Casehistory: Alison (head injury)

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Casehistory Alison (head injury)

• U.A.Fanthorpe

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Learning Objectives

• AO1 respond to texts critically and
  imaginatively, select and evaluate textual detail
  to illustrate and support interpretations.
• AO2 explain how language, structure and form
  contribute to writers presentation of ideas,
  themes and settings.

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Casehistory Alison (head injury)

• (She looks at her photograph)
• I would like to have known
• My husbands wife, my mothers only daughter.
• A bright girl she was.
• Enmeshed in comforting
• Fat, I wonder at her delicate angles.
• Her autocratic knee
• Like a Degas dancers
• Adjusts to the observer with airy poise,
• That now lugs me upstairs
• Hardly. Her face, broken
• By nothing sharper than smiles, holds in its
  smiles
• What I have forgotten.

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• She knows my fathers dead,
• And grieves for it, and smiles. She has digested
• Mourning. Her smile shows it.
• I, who need reminding
• Every morning, shall never get over what
• I do not remember.
• Consistency matters
• I should like to keep faith with her lack of
  faith,
• But forget her reasons.
• Proud of this younger self,
• I assert her achievements, her A levels,
• Her job with a future.
• Poor clever girl! I know,

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?
Imagine looking from an older age at a photograph
of your younger self. What things might you
comment on?
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Casehistory Alison (head injury)

• (She looks at her photograph)
• I would like to have known
• My husbands wife, my mothers only daughter.
• A bright girl she was.

Who is she looking at?
Who is this person?
What does was suggest?
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What is the effect of using enjambment?

• Enmeshed in comforting
• Fat, I wonder at her delicate angles.
• Her autocratic knee

What do we learn about Alison before and after
her accident?
Domineering, high and mighty
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French artist famous for painting ballet dancers.

• Like a Degas dancers
• Adjusts to the observer with airy poise,
• That now lugs me upstairs

Contrast between before and after the accident.
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• Hardly. Her face, broken
• By nothing sharper than smiles, holds in its
  smiles
• What I have forgotten.

Why is smiles repeated?
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The two identities are shown by the use of two
different pronouns.
Caesura break in line made by punctuation.

• She knows my fathers dead,
• And grieves for it, and smiles. She has digested
• Mourning. Her smile shows it.

Why is the poet emphasising the smiling?
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Why does she need reminding?

• I, who need reminding
• Every morning, shall never get over what
• I do not remember.

What emotion is portrayed here?
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What is the effect of the short sentence?

• Consistency matters.
• I should like to keep faith with her lack of
  faith,
• But forget her reasons.

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• Proud of this younger self,
• I assert her achievements, her A levels,
• Her job with a future.

Refer to stanza 1 how is the girl described?
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Why does Alison feel pity for the girl in the
photograph?

• Poor clever girl! I know,
• For all my damaged brain, something she doesnt
• I am her future.
• A bright girl she was.