Exam-useful questions from this chapter, grouped by marks, each with a full model answer. Try writing the answer yourself first, then check it against this one.
1 1-Mark Questions
Q. Who wrote “On the Face of It”?
Answer: Susan Hill, an English author, wrote this one-act play.
Q. What literary form is this chapter?
Answer: It is a one-act play, told almost entirely through dialogue and stage directions.
Q. What is Derry’s real name?
Answer: His real name is Derek, but he insists on being called Derry.
Q. How did Mr Lamb lose his leg?
Answer: His real leg was blown off by a bomb, years back, in the war.
Q. What nickname do local children give Mr Lamb?
Answer: “Lamey-Lamb,” a nickname he says “doesn’t trouble” him.
Q. What fruit is Mr Lamb picking when he falls from the ladder?
Answer: Crab apples, which he was gathering to make jelly.
Q. What does Mr Lamb call the untidy part of his garden?
Answer: “A weed garden,” a patch he deliberately lets grow wild.
Q. How far is Derry’s home from Mr Lamb’s garden?
Answer: Three miles, across the fields.
Q. In which month is Scene One set?
Answer: September (“It’s a good time of year, September”), when the crab apples are ripe for jelly-making.
Q. What three words describe Mr Lamb’s way of understanding the world?
Answer: “Watching. Listening. Thinking.”
2 2-Mark Questions
Q. Why does Derry believe people are afraid of him?
Answer: Derry says people are afraid of him because of his disfigured face, and that he can “see” what they think, even when they do not say it aloud: “I know. I can see.”
Q. What is the “weed-garden argument,” in brief?
Answer: Mr Lamb argues that calling one plant a “weed” and another a “flower” is only a human label; both are equally alive. He extends this to people: a burned face and a whole one are, in the same way, both simply human.
Q. Why does Mr Lamb keep no curtains?
Answer: He says he dislikes “shutting things out, shutting things in,” and prefers the light, the darkness and the sound of the wind coming freely through open windows.
Q. What does Derry mean by “I won’t change”?
Answer: Derry rejects the fairy-tale idea (Beauty and the Beast) that a disfigured person is magically transformed once truly loved. He insists his face will never change, and that he must be accepted exactly as he is, not comforted with a fantasy.
Q. Why does Derry hesitate before giving Mr Lamb his name?
Answer: Derry says, “You don’t know me. You don’t know where I come from or even what my name is.” Giving his name is an act of trust, so he only does it once he feels that trust, and even then sets his own terms for the friendship: “If I’m your friend, you don’t have to be mine. I choose that.”
Q. What is the parable of the fearful man, briefly?
Answer: Mr Lamb tells of a man so afraid of every possible danger that he locked himself in a room and never left. He is still killed, by an ordinary picture falling off the wall, showing that hiding from life does not protect you from it.
Q. Why does Derry’s mother forbid him from visiting Mr Lamb?
Answer: She has “Been told. Warned.” about Mr Lamb, even though the family has not lived there three months, and she feels she knows “what there is to know.” So she forbids Derry to go back and says he is best off at home.
Q. What happens to Mr Lamb in Scene Three?
Answer: While picking crab apples alone on a ladder, Mr Lamb falls; a creak, a crash, a thump and then silence are heard, just before Derry returns as promised.
Q. What does Derry’s final line, “I came back. Lamey-Lamb. I did…..come back,” reveal about his character?
Answer: It suggests that Derry may be changing: he has kept his promise to come back, used Mr Lamb’s nickname affectionately rather than mockingly, and is finally weeping, showing real emotional connection rather than his earlier defensive anger.
Q. Give both meanings of the play’s title.
Answer: The play does not explain its title; one reading is that it refers to Derry’s disfigured face. Idiomatically, “on the face of it” means “as it appears at first glance,” suggesting that surface appearances, like a burned face or a tin leg, can be misleading about a person’s real worth.
