Read the passage from "Optimism.” A poet once said I must be happy because I did not see the bare, cold present, but lived in a beautiful dream. I do live in a beautiful dream; but that dream is the actual, the present,—not cold, but warm; not bare, but furnished with a thousand blessings. The very evil which the poet supposed would be a cruel disillusionment is necessary to the fullest knowledge of joy. Keller achieves her purpose of convincing the audience by using a
Keller responds to the poet’s claim that she must be happy because she lives in a dream. She acknowledges that she does live in a beautiful dream, then challenges the poet’s assumption by explaining that her present reality is warm and filled with blessings. This is a rebuttal: she counters another person’s argument with her own reasoning.
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