In the article “The Radical Dissent of Helen Keller” by Peter Dreier, the author expresses his views on Keller’s life and the political things that she did. Dreier believes that Helen Keller was an inspirational woman that did many great things. “Keller is well known for being blind, but she also deserves to be heralded for her progressive social vision”(20). He has three main reasons for this belief: her ability to overcome hardships, her political involvement, and her support of civil rights.
When Helen Keller was 19 months old, she contracted a fever that caused her to lose both her hearing and sight. She became violent and uncontrollable, and many of her family members thought she should be put in an asylum. Instead, her mother found Anne Sullivan (a former student of the Perkins School for the Blind) to be Keller’s tutor. Sullivan was able to calm the young girl and began to spell words into her hand to help her read. “With Sullivan’s support, her student soon learned to read and write Braille, and by the age of ten she had begun to speak” (4). When she was 14, Keller began formal schooling, first at…show more content… Though she could not see what was going on, she could smell the suffering of those who were around her. As Keller was exposed to situations such as this, she came to the decision that all suffering came from ignorance, stupidity, and sin. She was introduced to “political books, reading socialist publications (often in German Braille) and Marxist economists”(9). In 1909, Keller joined the Socialist Party and wrote articles in support of its ideas. Over time, she was told that her views were unpopular and controversial - “Although she was universally praised for her courage in the face of her physical disabilities, she now found herself criticized for her political views”(10). Despite this, Keller pushed on with spreading her opinions on the world’s