The Deliverer Flashcards
1
Q
Gender Discrimination and Infanticide
A
- “The Deliverer” illustrates the devastating effects of gender discrimination in India, showing how the devaluation of female life often begins at birth and leads to immense suffering, violation, and even infanticide. The speaker’s mother visits a convent in Kerala (a state in southwest India), where the sisters take in children whom society considers disposable: those who are “crippled or dark or girls.” The poem then zooms in on one child in particular: a little girl buried in the dirt, her head “barely poking above the ground,” snuffed out by a dog searching for something to “gnaw on.” This deeply disturbing image is symbolic of the fact that girls don’t stand a chance in a world that denies them economic freedom, access to education, and bodily autonomy; their fates are sealed before they’re even born.
- This, the poem implies, is what happens in an intensely patriarchal society that denies women their full humanity. Unable to work, educate themselves, or make their own reproductive decisions, women can’t prioritize their children’s lives. That the poem ends with these women “Trudg[ing] home to lie down for their men again” hammers home their lack of autonomy; their bodies are used as receptacles of men’s desire, regardless of the consequences. More unwanted babies will be conceived, and if they’re girls, they, in turn, won’t be able (or allowed) to contribute economically to their families. For families already drowning in poverty, girls are seen as an added burden. These destitute mothers know that if they keep their unwanted girls alive, the girls’ fates will be as bad as or worse than their own. In this respect, the mothers might feel they are doing these babies a kindness by allowing them to die—really the only kindness they have at their disposal. At least their daughters won’t grow up to face the horror of starvation, rape, and/or bearing children they, too, have to abandon.
2
Q
Poverty, motherhood and adoption
A
- “The Deliverer” illustrates the at-times murky reality of cross-cultural adoption by juxtaposing the most “desolate” sector of Indian society and a relatively affluent sector of American society. The former is more populous, less affluent, and (in the era described) more regressive in its treatment of women. Intense poverty and oppression lead some Indian women to abandon their babies, while relative wealth and freedom allow some Americans to accept those babies with open arms. The poem suggests that more affluent and liberalized societies afford mothers the opportunity to treat all kids as worthy of unqualified love. Conversely, in impoverished societies that allow women no reproductive freedom and are especially brutal toward female, dark-skinned, and disabled children, mothers may find that giving up such children is the best they can do for them.
- Still, she “grows up on video tapes,” suggesting lingering curiosity about her origins, and she revisits “twilight corners”—murky, obscure memories or dreams of the place she came from but did not get the chance to know. And while the couple comes across as sincere in their desire for this child and filled with good intentions, the poem also subtly hints at the ways in which the wealth and prosperity of nations such as the U.S. are dependent on the oppression and suffering of nations such as India. That is, this family would not be experiencing the joy of adoption without the terrible conditions that led to the baby’s biological mother rejecting her. In a way, babies are one of the many resources that rich countries extract from places like India, which are still reeling from the impact of Western colonization.
3
Q
OUR LADY OF …
… dark or girls.
A
- “The Deliverer” is a 32-line free verse poem broken up into three distinct sections. The first section begins with a heading announcing where the poem is set: a “convent” (a place where a community of nuns lives) in “Kerala,” a state in India. By announcing the location up top, the poet conveys the importance of this setting: this isn’t some imagined dystopia, but a real place in the real world.
- The speaker then begins the poem itself by describing a conversation between her mother and a nun, who is explaining how the children living at the convent came into her care. This nun took the children in because “they were crippled or dark or girls.” (Though the speaker narrates the poem in the present tense, she isn’t necessarily there with her mother; more likely, she is imagining a scene from her mother’s past.)
- This blunt, matter-of-fact explanation makes it clear from the start that in India, being born with a disability, having dark skin, or simply being female puts children at a terrible disadvantage. The polysyndeton of this phrase—”crippled or dark or girls”—presents all these traits as equally undesirable; being a girl is no better than being born with a disability, which is no better than simply having dark skin. In an ideal society, none of these scenarios would result in a parent rejecting their own child. But in an impoverished, deeply patriarchal society, such children are often rejected as soon as they are born because they would become a financial burden to their parents.
