the deliverer Flashcards
Message
‘The Deliverer’ by Tishani Doshi starts at a convent in Kerala, India where abandoned children live (due to disability, skin colour or the fact they are girls). It is the speaker’s mother’s job to ‘deliver’ a baby to her adoptive family in America, who are waiting at Milwaukee USA. They raise her and she grows into a woman but there is sadness in the poem from the speaker’s mother who had to leave the baby behind.
Title
The title could have two different meanings as to who is the deliverer…
The person who biologically delivers the baby
The person who delivers the abandoned babies to new homes
Structure
Change in structure - tercets change to 2 line stanzas - The change in structure is very significant because it allows us to get rather explicit opinions about adoption from the developing world.
Tercets
Tercets - contrasts and symbolise the broken livesIn the second stanza, there are words such as ‘abandoned’, ‘covered’ and ‘stuffed’ which are all part of the semantic field of hiding things
Language techniques - Sympathy
In the third stanza, the narrator states “one of them was dug up by the dog” which provokes sympathy for the girls from the reader
Structure
The regular structure destructs in the last few stanzas, implying optimism for the girl
Form
The form enables the poet to explore this situation from different perspectives. It perhaps also suggests - in its shifts of time and place - both the invisible global connections which link West and East, the developed and developing world, and the fracturing of family relationships
Language Techniques
Shift in narrative shown by the * - allows the reader to become aware of how different people have different views.
abandoned at their doorstep’
The emotive use of “abandoned” would be very striking for a reader, particularly due to the word being physically noticeable due to its length, and the contrast to the existing semantic field of mothers and children up to this point. The use of “their” also helps to insert a gap from everyday life, but when coupled with a regular “doorstep” this makes the situation seem familiar but also distant
‘sees how she’s passed from woman// to woman’
Some readers may notice the use of sibilance at the beginning of this line with the repeated ‘s’ sounds, which creates a sense of danger and has negative connotations. This would be very effective for a reader because the poem so far has already been negative, so the potential for it to describe even more upsetting situations would be unwelcome. The 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.
‘trudge home to lie down for their men again’
“Trudge” has a range of negative connotations but most importantly it communicates a sense of unwillingness. The reference to “their men” encourages the view that there is a form of trade or commodity in people through the ‘value’ of their gender. By ending the poem on “again” it 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.
Our Lady of the Light Convent, Kerala
Place in India
‘How she came to collect children Because they were crippled or dark or girls’
Matter of fact. Pale skin valued, Parents normally want boys > strong, dowry
‘Found naked in the streets, Covered in garbage, stuffed in bags’
No pronoun, Vulnerable, all ways parents have tried to abandon babies. Enjambment emphasises Suffix also
‘One of them was dug up by a dog’
Just another ‘One of them’, Human life is cheap and meaningless, no identity. Dug up by a dog shows that even animals seem to care / notice more than people
‘They are American so they know about ceremony And tradition, about doing things right.’
Better than India > What they ought to do. Not sending a car > US is good
‘To the day of her birth, How it happens in some desolate hut Outside village boundaries’
concealment
Where mothers go to squeeze out life, Watch body slither out of body’
Giving birth = Lack of beauty, Animalistic, Biological > Matter of fact
