(Note that analyses can vary widely, hence these annotations must only be used in conjunction with your own analyses).
Annotations of On Her Blindness by Adam Thorpe
Summary of the poem:
Title: Play on intertextuality. Makes it sound like a subject line.
Tone: 1st POV, guilt, regret, narrative, bits of conversational. Dialogue plays a amor role
Summary: A son recounts his mother’s fight against her progressive blindness, how she remained strong despite evidently being bothered by it. He regrets not being a better support throughout her life and not being able to fully understand due to his lack of emotional aptitude, but he admires her mental fortitude all the same.
Structure: Stanzas in non-rhyming couplets, except the last line. Could signify the narrator’s relationship with his mum, and then loneliness after her death. Enjambment imitate gasping breath,
Themes: Family, guilt, regret, fight against illness
Devices used: Intertextuality ‘On His Blindness’ by John Milton, caesura, alliteration, repetition (to be honest, hell), simile, diction is self-depreciating, pun (compass), pathetic fallacy (autumn, sending off in colour), stages of grief, irony.
Links to other poems: All the familial and guilt-driven poems basically. A Minor Role.
A Levels Revision 