On the Face of It

Susan Hill's short play centres on two characters, each marked by a physical difference that has left them isolated. Mr Lamb is an elderly man whose face is severely burned and disfigured, and who has also lost a leg, using an artificial one. He lives alone, and his neighbours largely avoid him, regarding him as strange — some children even call him names and throw stones over his garden wall.

Derry's intrusion

A boy named Derry, whose face and one arm were badly burned and disfigured in an accident with acid, wanders into Mr Lamb's garden, expecting to be treated the way he usually is by others — with stares, pity, or cruelty. Instead, Mr Lamb treats him with complete ordinariness, talking to him as he would to any visitor, showing him his garden and his bees, and refusing to dwell on Derry's disfigurement as anything remarkable.

Derry, who has grown deeply self-conscious and withdrawn — hiding at home, avoiding people, convinced that his appearance makes him repulsive — is initially defensive and even hostile, testing whether Mr Lamb, too, will eventually flinch or pity him the way everyone else does.

The old man's philosophy

Mr Lamb has developed, through his own long isolation, a distinctive and hard-won outlook: he refuses to let his own disfigurement define or confine him, insisting on living fully — tending his garden, keeping his door and gate open, engaging with the world rather than hiding from it. He tells Derry that doors and walls are things people build in their minds as much as in the world, and that Derry does not have to accept the isolation others' reactions seem to demand of him.

Over the course of their conversation, Mr Lamb gently but persistently challenges Derry's self-pity and his assumption that his scars must define his entire life and identity. He encourages Derry to see himself as capable of joy, curiosity, and connection despite his appearance.

Derry's departure and Mr Lamb's fate

Derry leaves, visibly changed by the encounter, more open and less defensive than when he arrived, and promises to return. However, when he does return, he learns that Mr Lamb has died — he had climbed a tree to rescue a cat or retrieve something and fallen. The play ends with this loss, leaving Derry (and the audience) to carry forward what Mr Lamb taught him, even though the teacher himself is now gone.

Mr Lamb

Mr Lamb represents a person who has, through years of deliberate effort, achieved a genuine, hard-won acceptance of his own difference. He does not pretend his disfigurement is unnoticed or unimportant to others — he is well aware of how the neighbourhood children and adults treat him — but he has chosen not to let their reactions dictate how he lives. His open gate, his garden, his bees, and his willingness to talk to Derry as an equal all reflect this deliberate, ongoing choice to engage with life rather than withdraw from it.

His wisdom is not presented as effortless serenity; it reads instead as the product of real struggle, which is part of why his advice to Derry carries weight rather than sounding like empty comfort.

Derry

Derry begins the play deeply defensive, having internalised the cruelty and pity he has repeatedly experienced from others into a belief that his disfigurement makes him fundamentally unacceptable and that isolation is simply the correct, inevitable response to his condition. His hostility towards Mr Lamb at first is a kind of test — expecting the old man to eventually react the way everyone else does.

His gradual openness over the course of their conversation, and his promise to return, mark real change, but the play is careful not to present this transformation as complete or guaranteed — it is the beginning of a shift in how Derry might see himself, not a finished resolution.

The neighbours and children (offstage)

Though they never appear directly, the neighbours and children who mock and avoid both Mr Lamb and (implicitly) people like Derry represent the ordinary social cruelty and discomfort around visible difference that both characters must contend with, giving the play's central relationship its urgency and stakes.

Isolation as partly self-imposed

The play's central idea, voiced through Mr Lamb, is that isolation is not simply forced upon people with visible differences by others' reactions — it is also, at least partly, a wall built in the mind, one that a person can choose, with real effort, to refuse. This is a delicate argument: the play does not deny that others' cruelty is real and painful, but it insists that a person's response to that cruelty is not fully determined by it.

The courage of ordinariness

Mr Lamb's method of helping Derry is notable for what it is not — he does not offer excessive sympathy, inspirational speeches, or forced positivity. He simply treats Derry as an ordinary visitor, talking about bees and the garden, refusing to make the disfigurement the centre of their interaction. The play suggests this ordinariness is itself a profound and difficult kindness, harder to offer than either pity or avoidance.

Mentorship and legacy

Mr Lamb's death at the play's end, just as Derry has begun to change, raises the question of whether his influence will endure without him physically present to reinforce it. The play seems to suggest that genuine change, once begun, can outlast the person who sparked it — Derry has been given something (a way of seeing himself and the world) that does not depend on Mr Lamb's continued presence to remain valid.

Physical difference and social cruelty

The play is unflinching about the reality of how society treats visible physical difference — name-calling, stone-throwing, avoidance — and does not pretend this cruelty is minor or easily dismissed. Its optimism about Mr Lamb's philosophy is set against this realistic backdrop, not offered as a naive alternative to it.

A two-hander, dialogue-driven structure

The play relies almost entirely on the extended conversation between Mr Lamb and Derry, with minimal action or spectacle. This form suits the play's subject: the transformation it depicts happens through talk, through one character gradually earning another's trust and challenging his assumptions, rather than through any dramatic external event (aside from the final, offstage death).

Symbolism of doors, walls, and the open gate

Mr Lamb's insistence on keeping his gate open, and his recurring language about doors and walls being built 'in the mind' as much as physically, function as the play's central controlling symbol. Derry's own withdrawal — hiding at home, avoiding people — is presented as his own version of a closed door, which Mr Lamb's example and words gradually work to open.

Naturalistic dialogue with philosophical weight

The dialogue reads as ordinary, unforced conversation — about bees, the garden, everyday things — while carrying genuine philosophical weight beneath its surface. This technique lets the play's ideas about acceptance and isolation emerge organically rather than through direct, didactic speeches.

An ending that withholds easy comfort

Rather than ending on Derry's transformation as an unambiguous triumph, the play immediately follows it with Mr Lamb's death, denying the audience a fully comfortable resolution. This structural choice keeps the play's optimism honest — change is real and worth having, but the world (and mortality) remains genuinely uncertain and sometimes cruel.

The title

'On the Face of It' plays on a double meaning — both characters' literal, disfigured faces, and the idiom meaning 'at first glance,' referencing how easily people judge based on surface appearance without looking deeper.

The questions that recur

• Mr Lamb's philosophy — doors and walls 'in the mind.'
• How Mr Lamb helps Derry — his method of ordinariness.
• Derry's initial attitude and why he is defensive.
• The significance of the ending — Mr Lamb's death.
• The play's central message about isolation and acceptance.

On Mr Lamb's philosophy

Name the specific idea precisely: Mr Lamb believes that doors and walls are built as much in the mind as in the world, and that isolation, while partly a response to real cruelty from others, is also something a person can choose not to accept fully. Vague answers ('he taught Derry to be positive') miss the specific, considered nature of his argument.

On the ending

A strong answer addresses both halves: Derry's genuine transformation and openness by the end of their conversation, and the immediate loss of Mr Lamb through his death, which complicates rather than cancels that transformation. State that the play suggests change can outlast the person who sparked it, rather than treating the ending as simply sad or simply hopeful.

Details worth memorising

Mr Lamb's disfigured face and artificial leg; Derry's acid-burned face and arm; the bees and garden; the open gate; the cause of Mr Lamb's death (a fall while rescuing something from a tree).

Mistakes that cost marks

• Presenting Mr Lamb's help as simple encouragement rather than his specific method of treating Derry with complete ordinariness.
• Ignoring the ambiguity of the ending by calling it purely tragic or purely uplifting.
• Missing the title's double meaning.