on her blindness - adam thorpe

Question 1

couplets

Answer 1

mirror two eyes

the façade and the truth

speaker and his mother

Question 2

enjambment

Answer 2

disorientating effect to mirror how the mother feels.

Question 3

irregular rhyme scheme

Answer 3

uncertainty

Question 4

‘my mother couldn’t bear being blind, to be honest’

Answer 4

alliteration - intense emotions

colloquial

the truth

confession of her inability to cope

Question 5

‘one shouldn’t say it’

Answer 5

many people are affected by blindness

distanced himself

Question 5

‘one should hide the fact that catastrophic handicaps are hell;’

Answer 5

alliteration

expected to be brave and stoical

hyperbolic

caesura - uncomfortable effect

Question 6

‘bear it like a roman’

Answer 6

suck it up and get on with life

simile

weak if you lose

armour to hide their hurt

society is blind to blindness

ancient rome - ancient rumours

Question 7

‘she turned to me once’

Answer 7

temporal deixis

opening up about problems

Question 8

‘whispered ‘its living hell’’

Answer 8

doesn’t want to be overheard

secretive

colloquial language

Question 9

‘i’d bump myself off’

Answer 9

euphemism for suicide

harsh reality

Question 10

‘usual sop’

Answer 10

no way of comforting her

feels trapped and despondent - can’t help her

Question 11

‘she kept her dignity, though, even when she was bumping into walls like a dodgem’

Answer 11

simile

childhood

no control

find joy in pain

did he keep his dignity?

Question 12

‘her sense of direction did not improve’

Answer 12

dismisses the idea that if you lose one sense the others heighten

Question 13

‘smiled when kids would offer the latest drawing’

Answer 13

being nice

social contract

the struggles of having a hidden disability

Question 14

‘long , slow slide’

Answer 14

gradual process of going blind

metaphor for her life

elongated vowels

Question 15

‘blank as stone’

Answer 15

speeds up poem - blindness is out of control

represents what she sees

idea of darkness, lifelessness and weight of grief

Question 16

‘she’d visit exhibitions, admire films, sink into television’

Answer 16

ironic - visual things

trying to convince people its not that bad

no pleasure

Question 17

‘looking the wrong way’

Answer 17

comical but tragic

Question 18

‘golden weather’

Answer 18

visual

a metaphor for the end of his mother’s life, is colourful

death gave her new life

Question 19

‘too weak to move, staring at nothing’

Answer 19

dying

death keeps up the pretence

Question 20

‘it’s lovely out there’

Answer 20

echolalia

meaningless - based on memories

doing it for her children - protect her son

social grace

Question 21

‘dying made her no more sightless’

Answer 21

emphasises how bad it was when she was alive

already dead to herself

Question 22

‘she was watching, somewhere, in the end’

Answer 22

comfort

looking down on him

died and suffered

nothing good about blindness

Question 23

headlines

Answer 23

frustrations of being blind

the reality of having a disability

losing sight can cause a loss of identity

the resilience upheld by those who have a disability

we take our senses for granted

disabilities affect mentality

we can’t relate to something we haven’t experienced

society is oblivious to other people’s suffering