Keller's life consists of music and memories. He seems hostile and closed up from a life of pain and betrayal, which causes music to lose it's beauty and causes Keller to hate himself. Keller unfolds his tragic wisdom to Paul though their piano lessons and attempts to teach him about life, with his riddles and bizarre sayings that can be taken two ways. Keller teaches Paul more about life than music.
Paul needed Keller; he needed him to bring him back from his world of self satisfaction. Keller thought of him as arrogant, he said that "the boy (Paul) is too given to self satisfaction. The self satisfaction go no further." Keller tries to give Paul what he was could not get from anyone else, wisdom of life. When Paul reads a bizarre article that was to enter Keller's "textbook" he asks if he could take it home. Keller tells him to take the whole thing. That was not an act of kindness, Keller had been intending Paul to read the book. He wanted to show Paul the pain of the world; he wanted him to be shocked into learning how horrible life can be. He wanted him to know what to expect in life. Keller was a happy man, he hated himself and he lived life to in the worst manner he could. He made the textbook so he could be in a content state of sadness. Giving Paul was not to make him sad to but to force him to see what is really there. Keller ignored what were there many years before and he didn't want Paul to make the same mistake. He liked Paul (even though he had not admitted it) and he wanted him to live the happy life that he could not have.
Keller was not an open person; he did not speak his mind. But he left clues on what he felt and wanted. He gave riddles and sayings to Paul when teaching him to better the piano, which had secret meanings about life. Everything he said could have been taken two ways, a way of life and a way of music. Paul had to think and wonder what the meanings where, he said, "it is something that still puzzles me today" when recollecting about Keller's words.
