The Deliverer - Tishani Doshi

Overview

• addresses the horrifying reality of gender discrimination and female infanticide in India

• illustrates how the cultural devaluation of women's lives combined with extreme poverty can lead women to abandon babies deemed a burden by society: those with dark skin, a disability, or who are female.

• speaker's mother brings one such abandoned baby girl to the United States, where she's adopted by American parents

• poem ends by returning to India to describe the horrific reality of giving birth for women like the girl's biological mother, who have little freedom over their bodies and lives

• poem suggests that a society's treatment of women and other marginalized groups directly corresponds to its treatment of its most vulnerable population: children

Themes

• gender discrimination

• infanticide

• poverty

• motherhood

• adoption

• patriarchy

• control

• the body as a commodity

• society and culture

• transgression

• vulnerability

Form and Structure

• Two written subheadings: Kerala and an airport in the United States (which contrast each other).

  • reinforces the geographical and political divide between East and West to create contrasts

  • airports represent global connections, technology and a mix of cultures

  • arguably, a convent could be seen as a traditional location focused on an individual and hegemonic religion

  • also reinforces distance to show the distance travelled

• Simplicity in terms of sentence length emphasising the cyclical feeling of the poem, or demonstrating the tragically short life that many girls have due to the preference for males in this society.

• tercets

Rhyme and Meter

free verse = reflects a world where there is no room for comfort or melody, underscoring the tragic and chaotic cycle of abandonment the poem describes.

Title

• "deliverer" could be seen as either the woman who gave birth, the adoption agency, or another person altogether.

• This ongoing ambiguity would be very effective at making a reader feel complicit in events, making this poem highly effective and memorable.

• The Deliverer also has religious connotations and has allusions to religious scripture ' to deliver us from evil' and 'Christ the deliverer'

'The sister here is telling my mother how she came to collect children because they were crippled or dark or girls.'

• lack of figurative language = ensures that the imagery remains simple and realistic as it is not required due to the vivid images which would be evoked through the regular descriptions and factual imagery.

• list of three = emphasises the tragedy of the children who are burdened and unwanted.

• The final of the list being a girl emphasis the severity of being a girl in a culture that is male dominated.

• "the sister" and its anonymity illustrates how she is defined by her religion and her societal role, apart from her individual role as a women

• dysphemism "crippled" illustrates the luxury of kindness, with the provocative language illustrating the extent of brutality

'Found naked in the streets, covered in garbage, stuffed in bags, Abandoned at their doorsteps.'

• 'found', 'stuffed' and 'abandoned' remind the reader that the babies lack agency and self-determination and highlights their vulnerability and emphasizes the cruelty of the act.

• also juxtaposes the first stanza which has a domestic field of nurture with 'mother' 'collect', and 'children'.

• "naked" reinforces the pinnacle of their vulnerability

'One of them was dug up by a dog, thinking the head barely poking above the group was bone or wood, something to chew.'

• 'dug up' has negative connotations associated with being buried and being dead which could suggest that these undesirable children are already dead to their parents

• also quite striking that a dog a being without emotion find the child which helps to symbolise just how emotional defunct the parents are because of the pressures of the culture

• the power dynamics in terms of the animal being placed above humanity suggests the extent of the brutality of the treatment of children

• enforced through the use of the /d/ plosive and monosyllabic lexis: harsh, intensity and physically

• connotations of death, showing their lack of societal worth

• the use of the animal without emotional connection reinforces the emotional defunctness of the parents because of societal pressure

• semantics of dryness reiterates how these children are perceived as inanimate

'This is the one my mother will bring.'

• separated from the stanzas most likely highlighted the stark contrast between the speaker and her mother's relationship compared to the children she cares for and their parents

'Don't know of her fetish for plucking hair off hands, Or how her mother tried to bury her.'

• disturbing image of a child with a fetish shocks the reader and they understand how their abandonment leads them to have issues later in life

'We couldn't stop crying, my mother said, feeling the strangeness of her empty arms.'

• empty arms symbol for the lack of love and tenderness she has grown up without

'This girl grows up on video tapes, see how's she passed from women to women.'

• Sibilance = creates a sense of danger and has negative connotations.

• break of the repetition of "woman" also helps to encourage the view of the child as a commodity, but an unwelcome one, further making a reader feel sympathy

'To the day of her birth, how it happens in some desolate hut outside village boundaries where mothers go to squeeze out life, watch body slither out of body.'

• cyclical structure? as birth is a cycle that the speakers mother watches everyday

• This stanza is written in a quite monotonous tone and it is quite clinical which strips the emotion away from a usually life changing experience in our western society.

'Feel for penis or no penis, Toss the baby to the heap of others.'

• crude and graphic image of 'penis' emphasises the preference for boys and how the male empennage symbolises this wealth and power within this society

• The term 'toss' emphasises the lack of care for the children born with 'no penis'.

'Trudge home to lie down for their men again.'

• use of 'trudge' suggest the unwillingness and despondence of the women

• "again" = emphasises the negative tone and alludes to this society being trapped in a repeated cycle of these acts, perhaps encouraging a reader to form an opinion and take action

• the line is alone emphasis the importance of the message Doshi is trying to represent

End Stop Line

• initial consistency of end-stopped lines at the end of each stanza = representing the continuing cycles of this dire situation with each birth and each new generation, with no completion or true end available

• show the certainty of the adoption, and the power the USA possess as a global superpower