Notes created by an A-level English Literature private tutor + A* student.
All topic notes for On Her Blindness (poems of the decade)
Edexcel English Literature A-level
Key context
Intertextual link ‘on his blindness’ - original poe the speaker was the poem
It is written as an elegy - celebration of life
Structure
Enjambment, re ects the mothers dependance on the speaker.
Past tense- nostalgic grieving
Caesura breaks the pace imitates the sound of crying/gasping- the detached ow as if
recounting a far away memory.
Stanzas are all two lines except from the last stanza which consists of a single line
No rhyme scheme mimics a eulogy, raw- lack of end-stopped lines more personal, alludes
to a constant ow of memories.
Key ideas
Structured using the 5 stages of grief : denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance
1. ‘One shouldn’t say it
2. ‘Its living hell’
3. 'She’d visit exhibitions’
4. ‘She sat too weak to move, staring at nothing’
5. ‘She was watching, somewhere in the end’
This structure allows the reader to relate on a more personal level
Key quotes
‘Could not bear being blind’
Plosives in the opening line- shows the reader the strong emotional impact of both being
blind and these who bare witness the di culties of the su erer
Lexical choice of ‘bear’ is interesting because some may link it to ‘bare’ as it is a
homophone- connotations of vulnerability and the image of empty space.
First person anecdotal tone
‘Slow slide’
Sibilance in this description helps to emphasise the extremely horribly situation that the
mother is in, with additional audible emphasis placed on the the drawn out ‘slow’ by the
reader, further feeds into the idea of a long di cult decline, increasing a reader’s empathy
with the mother, particularly for readers with similar personal experience.
‘She was watching, somewhere in the end’
There is a strong visual emphasis on this line as it is isolated as the only one line stanza
and it is also the last line of the poem
Hopeful tone helps to end the poem on a more positive note which encourages the
interpretation as an elegy- strengthens the idea of happy times/ memories
‘Watching’ in this context is a particularly emotion evoking verb as this was something the
mother was not able to do when she was alive.
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