On the Face of It Class 12 Notes: Scene-wise Summary, Characters and Themes

These On the Face of It Class 12 notes follow the 2026-27 session and cover Susan Hill’s play in three scenes from the Vistas textbook. The play brings together Derry, a fourteen-year-old boy whose face was burned by acid, and Mr Lamb, an old man with a tin leg, who meet in Mr Lamb’s garden.

Beneath the conversation runs one plain subject: people are judged by their surface, even though the surface is never the whole person.

The page gives you a scene-wise summary, an evidence-based comparison of Derry and Mr Lamb, the play’s themes and literary devices with exact lines, model answers for the textbook’s ‘Reading with Insight’ questions (and the creative alternative-ending activity), common reading mistakes, and a one-page revision recap.

Use it in two passes: the walkthrough and theme sections for a full revision, then the recap and memory devices the night before the test.

If you are preparing the whole book, this chapter pairs well with The Enemy, also about prejudice and human connection; all the book’s chapters are collected in the Class 12 English notes hub, and the complete Class 12 revision notes cover every subject.

The Play in Brief: People, Place and Conflict

On The Face Of It is a drama in three scenes. Scene One takes place in Mr Lamb’s garden (pp. 48–58), Scene Two in Derry’s house (pp. 58–59), and Scene Three back in the garden (pp. 59–60).

The central conflict is an argument about how much your face decides your life. Derry believes the burned half of his face fixes everything — “I won’t change” — while Mr Lamb insists the world is open to anyone who chooses to look at it.

The outcome is deliberately mixed: Derry does choose to return to the garden, but he arrives to find Mr Lamb dead after falling from his ladder.

Scene-by-Scene Walkthrough: What Actually Happens

Scene One: The Garden Meeting (pp. 48–58)

Derry climbs over the garden wall into a place he thought was empty, and Mr Lamb’s first words are a warning about crab apples lying in the grass. What follows is an afternoon of talk in which neither character behaves as the world expects. The beats, in order:

• The garden is never empty while Mr Lamb is in it; the gate is always open, and Derry is welcomed as “anybody”.
• Derry is angry that Mr Lamb refuses to ask about his face, then blurts out the truth himself: acid ate half his face and it will never change.
• Mr Lamb names his matching wound — a tin leg, “blown off” in the war — and the two sit level: old and young, two marked bodies.
• The weeds-versus-flowers talk: a weed is only a plant someone has labelled, and “It’s all life… growing”, like the two of them.
• Derry repeats the bus-stop whisper: “That’s a face only a mother could love.” Mr Lamb’s answer — “So you believe everything you hear, then?” — shakes a belief Derry had treated as fact.
• The fable of the man who locked himself in his room and was killed by a falling picture makes Derry laugh, a first small healing.
• Mr Lamb warns that hate burns worse than acid: “You can burn yourself away inside.”
• Derry runs home but promises, “I’ll come back.” Left alone, Mr Lamb’s aside undercuts the hope: “They never do come back.”

Scene Two: The House and the Mother (pp. 58–59)

• The mother forbids Derry to return; she has been told and warned about Mr Lamb.
• Derry defends the old man and the garden — the house without curtains, bees singing, a man who says things that matter.
• His key turn comes in his own words: going back is not about the face but about “what I think and feel”.
• He speaks his most important line: “if I don’t go back there, I’ll never go anywhere in this world again.”
• The door slams and Derry runs, thinking only of the world he now wants.

Scene Three: The Return (pp. 59–60)

• Garden sounds open the scene: a branch shifting, apples thumping down.
• A creak, a crash — the ladder falls back with Mr Lamb on it; then silence.
• Derry arrives through the open gate, panting and triumphant — “You see, you see! I came back” — before he stops dead.
• He finds Mr Lamb dead on the grass, kneels and weeps.
• His last words — “I came back. Lamey-Lamb. I did… come back” — prove his promise to the one person no longer able to see it.

The irony closes the play: the boy kept his word at the exact moment the man who doubted him died.