4
Q
Found naked in …
… mother will bring.
A
- The children who come to live at the convent have been abandoned by their parents. The imagery of these lines is deeply disturbing, and it illustrates just how worthless these babies are considered. They are thrown out with the trash, left to wander “naked in the streets” or “Covered in garbage.” The image of innocent children being “stuffed in bags” is particularly violent and difficult to stomach. The ones who get left at the front door of the convent are comparatively lucky; the mothers of these babies took a risk to leave them there, since it is illegal for them to abandon their children.
- Asyndeton creates the sense that these are just a few of the scenarios that come to mind, the ones that stuck with the mother as she retells this story to her daughter, the speaker. There are undoubtedly countless more; these abandonments are disturbingly common.
- Horrific as the images in these stanzas are, the poem takes care not to condemn the mothers of these children. Instead, these images reflect the terrible reality of an impoverished society where women have little reproductive freedom or autonomy, lack access to education and employment, and are forced to give birth to children they don’t want or can’t afford to raise. In such a world, these women are as much victims as they are perpetrators of violence. Indeed, many likely believe they’re doing the merciful thing by letting their children die, if there is no support for these children in the world they’re born into. And if they have other mouths to feed, they might make the decision to abandon those children whom society has deemed less worthy (the “crippled,” dark-skinned, or girls) in order to give the rest of their family a better chance of surviving. Faced with desperate conditions, people resort to desperate measures.
5
Q
MILWAUKEE AIRPORT, USA …
… doing things right.
A
- The second part of the poem begins with a heading informing the reader that it takes place at an airport in Milwaukee, a city in the state of Wisconsin. From the first line, where the speaker says “The parents wait at the gates,” it becomes clear that the speaker’s mother has brought the baby from the convent in India to an adoptive family in the United States. Readers can assume that this is why she was visiting the convent in the first place.
- But the statement also feels ironic, subtly implying that the Americans are ignorant of the fact that their preparedness, their ability to do things “right,” isn’t something that’s inherent to their nature. Instead, it’s a direct result of their country’s comparative affluence. They are able to do things right because their society doesn’t treat women as second-class citizens with no power of their own. This baby will have a better life with them than she would have had with her own family, but the reasons for this are cultural, economic, and systemic rather than individual. If they feel a sense of superiority about being able to do “things rights,” it’s unearned.
- The lack of coordinating conjunction between “about ceremony / And tradition” and “about doing things right” seems to imply that, for the Americans, these things are interchangeable. They seem to think that to be good parents, they have to do what’s expected of them—what was modeled by their own parents, no doubt. There’s a precedent for parenthood; they know what to do because someone did it for them.
6
Q
They haven’t seen …
… her empty arms.
A
- The speaker says that the Americans haven’t “seen or touched” their adoptive daughter yet. They don’t know the first thing about her. They’re unaware of her “fetish for plucking hair off hands,” for example, imagery that might suggest some sort of neurosis that has resulted from her early trauma (alternatively, this is just a quirk). Nor do they know about her bleak origins, the fact that “her mother tried to bury her.” (Remember, this is the same baby dug up by a dog.”) The fact that they are “crying” anyway suggests that they don’t need to know these things to already feel affection for this vulnerable little girl. These parents have undoubtedly been dreaming about bringing a child into their home for some time. The poem hints that they will be good parents, or at least that they will love this child deeply.
- By now, it’s clear that the poem’s title is a play on words. To deliver something is to transport it and hand it over to its intended recipient. In one sense, then, the “Deliverer” of the poem’s title is the speaker’s mother, who is bringing the baby girl from the Indian convent to her adoptive family in America. However, giving birth is also referred to as delivering a baby. Thus, the baby’s mother is another “Deliverer,” albeit one made invisible by her geographic and economic distance from the people who adopt her baby.
