The Deliverer

Question 1

What are the themes in this poem?

Answer 1

Misogyny, neglect/expolitation, identity, dehumanisation, family/relationship, gendercide

Question 2

The Deliverer

Answer 2

1. deliverer to new family 2. birth mother - impersonal / lack of intimacy between mother and daughter
   Or religious imagery - deliverance = saved from sin

Question 3

‘the sister here’

Answer 3

ambiguous use of pronouns - vague lang to perhaps emphasise the sense of detachment - also emphatic of her being one girl among many

Question 4

‘crippled or dark or girls’

Answer 4

tricolon - emphatic of inferiority to society - discrimination

Question 5

‘found’ ‘covered in garbage, stuffed in bags, abandoned at their doorstep’

Answer 5

semantic field of abandonment /neglect/ carelessness - reduced to waste - inhumane treatment

Question 6

‘dug up by a dog’

Answer 6

visceral imagery to dehumanise and emphasise horror of crimes and abhorred status - victims

Question 7

‘This is the one my mother will bring’

Answer 7

single line stanza - represents girls separation from mother - deliberately ambiguous / othered

Question 8

‘fetish’ ‘mother tried to bury her’

Answer 8

a sign of previous trauma / she is damaged
lack of emotive language - no need to embellish an already horrific/ visceral experience

Question 9

‘they are crying’ ‘We couldn’t stop crying’

Answer 9

1. her adoptive parents crying in joy and perhaps relief
2. birth mother is crying due to seperation - perhaps feel sympahetic

Question 10

‘woman/ to woman’

Answer 10

enjambment 1. as a baby, excitement, lots of people want to see her - celebatory
2. passed from birth mother to adoptive - feels she has no deep connection with her family

Question 11

‘twilight corners’

Answer 11

symbolic of transgressive gendercide which needs to be hidden/secretive

Question 12

‘outside village boundaries’

Answer 12

emphatic of her seperation/ isolation from society

Question 13

‘squeeze out’ ‘slither out’

Answer 13

sibiliance is harsh to portray a sense of fear - something natural becomes frightening

Question 14

‘penis or no penis’

Answer 14

parallel phrase - immediate check of gender - vague language emphatic of amorphous group of babies - lacking identity

Question 15

‘their men again’

Answer 15

single line stanze is emphatic of first mention of men - makes it poignant
throughout poem women are blamed for heinous crimes but there is a final suggestion that men are real cause/ problem
end stop - repetitive cycle