3 4-Mark Questions
Q. Describe the character of Mr Lamb, quoting at least two of his lines.
Answer: Mr Lamb is an old man who lost his leg to a bomb in the war and lives alone, but he is warm, endlessly curious and completely unafraid of being different or being stared at. His life is built on openness: “The gate’s always open,” and he keeps no curtains because he dislikes “shutting things out, shutting things in.” He treats every visitor, including a suspicious, defensive boy, with patience and respect, summing up his outlook as “Watching. Listening. Thinking.”
Q. Describe the character of Derry, quoting at least two of his lines.
Answer: Derry is a fourteen-year-old boy whose face was disfigured by acid, and who has built a wall of anger and suspicion around himself, believing “Underneath, you are afraid…. I’m afraid of me.” He rejects easy comfort, declaring “I won’t change” rather than accept a fairy-tale transformation. Yet underneath his defiance he is desperately curious, admitting he wants “something no one else has got or ever will have,” and by the end of the play he keeps his promise to return, calling Mr Lamb “Lamey-Lamb” with affection rather than mockery.
Q. Explain, with reference to the text, why the ending of the play is called “ambiguous.”
Answer: The play ends with Mr Lamb falling from a ladder, “a creak. A crash…. A thump…. Then silence,” and Derry finding him and weeping. At no point does the text state in words whether Mr Lamb is alive, injured or dead. The final stage direction is only “[Derry begins to weep.] The End.” This withholding of a clear outcome is what makes the ending ambiguous: the reader must interpret it rather than being told.
Q. Explain how the parable of the fearful man connects to Derry’s own situation.
Answer: The man in the parable hides from every conceivable danger by locking himself in a room, yet is still killed by something ordinary and unforeseen, a falling picture. Derry, in the same way, has withdrawn from people out of fear of their reactions to his face. One reading of the parable’s point, that hiding from life does not protect you from it, is that Mr Lamb is indirectly warning Derry that his own seclusion will not keep him safe either.
Q. Explain the significance of the “weed garden” as a symbol in the play.
Answer: Mr Lamb deliberately lets one part of his garden grow wild and calls it a “weed garden,” asking Derry why one plant is labelled a “weed” and another a “flower” when “it’s all life…. growing.” This becomes a symbol for how society labels people: a burned face or a tin leg is judged as lesser, exactly as a weed is judged lesser than a flower, though both are equally alive. The weed garden argues that such labels say more about the people who apply them than about the thing being labelled.
Q. What behaviour does a person with a disability actually want from others, according to the play?
Answer: The play suggests, through Derry, that a person with a disability wants to be treated as a full person, not defined entirely by their difference. Derry rejects pity (“Poor boy”), rejects forced comfort and clichés about bravery, and rejects being stared at or segregated from “normal” people. What he responds to instead is Mr Lamb’s plain acceptance: being spoken to as an equal, asked real questions, and welcomed without conditions.
4 6-Mark Questions
Q. What is it that draws Derry towards Mr Lamb, in spite of himself?
Answer: Several things draw Derry back despite his defensiveness. First, Mr Lamb treats him as an ordinary visitor rather than reacting to his face with pity or fear: “I’m interested in anybody. Anything.” Second, Mr Lamb offers Derry a philosophy that reframes his own difference as unimportant, “You’ve got a burned face, I’ve got a tin leg…. Where’s the difference?” Third, the garden itself, open, unguarded, full of life, offers Derry a sense of belonging: “I’d like a place like this.” Finally, Mr Lamb’s parable of the fearful man makes Derry laugh “a lot,” showing him a way of thinking about fear and safety that he has never considered. Together, these draw Derry back even though every instinct tells him to stay guarded.
Q. In which section of the play does Mr Lamb display signs of loneliness and disappointment? What are the ways in which Mr Lamb tries to overcome these feelings?