7
Q
This girl grows …
… Outside village boundaries
A
- The poem’s third and final section fast-forwards into the future, when the baby girl from the convent “grows up.” She’ll watch “video tapes” of her adoption, the speaker says, and see “how she’s passed from woman to woman.” This line, with its repetition of “woman,” suggests a certain kinship between the girl’s adoptive mother and the speaker’s own mother (a stand-in for the child’s biological mother). They are connected by their gender; they share in the nurturing role that women have traditionally taken on across the world. Yet it also suggests a stark divide between them: the little girl is being handed over from one world to another. The American mother gains a daughter; India loses one.
- This girl, as she ages, feels a pull toward her own origins. Having been so young when she was brought over, she has no conscious memories of her time in India. Still, the poem implies that some memory of her origins lives on inside her body, in “twilight corners.” Twilight refers to the time of day after the sun is no longer visible in the sky, but its light still lingers. It’s an in-between time; a hazy, ambiguous, hour. The image of “twilight corners” suggests that such trauma as the girl has endured doesn’t just disappear; it affects her in unseen ways.
- The poem then travels back in time to “the day of her birth” in India. The speaker says that “it” (the girl’s birth) happens in some desolate hut / Outside village boundaries.” The location conveys the poverty that the girl’s mother faced and implies that didn’t want to be discovered. If she planned on keeping the baby, she wouldn’t have trekked out to some forsaken, broken-down structure “Outside village boundaries” where nobody could find her.
8
Q
Where mothers go …
… their men again.
A
- In its final lines, the poem broadens its scope. Now, it’s describing all the women who, like this girl’s mother, found some abandoned hut in which “to squeeze out life.” This visceral phrase conveys that for these women, giving birth isn’t beautiful or romantic. It’s a painful, lonely experience; they’re simply getting something unavoidable over with. The speaker adds that the babies “slither” from their bodies like snakes, disturbing imagery that suggests the revulsion these women feel. This revulsion might stem from the circumstances under which these babies were conceived (without autonomy, these women may have conceived against their will).
- While it would be easy to blame these mothers for rejecting their own children, the last line of the poem emphasizes how little power these women have over their lives. They “trudge” (or walk slowly and heavily) “home to lie down for their men again.” In this patriarchal society, women are passive figures, receptacles for men’s desires. They aren’t running home out of love and desire for their husbands; they’re returning because they have no other options. Without access to education, jobs, and reproductive freedom, there is little these women can do to change their circumstances, let alone that of their vulnerable, infant daughters.
9
Q
Garbage
A
The poem describes abandoned babies being thrown out with and/or buried beneath piles of garbage. The sister at the convent informs the speaker’s mother that she’s even found babies “stuffed in bags.” This disturbing imagery symbolizes how little this culture values these babies; dark-skinned children, children with disabilities, and girls are deemed essentially worthless, just more trash to be thrown away. The image of mothers deciding to “Toss” their female babies onto “the heap of others” echoes this idea, again reflecting that, in a society that doesn’t value women, female babies get treated as disposable.
10
Q
Form
A
“The Deliverer” is a 32-line free verse poem broken up into three sections. The first section takes place at the “Lady of the Light Convent” in Kerala, a coastal state in India, where a baby girl is found buried in the dirt. The second section takes place at the “Milwaukee Airport” in Wisconsin, where this girl is adopted by American parents. The third section travels back in time to describe the horrific conditions surrounding the girl’s birth, and abandonment, in India. The fact that the poem begins and ends in India suggests that while this one particular girl may have been saved, the broader cycle of misogyny and abandonment has not been broken.
11
Q
Rhyme Scheme and meter
A
- “The Deliverer” is written in free verse, so it doesn’t use a set meter. The poem’s language sounds real and raw rather than artfully crafted, which is fitting for a poem about a devastating subject.
- As a free verse poem, “The Deliverer” doesn’t use a rhyme scheme. The lack of rhyme keeps the poem sounding more conversational and direct, as though the speaker is simply telling this story to a friend.