Derry and Mr Lamb: Two Characters, Two Wounds

Derry is fourteen, with half his face burned away by acid. He is bitter and defiant, avoids people, and repeats the cruelty he has heard — “That’s a face only a mother could love”. He hates pity, including his mother’s careful kiss on the unburned side of his face. Change begins only when someone looks past the face without flinching.

Mr Lamb is an old man who lost his leg in the war. Children taunt him as “Lamey-Lamb”. He refuses curtains, keeps bees, reads, makes toffee and crab-apple jelly, and calls anyone who enters a friend. His only confession of disappointment is the closing aside, spoken to himself.

Derry’s mother is loving but smothering. Her pity — “I forgive you” — treats her son as a permanent victim, and the play sets that pity against Mr Lamb’s steady equality. She means well; the play shows that meaning well is not enough.

The shared wound matters: both are judged by what is visible, and both lose people because of it. The difference is that only Mr Lamb has stopped believing the judgment. That is what Derry gradually learns from him.

The Big Ideas: Judging the Surface, and the Cost of Pity

Why does the playwright place the optimistic voice in an old disabled man? Because Mr Lamb’s optimism is earned by experience — he has already lived through the stares and the taunts and come out the other side. His hope is not naive, and that is precisely why Derry can believe him.

How Susan Hill Builds the Play: Irony, Symbols and Contrast

Every device below is named with the exact line that proves it — a device with no quotation is worthless in an exam answer.

• Dramatic irony: Mr Lamb’s aside “They never do come back” (p. 58) comes immediately after Derry’s promise to return, so the audience knows he is wrong. Scene Three completes the irony.
• Symbolism: the open gate (welcome and choice); the garden (a small world “there to be looked at”); crab apples and weeds (labels versus living worth — “It’s all life… growing”); bare windows with no curtains (nothing shut out or shut in); the bees (attention and wonder — “hum means ‘sing'”); the tin leg and the burned face (two matched outer wounds).
• Metaphor: the inner burn is worse than the outer one — “You can burn yourself away inside” beside “Acid only burns your face”.
• Allusion: the Beauty and the Beast tale, which Derry rejects — “he’d have stayed a monstrous beast. I won’t change.”
• Fable within the play: the man who locked himself in his room and was killed by a falling picture. It makes Derry laugh and marks his first healing.
• Contrast: the open garden light against the curtained house of Scene Two; Mr Lamb’s humour against Derry’s bitterness; the mother’s pity against Mr Lamb’s equality.
• Foreshadowing: Derry’s own line — “If you fell and broke your neck, you could lie on the grass and die” — is realised when Mr Lamb falls from the ladder in Scene Three.

Quotes That Carry the Play

Answering the ‘Reading with Insight’ Questions

The Creative Question: ‘How about…’ Another Ending

The activity on p. 61 asks you to imagine another ending to the story. A good alternative ending must do three things: keep Derry’s own voice (his defiance and his raw honesty), keep a central symbol (the gate, the bees, the garden), and keep the theme of choice — that going back is a decision only Derry can make.

One possible ending, as a model you can improve on: Derry arrives too late and weeps by the body, but then, instead of running home, he stays. He walks to the hive, sits in the garden as the evening comes, and when neighbours arrive at last he says only, “The gate stays open.”

This keeps the promises of the play — the boy chose the world, and the garden’s door remains open for anyone else who needs it.

Mistakes Students Make on This Play

Writing Strong Answers on This Play

How to write a character answer

Open with a one-line characterisation, then give evidence — what the character says or does, with the scene named — then close with the character’s function in the theme. A model paragraph for Derry:

Derry is a fourteen-year-old boy whose acid-burned face has turned him bitter and withdrawn. When he meets Mr Lamb in Scene One, he expects the usual stare and pity, and instead receives honest questions and an open gate.

His slow change — from “I won’t change” to “I want the world” — shows that a person can be reached when someone looks past the surface, and his return in Scene Three proves the lesson took hold.

