Casehistory: Alison (head injury)
Read the poem
Things you should know
• Autocratic = an autocrat is someone who is a
dictator and who rules by his own power. An
autocratic knee means that before her head
injury she could control her physical
movements
Things you should know
• A Degas dancer’s = Degas
was a 19th century French
painter whose paintings
of ballet dancers show
them as graceful and
slim. The allusion in the
poem suggests that
Alison was like one of
them before her head
injury
The subheading
The title and subheading
are vital for the reader to
understand what is
happening
(She looks at her photograph)
By looking at the
photograph we can see
that Alison’s memory
has been affected.
She can’t
remember the
person she used to
be
Stanza one
Alison is talking about herself. The use of the
third person makes it clear to us that she is
different to how she was
I would like to have known
My husband’s wife, my mother’s only
daughter.
A bright girl she was.
‘was’ in the last line sounds awkward. This
is so that we recognise that Alison is
struggling to remember the past and her
own identity.
Stanza Two
In the present, Alison is fat. In the
past, it is clear in this stanza that
she was dainty and that her joints
did what she wanted. The mention
of the autocratic knee suggests that
Alison is not in control of her body
Enmeshed in comforting
Fat, I wonder at her delicate angles.
Her autocratic knee
Stanza Three
Simile to compare the way
she looks now to before
Like a Degas dancer’s
Adjusts to the observer with airy poise,
That now lugs me upstairs
Now that she has put on
weight, her knee struggles to
get her upstairs
Stanza four
The word hardly is delayed
with enjambment until this
stanza. This shows how her
injury has affected her
thought process too
Hardly. Her face, broken
By nothing sharper than smiles, holds in its
smiles
What I have forgotten.
Alison has forgotten why she
is smiling and has forgotten
everything else too.
Stanza five
Alison talks about her father’s
death. It seems to have happened
before her own injury because she
detects in the smile in the
photograph a sense that she had
‘digested mourning’, or got used to
the sadness she felt
She knows my father’s dead,
And grieves for it, and smiles. She has digested
Mourning. Her smile shows it.
metaphor
Stanza six
The speaker needs reminding every
morning who she is and what has
happened to her
I, who need reminding
Every morning, shall never get over what
I do not remember.
She will never get over – or be
healed from her accident –
which she can’t remember
Stanza seven
This could suggest that she has to
live a heavily structured life now
because she can no longer think for
herself
Consistency matters.
I should like to keep faith with her lack of faith,
But forget her reasons.
Alison says she would like to have faith
with her younger self’s lack of faith but
can’t say why because she can’t
remember what she lacked faith in
when she was younger
Faith is a word we associate
with religion. This seems to
suggest that Alison’s younger
self did not believe in God.
This is appropriate as this kind
of injury is what forces us to
question our belief in God.
Stanza Eight
The speaker is clearly aware of her
former talent as she discusses her
achievements before the accident
and that she had a future to look
forward to.
Proud of this younger self,
I assert her achievements, her A levels,
Her job with a future.
The future Alison looked forward to
Stanza Nine
This stanza is ironic because the one
thing the speaker does know is that her
former self will have to live with a head
injury.
Poor clever girl! I know,
For all my damaged brain, something she
doesn’t:
I am her future.
The future she now has
She will remain trapped like this forever.
Stanza Ten
The last line stands isolated at the end
of the poem like Alison is isolated from
life by her brain damage
A bright girl she was.
Things to note
• The three line stanzas mimic the stuttered speech and
thoughts of Alison now
• Her mental dysfunction is shown through the way she
refers to her former self in the third person – using
‘she’ and ‘her’
• The different tenses also confuse matters
• The title makes it sound like the poem is her medical
record
• The dramatic monologue is written in free verse
• The title is ironic seen as Alison cannot remember
anything about her past
The poem
•
•
•
•
Gives a voice to someone with brain damage
Explores the problems of memory
Compare the past to the present
Draws out attention to something we might
otherwise ignore