Chapter 6 Summary

Helen needed to move from knowing names of concrete things and actions, to knowing how to recognize and communicate abstractions. Her next big step came, again, as she was trying to solve a problem. Helen was concentrating very hard, and Anne Sullivan tapped Helen's forehead, emphatically spelling, "THINK!" Helen says she knew "in a flash" that "think" was the name for what she was doing. She worked for a long time, she says, before she could understand the meaning of the word "love."

Anne Sullivan reasoned that normal children learn language by being exposed to it constantly. Thus, she "spoke" to Helen constantly, using the manual alphabet to help Helen learn the words and figures of speech people used in speaking to each other. It was a long time before Helen could initiate much conversation, but as Sullivan continued to give her language...