Complete solutions to the “Before you read” question, the two in-text questions and the “Reading with Insight” exercise of NCERT Vistas, Book 2 Chapter 5, “On the Face of It,” exactly as printed in the book, with a full model answer under each. Write your own answer first, then compare. The book also carries a “How about…” prompt inviting you to imagine another ending; a suggested answer for that is included at the end as a bonus, since the book gives no model answer for it.
1 Before You Read
Q. This is a play featuring an old man and a small boy meeting in the former’s garden. The old man strikes up a friendship with the boy who is very withdrawn and defiant. What is the bond that unites the two?
Answer: Both are visibly different from other people and both are stared at and talked about. Derry has “half a face,” burned by acid, and Mr Lamb has a tin leg (his real one “got blown off, years back”) and is called “Lamey-Lamb” by the kids. Both live somewhat apart from others. What unites them is this shared experience of being different, and Mr Lamb’s plain acceptance: he treats Derry as an equal, “You’ve got a burned face, I’ve got a tin leg. Not important.” For Derry, the lonely old man is someone who neither pities nor fears him, and for Mr Lamb, the boy is company who, unlike others, does come back.
2 In-Text Questions
The book prints two short questions in the margin of the play itself. They are answered here in the book’s order.
Q. Who is Mr Lamb? How does Derry get into his garden?
Answer: Mr Lamb is an old man with a tin leg (his real leg was blown off in the war) who lives alone in a big house without curtains. He spends his time in his garden, where he grows crab apples, flowers and “weeds,” keeps bees, and welcomes anyone who comes: “The gate’s always open.” Derry, thinking it was “an empty place,” got into the garden by climbing over the garden wall, even though the gate was open, as Mr Lamb points out: “Only you climbed the garden wall.”
Q. Do you think all this will change Derry’s attitude towards Mr Lamb?
Answer: Yes, it begins to. Mr Lamb’s story of the man who locked himself in a room to be safe from everything, only to be killed by a picture falling on his head, makes Derry laugh a lot. His defensiveness visibly softens here, though he is still wary. Though he still calls Mr Lamb “peculiar” (“You say peculiar things”), he now starts asking about Mr Lamb’s own life (“What do you do all day?”), tells him things he likes, such as hearing rain on the roof, gives him his name, and soon wants to come again and help with the crab apples. The story also hints at a lesson Derry needs: shutting yourself away from people does not keep you safe.
3 Reading with Insight
Q. What is it that draws Derry towards Mr Lamb inspite of himself?
Answer: Several things draw Derry back despite his defensiveness. Mr Lamb treats him as an ordinary visitor rather than reacting to his face with pity or fear, saying “I’m interested in anybody. Anything.” He 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?” The garden itself, open and unguarded, gives Derry a sense of belonging: “I’d like a place like this.” Most tellingly, Mr Lamb’s parable of the fearful man makes Derry laugh a lot, showing him a completely different way of thinking about fear.
Together, these draw Derry back even though every instinct built up by years of pity and staring 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. It’s a big house, too,” and later 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 cannot, or will not, name his visitors: “What are names? Tom, Dick or Harry.” His loneliness surfaces most clearly at the very 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 often he has hoped for a visitor to return and been disappointed.
He tries to overcome this feeling in several ways: by keeping his garden gate permanently open to anyone who wants company; by talking to whoever comes (“I like to talk. Have company.”); by filling his days with books, bees and gardening instead of waiting passively; by claiming to have “Hundreds” of friends, whether entirely true or partly hopeful; and by refusing to let being called “Lamey-Lamb” or being stared at change his own behaviour, “I’m not afraid of them, that’s why not.” His three-word philosophy, “Watching. Listening. Thinking.”, is itself a way of staying engaged with the world rather than withdrawing into isolation.
Q. The actual pain or inconvenience caused by a physical impairment is often much less than the sense of alienation felt by the person with disabilities. What is the kind of behaviour that the person expects from others?
Answer: The play, through Derry, suggests that a person with a disability wants to be treated as a complete person, not defined entirely by their difference. Derry explicitly rejects pity, mimicking the phrase people use about him: “Poor boy.” He rejects forced comfort and clichés about “brave” disabled people who “never cry and never complain.” He rejects being told to compare himself with people supposedly “worse off.” And he rejects the idea of being segregated with “others like himself,” a suggestion Mr Lamb dismantles by asking, “What kind of a world would that be?”
What Derry responds to instead is Mr Lamb’s plain, ordinary acceptance: being spoken to as an equal, being asked real questions instead of being avoided, and being welcomed into the garden without any conditions attached to his appearance.
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?
Answer: The play leaves this open, but there is strong textual evidence for 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 use Mr Lamb’s nickname with warmth rather than mockery: “I came back. Lamey-Lamb. I did…..come back.”
At the same time, a case can be made for regression: Derry’s whole worldview before this meeting rested on the certainty that connection only leads to disappointment, and finding Mr Lamb fallen and silent at the exact moment he chose to trust someone could just as easily confirm that old fear. The play’s open ending does not decide this for the reader; both outcomes are genuinely supported by everything that has come before, and a good answer should acknowledge both possibilities rather than picking only one.
The book’s own prompt (not a scored exercise question): “using your imagination to suggest another ending to the above story.”
A sample alternative ending: Derry kneels beside Mr Lamb and hears him groan, alive but injured. Derry runs three miles home without stopping to fetch help, and returns with his mother and a doctor. Mr Lamb recovers slowly through the autumn, with Derry visiting every day after school, no longer climbing over the wall but walking straight through the gate that was, as promised, always open. When you write your own version, keep it consistent with the characters as the play draws them: Mr Lamb’s calm acceptance of whatever happens to him, and Derry’s decision, already visible by the play’s end, to stop hiding from the world.
- Questions 1, 3 and 4 circle one idea: what does Derry actually need from people, and does he get it from Mr Lamb? Question 2 asks about Mr Lamb’s own loneliness and how he copes with it.
- Anchor your answer in one of three angles: Mr Lamb’s philosophy (“Watching. Listening. Thinking.”), the weed-garden argument (labels do not change what a thing is), or the parable of the fearful man (hiding does not protect you)
- For Q.4, present both possibilities (change vs. regression) rather than choosing only one; the play leaves the outcome open