MR. LAMB'S ATTITUDE: Mr. Lamb is radically open to life in all its forms. He welcomes weeds in his garden ('they grow and are green'), leaves his gate open, keeps no curtains, reads books, listens to bees, and makes crab apple jelly. He refuses to pity himself for his tin leg or to see his physical limitation as defining. His philosophy: 'It's what you think that counts, what's inside you.' He engages with the world without fear or resentment. DERRY'S ATTITUDE AT THE START: Derry is the opposite — closed, bitter, and convinced that the world sees only his burned face. He expects to be stared at, pitied, or avoided. He is angry at people who pity him and angry at people who recoil from him. He has withdrawn from the world, convinced it has no place for him. THE CONTRAST: Lamb has been marked by loss (his leg) and responded by opening further; Derry has been marked (his face) and responded by closing completely. The play is about Lamb's openness gradually drawing Derry out of his closure.

THE ENDING: Derry leaves Mr. Lamb's garden after their encounter, goes home, and faces his mother's objections. Despite her protests, he insists: 'I am going back to him.' He runs back to Lamb's garden — transformed, ready to engage with life. When he arrives, Mr. Lamb has fallen from the ladder while picking crab apples alone. He is dead. DRAMATIC IRONY: The irony operates on two levels. (1) SITUATIONAL IRONY: Derry reaches the highest point of his transformation — ready to return, ready to live — at the exact moment Lamb is gone. The man who enabled the transformation does not get to see it. (2) TRAGIC IRONY: Lamb's death is caused by his very habits (climbing ladders, doing things alone, not waiting for help) — the same independence and openness that made him such an effective teacher for Derry. WHAT THE ENDING SAYS ABOUT TRANSFORMATION: The ending is not simply tragic — it argues that transformation, once real, survives the loss of its catalyst. Derry says 'I'm not afraid' in the final scene. He weeps, but he does not retreat. Mr. Lamb's gift — the capacity to see himself and the world without fear — has taken root. The lesson did not die with the teacher. This is the play's most hopeful and most mature argument: that genuine human connection creates change that outlasts the connection itself.

THE PLAY'S SUBJECT — DISABILITY AS SOCIAL CONDITION: 'On the Face of It' treats disability not primarily as a medical fact but as a SOCIAL EXPERIENCE. Derry's burned face is not the source of his suffering — the world's response to it is. People stare, or deliberately look away. His own mother cannot bear to kiss him. A woman whispers 'that poor boy' — and her pity feels as dehumanising as rejection. Derry has internalised all of this: he believes he is permanently marked, permanently excluded, permanently defined by his face. His disfigurement is not the prison; the world's prejudice is. TWO RESPONSES TO PHYSICAL LOSS: Mr. Lamb and Derry both have visible physical differences — Lamb has a tin leg, Derry a burned face. But their responses are diametrically opposed, and the play uses this contrast as its central argument. LAMB'S RESPONSE: Lamb has made a complete peace with his tin leg. He does not deny it or hide it; he does not explain it or ask for sympathy. He moves on — literally and figuratively. His garden is full of weeds he refuses to pull ('weeds have their place, just like everything else'), his gate is permanently open, his windows have no curtains. He is a man who has decided that being alive and engaged with the world is the proper response to imperfection. His philosophy: 'It's what you think that counts, what's inside you.' This is not false cheerfulness; it is a hard-won wisdom. DERRY'S RESPONSE: Derry has made NO peace. He has withdrawn, pre-rejected the world before it can reject him, and constructed a story in which his burned face means permanent exclusion. His bitterness is understandable — the world has given him ample evidence for it. But the story he has told himself is also a prison. THE ENCOUNTER — HOW LAMB DRAWS DERRY OUT: What Lamb does for Derry is very specific: he does NOT pity him, NOT comfort him with platitudes, NOT pretend the face doesn't exist. He speaks to Derry the way he would speak to anyone — directly, curiously, without lowering his voice or adjusting his manner. 'There's nothing wrong with your face. It is a face. Just a face.' This is radical: in a world where everyone either recoils or over-compensates, Lamb simply SEES Derry. It is this being-seen — not any advice or lesson — that begins to unlock Derry. THE ROLE OF DERRY'S MOTHER: The play also uses Derry's mother to show the LIMITS OF WELL-MEANING PROTECTIVENESS. She loves Derry and tries to keep him safe. But her overprotection and her anxiety about 'funny old men' are another form of not-seeing: she sees Derry as fragile, as someone who must be shielded from the world. Lamb, by contrast, sees him as capable — of conversation, of growth, of making his own choices. The mother's love, however genuine, cannot do what Lamb's respect does. THE DRAMATIC IRONY AND WHAT IT MEANS: Derry decides to return — to embrace Lamb's openness, to stop using his face as a reason to hide. When he arrives, Lamb is dead. The world seems to confirm the bleakest reading: connection is brief, people leave, hope is punished. But Susan Hill refuses this conclusion. Derry does not retreat. He says, in the final line, 'I am not afraid' — and he weeps, but he stays. The transformation Lamb gave him was real, and it survives Lamb's death. THE PLAY'S ARGUMENT: 'On the Face of It' argues that the problem of disability is not in the body but in the imagination — both the disabled person's imagination of exclusion, and the world's imagination of what disability means. Mr. Lamb's lasting gift to Derry is not advice but a different imaginative possibility: that a man with a tin leg can have the most alive and open relationship with the world in the room. Once Derry has seen that possibility, he cannot unsee it.