Casehistory: Alison (head injury) Flashcards
Subject of Casehistory: Alison (head injury) by UA Fanthorpe
The poem is about Alison, a woman who has suffered brain damage after an accident.
Her memory has been badly affected. Alison looks at a photograph of her younger self and talks about the person in it as if she were someone else.
Although her memory has been affected, her vocabulary and understanding are still impressive.
However, the narrator is far removed from the woman in the photograph taken before the accident.
The Alison of today has one advantage over the Alison of the past: today’s brain-damaged woman knows what lies ahead for the woman in the photograph.
Form and structure of Casehistory: Alison (head injury) by UA Fanthorpe
Form:
This poem is a dramatic monologue; the poet chooses a character, Alison, to be the narrator. Alison has suffered brain damage after an accident.
Structure:
The poem is set out as nine, three-line stanza and closes with a single line.
The middle line of each stanza is always noticeably longer than the other two.
Sound of Casehistory: Alison (head injury) by UA Fanthorpe
Although at first the poem might sound like a conversation, it becomes clear that Alison is talking to herself.
There are a lot of short sentences that show how Alison is taking her time, either because she chooses to or because of her condition.
This poem lends itself to a slow reading with plenty of pauses.
Imagery of Casehistory: Alison (head injury) by UA Fanthorpe
There are several examples of juxtaposition in this poem.
Some examples of juxtaposition in the poem include:
enmeshed in comforting fat… delicate angles
airy poise… lugs me upstairs
Her face, broken… smiles
clever girl… damaged brain
The poet wants to show the contrast between the two Alisons of past and present and make clear how the injury has affected her life.
There are also lots of words used to reflect loss - loss of family members (“my father’s dead”), loss of memory (“I do not remember”) and loss of happiness or quality of life (“shall never get over”).
Attitudes, themes and ideas of Casehistory: Alison (head injury) by UA Fanthorpe
Attitudes:
The reader has to separate the poet’s attitude from the attitude(s) of Alison.
Fanthorpe was motivated to write these poems because she felt that the patients were more than a set of doctor’s notes or a “casehistory”.
They each had a story to tell, even if neither Fanthorpe or the patient could fully describe that story.
The present Alison has a mixture of attitudes.
She is fond of the past Alison and admires her, “I would like to have known… A bright girl she was”. But she also feels sorry for her, “Poor clever girl! I know,/For all my damaged brain, something she doesn’t:/I am her future”.
The present Alison is also - understandably - bitter and confused about what she has become, “I, who need reminding/Every morning, shall never get over what/I do not remember”.
Themes:
Loss: the present Alison has lost her ability to function properly both physically (“fat… lugs me upstairs”) and mentally.
And she has lost her father, who has died. Alison has also lost her future and all the good things that could have been.
Life is fragile: the past Alison seemed to have everything going for her.
She certainly had intelligence (as she shows even in her present state) and was also physically agile (“Her autocratic knee/Like a Degas dancer’s/Adjusts to the observer with airy poise”).
Her accident could have happened to anybody.
We should not judge people on what they appear to be: the doctors will have produced a case history about Alison that only partially describes who she actually is. She was once very different in all sorts of ways.
Ideas:
People should not judge others merely on their situation. Society might even abandon some people for this reason. People often have far more to offer than we might realise.
Plus, there is something universal (affecting everyone) suggested in this poem (even though Alison’s situation is extreme): one day we will all look back on an earlier photograph of ourselves and realise that we were a very different person then… though hopefully not because of traumatic circumstances like those that affected Alison.
Example comparisons to Casehistory: Alison (head injury) by UA Fanthorpe
The Hunchback in the Park:
- Both poems deal with figures who are isolated in some way (though for very different reasons).
- Disability is a central theme in both poems.
- Both poems warn against judging on appearances: Alison is not merely a set of notes (a “casehistory”); the negative, impersonal term “hunchback” reflects how the main character is judged and known only by his appearance.
- Both central characters’ lives are empty, although for different reasons.
- Readers will almost certainly feel sympathy for both characters.
On a Portrait of a Deaf Man:
- Both poems deal with a before-and-after scenario: the present Alison is in some ways an entirely different character from the pre-accident person; as we get to know and like Betjeman’s living father, we’re exposed to more graphic imagery of his death. Betjeman views the past and present versions of his father in very different ways.
- Readers will perhaps experience sympathy in both poems: one might feel sorry for the post-accident Alison, who has suffered brain damage; they might also sympathise with Betjeman for the loss of his father.
- Both poems deal with the theme of death in one way or another: Betjeman’s father has died (as has his faith in God, if he had any); Alison is still alive, but the Alison of the past is dead.
How does the poet reveal that the present Alison is a different character to the past Alison?
I would like to have known
My husband’s wife, my mother’s only daughter
This is a strange and confusing opening for the reader - surely the speaker must be the person she refers to?
How, then, can she not know herself?
The poet immediately and cleverly sets up a divide between the ‘past Alison’ (before her accident) and the ‘present Alison’ (the post-accident person).
The truth is that the present Alison doesn’t know the past one because the injury has caused a severe loss of memory.
The past Alison is a stranger to her now, and she looks at a photograph of herself in this way.
Fanthorpe makes the two Alisons physically different too:
Enmeshed in comforting
Fat, I wonder at her delicate angles.
The poem suggests that it is not just age that has been responsible for the increase in Alison’s body size, but perhaps inactivity caused by the accident. She is also different in how she looks and what she is capable of.
Fanthorpe uses the technique of juxtaposition throughout the poem. Her autocratic knee Like a Degas dancer's Adjusts to the observer with airy poise, That now lugs me upstairs
The simplest but perhaps most effective way the poet separates the two characters is through the present Alison referring to her past self in a very detached way in line three and again in the final line on its own:
A bright girl she was.
Context of Casehistory: Alison (head injury) by UA Fanthorpe
It was around this time, in 1974, that Fanthorpe began writing poetry seriously.
She was responsible for keeping patients’ records and used some of the material from these as inspiration for her poems.
Fanthorpe became very interested in how hospitals could reduce people and their experiences to a few notes, known by doctors as ‘case histories’.
Although she started to write for publication quite late (her first volume Side Effects was published in 1978), Fanthorpe produced several more volumes up to her death at the age of 79.