Answer: The signs come in Scene One. Derry points out, “But you live by yourself in that house,” and accuses him: “You’re here all by yourself and miserable and no one would know if you were alive or dead and nobody cares.” Mr Lamb only answers, “You think what you please,” and “What are names? Tom, Dick or Harry.” His loneliness surfaces most clearly at the end of Scene One, once Derry has run off. Alone, he says to himself, “I’ll come back. They never do, though. Not them. Never do come back,” a resigned, almost bitter line that reveals how many times he has hoped for a visitor to return and been disappointed. He overcomes this feeling in several ways across the play: by keeping his gate permanently open to anyone who wants company, “The gate’s always open”; by talking to whoever comes (“I like to talk. Have company.”); by filling his days with books, bees and gardening rather than waiting passively; by claiming, whether entirely true or partly hopeful, to have “Hundreds” of friends; and by refusing to let being called “Lamey-Lamb” or being stared at change his behaviour, “I’m not afraid of them, that’s why not.” His philosophy of “Watching. Listening. Thinking.” is itself a way of staying engaged with the world rather than withdrawing into isolation.
Q. Will Derry get back to his old seclusion or will Mr Lamb’s brief association effect a change in the kind of life he will lead in the future? Discuss both possibilities.
Answer: The play leaves this open, but the text gives evidence for a real change. Across their one meeting, Derry moves from suspicion and anger to laughter, admits that he wants “something no one else has got or ever will have. Something just mine,” defies his mother to keep a promise, and returns exactly as he said he would, even though Mr Lamb, alone at the end of Scene One, had said to himself, “They never do, though.” His last words, “I came back…. I did…..come back,” use Mr Lamb’s nickname with warmth rather than mockery, suggesting the beginning of real trust and connection. At the same time, the play offers a case for regression: Derry’s whole worldview before this meeting was built on the certainty that no one really wants him around, and the shock of finding Mr Lamb fallen and silent, right when he had finally chosen to trust someone, could just as easily confirm his old fear that connection only leads to loss. The play’s open ending does not decide this for the reader; both outcomes are genuinely supported by what has come before.
5 Case Studies
Derry: Rubbish.
Mr Lamb: Rubbish? Look, boy, look…. what do you see?
Derry: Just…. grass and stuff. Weeds.
Mr Lamb: Some call them weeds. If you like, then…. a weed garden, that. There’s fruit and there are flowers, and trees and herbs. All sorts. But over there…. weeds. I grow weeds there. Why is one green, growing plant called a weed and another ‘flower’? Where’s the difference. It’s all life…. growing. Same as you and me.
(A) 1 mark What does Mr Lamb call the untidy area of his garden?
Answer: “A weed garden.”
(B) 2 marks What is Mr Lamb’s argument for growing weeds rather than removing them?
Answer: He argues that a “weed” and a “flower” are both simply living, growing things, “it’s all life…. growing,” so the label given to a plant does not change what it actually is.
(C) 3 marks Explain how this passage connects to the play’s larger theme about appearance and worth.
Answer: One reading takes this exchange as the play’s central metaphor: just as a “weed” and a “flower” are equally alive, a person judged “different” because of a burned face or a tin leg is, underneath the label, equally human and equally deserving of acceptance. The passage argues that judging by appearance says more about the judge than about the thing being judged.
Mr Lamb: Steady…. that’s…. got it. That’s it… [More apples fall] And again. That’s it….and….
[A creak. A crash. The ladder falls back, Mr Lamb with it. A thump. The branch swishes back. Creaks. Then silence. Derry opens the garden gate, still panting.]
Derry: You see, you see! I came back. You said I wouldn’t and they said…. but I came back, I wanted….
(A) 1 mark What was Mr Lamb doing just before the accident?
Answer: He was up a ladder, picking crab apples from the tree.
(B) 2 marks What sounds does the stage direction use to convey the accident?
Answer: “A creak. A crash. The ladder falls back, Mr Lamb with it. A thump. The branch swishes back. Creaks. Then silence.”
(C) 3 marks Explain why this moment is ironic when read alongside Mr Lamb’s earlier parable.
Answer: Mr Lamb had earlier told Derry that a man who hid from every conceivable danger was still killed by an ordinary falling picture, meaning that hiding from life offers no real protection. It is ironic that Mr Lamb himself, who has never hidden from anything, is brought down by an equally ordinary accident, a fall from a ladder, while doing something as harmless as picking apples, echoing his own parable’s lesson that danger cannot always be foreseen or avoided.