacher and lifelong friend, Anne Sullivan.

Here are links to our lists for the text: Part I: Chapters 1-11, Part I: Chapters 12-23, Part II: Letters, Part III: Chapters 1-2, Part III: Chapters 3-5

Here is a link to the full text: The Story of My Life

Here is a link to our lists for William Gibson's play about Keller's life, The Miracle Worker.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. audible
    heard or perceptible by the ear
    The impulse to utter audible sounds had always been strong within me. I used to make noises, keeping one hand on my throat while the other hand felt the movements of my lips.
  2. perseverance
    persistent determination
    But for Miss Sullivan's genius, untiring perseverance and devotion, I could not have progressed as far as I have toward natural speech.
  3. articulate
    speak, pronounce, or utter in a certain way
    In the first place, I laboured night and day before I could be understood even by my most intimate friends; in the second place, I needed Miss Sullivan's assistance constantly in my efforts to articulate each sound clearly and to combine all sounds in a thousand ways.
  4. saturate
    infuse or fill completely
    At the time I was writing "The Frost King," and this letter, like many others, contains phrases which show that my mind was saturated with the story.
  5. assimilate
    take up mentally
    This habit of assimilating what pleased me and giving it out again as my own appears in much of my early correspondence and my first attempts at writing.
  6. scrupulous
    characterized by extreme care and great effort
    I was still excessively scrupulous about everything I wrote.
  7. resolutely
    showing firm determination or purpose
    I wrote timidly, fearfully, but resolutely, urged on by my teacher, who knew that if I persevered, I should find my mental foothold again and get a grip on my faculties.
  8. inflect
    vary the pitch of one's speech
    I read aloud to Miss Sullivan and recited passages from my favourite poets, which I had committed to memory; she corrected my pronunciation and helped me to phrase and inflect.
  9. heterogeneous
    consisting of elements not of the same kind or nature
    At the present time my mind is so full of heterogeneous matter that I almost despair of ever being able to put it in order.
  10. circumscribe
    restrict or confine
    Circumscribed as my life was in so many ways, I had to look between the covers of books for news of the world that lay outside my own.
  11. optimism
    a general disposition to expect the best in all things
    I love all writers whose minds, like Lowell's, bubble up in the sunshine of optimism — fountains of joy and good will, with occasionally a splash of anger and here and there a healing spray of sympathy and pity.
  12. discourse
    extended verbal expression in speech or writing
    No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends.
  13. tumult
    a state of commotion and noise and confusion
    The rumble and roar of the city smite the nerves of my face, and I feel the ceaseless tramp of an unseen multitude, and the dissonant tumult frets my spirit.
  14. disparity
    inequality or difference in some respect
    Their life seems an immense disparity between effort and opportunity.
  15. abstruse
    difficult to understand
    Dr. Bell is proficient in many fields of science, and has the art of making every subject he touches interesting, even the most abstruse theories.
Created on Fri Sep 29 16:08:46 EDT 2017 (updated Mon Aug 11 11:37:36 EDT 2025)

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