How to write a theme answer

• Define the theme in the first sentence — e.g. “The play argues that the real wound of a visible difference is social alienation, not the difference itself.”
• Support it with two moments from the play: the bus-stop whisper and Mr Lamb’s “It’s all life… growing”.
• Close with how the playwright presents it — a device such as dramatic irony or symbolism.

How to use quotes

A short line, who says it, and what it reveals — three parts, no more. One line from the quote bank above plus your own explanation forms a complete short answer.

How to handle the creative ending

Keep the character’s voice and one symbol, and let the ending grow from a moment the play already gives you. Never invent a new character or a new setting; the test is whether the ending sounds like Susan Hill’s Derry.

General habits

• Name the scene in every answer — “in the garden, Scene One”.
• Quote only fragments, never whole speeches.
• Use the play’s own vocabulary: the open gate, weeds and flowers, “the world’s got a whole face”.
• Never retell the whole play for a one-character question.

One-Page Revision Recap

Character one-liners: Derry — the boy who learns to want the world; Mr Lamb — the old man who kept the gate open and the doubt to himself; Derry’s mother — pity that locks a door.

Symbol quick list: gate (welcome and choice) · garden (a world to look at) · weeds (labels versus life) · bees (wonder) · bare windows (nothing shut in) · ladder (the fall that seals the irony).

Themes in one line each: appearance versus reality — the face is not the person; alienation — the stare hurts more than the wound; connection — the open gate; optimism against pessimism — “It’s all relative” vs “I won’t change”; change — a closed boy opens to the world.

The play’s message in one sentence: look past the face — the world has a whole face, and it is there to be looked at.

The irony to remember: Derry returns just as Mr Lamb, who doubted he would, dies.

Memory devices: the three scenes as meet, mistrust and mourning, and the theme mnemonic OPEN — Optimism, Pity wounds, Empathy heals, Never shut yourself in.

Reference: NCERT Class 12 English (Vistas) textbook, chapter On The Face Of It.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the meaning of the title ‘On the Face of It’?

The title works two ways. It means “at first glance” — the surface judgment of Derry’s face. It also plays on the literal face itself: Derry’s face is the thing everyone reads and misreads. The whole play argues that the meaning carried “on the face of it” is almost never the whole truth.

What draws Derry to Mr Lamb even though he avoids people?

Mr Lamb does not stare, does not pity, and does not pretend the burn is invisible. He hears the truth about the acid, shrugs, and moves on to crab apples and bees. He makes Derry laugh, leaves the gate open, and treats him as an ordinary person — which is exactly the treatment Derry has never had.

Why does the play use an old man with a tin leg and a boy with a burned face?

So that both sides of the conversation carry a visible wound. If only one character were marked, the play would be a lesson about pity; with both marked, it becomes a dialogue between equals. Mr Lamb’s contentment with his tin leg also proves the play’s argument that the wound is not the problem — the world’s reaction is.

What does the open gate symbolise in the play?

The open gate stands for welcome and for choice. Mr Lamb says “All welcome” and the gate makes that literal. For Derry it is an invitation he must decide to accept — nobody pushes him through. The gate is the play’s answer to the closed doors created by stares and pity.

Is the ending of ‘On the Face of It’ hopeful or tragic?

It is both at once. The tragedy is Mr Lamb’s death, alone in the garden at the moment his doubt is proven wrong. The hope is that Derry has already changed: he defied his mother, declared “I want the world”, and kept his promise.

The change happened before the fall, so it is not destroyed by the death — but the play stops before we see what becomes of it.

How are Derry and Mr Lamb’s disabilities different from their real problems?

Derry’s burn is his disability; his real problem is the stares, the whisper, and the pity that taught him to fear himself. Mr Lamb’s tin leg is his disability; his real problem is the loneliness of people who never come back.

In both cases the outer wound is permanent but bearable, while the inner wound — alienation — is the one that can destroy.

Official source: download the NCERT textbook free from ncert.nic.in.