poetry of the decade - deliverer, Guiseppe, On her blindness Flashcards
(32 cards)
what is the significance of the title ‘The deliverer’
holds biblical connotations and synonymous with religious language of ‘deliverance’ suggestive that the girls are rescued by the speaker’s mother and the convent from unholy and evil acts of gendercide. whilst also referring to the role of the speaker’s mum
what are the two settings in the deliverer and what do they distinguish?
Doshi through the setting of ‘Our lady of the Light Convent,Kerala’ and ‘Milwaukee airport USA’ provides a cultural divide be sectioning of these two parts of the poem depicting both the westerised depiction of parenting and one with more traditional eastern values and perspectives particularly on the role of women.
what is the effect of ‘crippled or dark or girls.’
The polysyndeton conveys how children are unfairly discriminated against due to their appearance seen not for human beings but reduced to a category isolating the values in the list to emphasis and evoke shock in the reader.
what is the effect of the verbs ‘Covered in garbage/Stuffed in bags/Abandoned at the doorstep’
The verbs emphasises the extreme and exhausting effort by the society in Kerala to marginalize and conceal children deemed imperfect or as defects, completely inhumane in their treatment of young girls that is carried out with force and brutality.
‘one of them was dug up by a dog,/ thinking the head poking out the ground/ was bone or wood,something to chew’
what are the techniques
and what does the voice of the nun suggest
Instead of figurative language Doshi deploys blunt monosyllabic language which exposes the abuse of children in its most blunt and horrific form, the children are placed even lower in a hierarchy than an animal and are so mistreated they no longer even resemble a child depicting the disgusting events occurring against girls. Despite reiterating such harsh events the nun’s account through the indirect speech almost normalizes the events of discrimination told to the speakers mother in a matter of fact tone.
this is the one my mother will bring.
the singular line break from the tercet structure shows the significant focus on the speaker’s mother in the poem as though paying homage to the kindness of his mother and pride due to her benevolence and charitable nature.
‘The parents wait at the gates’
How does the Parents keen arrival for their adopted daughter contrast the parental treatment of girls in Kerala
(similarly ‘They haven’t seen or touched her yet’ )
It is significant that there is the plural of both parents who are their to great the arrival of the daughter suggesting a more balanced approach to parenting, neither do the parents care about her appearance to make their decision on whether to love the child unlike the superficial focus on discrimination of the girls in Kerala, where love of children in US values is instead presented as an unconditional bond.
‘don’t know of her fetish for plucking hair of hands/ or how her mother tried to bury her’
what does this suggest both about the speaker’s mother and the child ?
The detail of the girl’s behaviors depicts the intimate bond developed between the speaker’s mother and the girl in a short amount of time solidifying the speaker’s mum’s care and compassion showing great focus for the girl who is innocent and starkly contrasted by the horrors and trauma of her past in the next line placing innocence and corruption in the enjambment provides a jarring and unnatural tone.
‘But they are crying./
we couldn’t stop crying, my mother said’
what does the reaction of the speaker’s mother show about her?
The juxtaposition of tears of joy from the adoptive parents alongside the tears of sadness from the speaker’s mother depicts the conflict of emotions during the adoption where the mother never quite gets personal closure with the transition of the young girl she adores and whilst also having distressing memories of her abuse ingrained. The mother’s natural maternal desire ‘feeling the strangeness of her empty arms’ shows that values of nurture are not completely absent from Kerala but they are overshadowed by cultural values that deem girls inferior.
why is their a transition and what to?
‘The girl grows up on video tapes,
sees how she’s passed from woman
To woman. She returns to twilight corners’
what does it suggest about the young girls sense of self
and how are women presented
Doshi in the stanza employs figurative language to provide how the memories of the daughter’s life are hazy and ambiguous failing to remember her traumatic childhood off her own accord therefore suggesting her lack of identity and history physically distant from her homeland and biological parents kept in the dark and without full clarity of her self in ‘twilight corners’. Despite being abandoned by her own mother, the enjambment depicts how the girl has had aid from multiple women around the world.
what is the significance of the ‘birth’ of the girl taking place in
‘some desolate hut/
outside village boundaries’
The isolated and secluded setting reiterates how girls are not to be celebrated but to be ashamed off with the preparation to conceal the girl’s birth, somewhere that cant be traced or detected, foreshadows the unnatural and immoral acts of the mother who goes to ‘bury’ her own child.
what does the visual description of the birth provoke
‘Where mothers go to squeeze out life/
watch body slither out from body’
The grotesque and gruesome detail of the birth depicts how even bringing the girl into existence seems unnatural and brings prolonged pain.
Feel for penis or no penis
the identification of girls by their sexual organs emphasises the brutality where anatomy determines which child lives or dies with no negotiation
How does doshi re-brand the role of women in Kerala in the last line.
toss the baby out to the heap of others
trudge home to lie down for their men again.
The mass of bodies is an extremely unsettling and disturbing image with the lack of precision and respect even when handling the pile of babies which suggests the abandoning of girl children is a routine and unstoppable process amplified by the lack of end stops.
However, Doshi through the separation labels the mother’s not as the perpetrators but instead lacking complete agency with reluctancy they submit to men with the ‘again’ highlighting the lack of respite from mother’s discarding their children until the cycle repeats.
what is the significance of the title ‘on her blindness’
Intertextuality to John Milton’s ‘On his blindness’. Milton had the debilitating condition and depicted it as a test of faith and strength, Thorpe’s poem aim to divert from such a perspective and detail the true suffering.
‘my mother could not bear being blind/handicaps are hell’
‘bear it/ like a roman’
How does Milton depict the reality from societal expectation?
the plosive alliteration conveys the bleak reality of living with the illness contrasted with the simile where the expectation of suffers is to deal with the condition in a stoic and brave manner, the speaker provides a subtle criticism of such a view that is outdated like the antiquated Roman Empire.
What is the effect of the language
‘one tends to hear/one shouldnt say it/One should hide the fact’
The overly formalized language depicts the taboo nature of discussing illness which is contrasted and challenged by the colloquial language of the speaker
How does the mother adhere to societal standards surrounding how illness should be dealt with?
(She turned to me ,once,’
whispered / ‘its living hell’
The appositive highlights how honesty of expression is a rarity for the speaker’s mother maintaining a facade and almost ashamed and embarrassed of her struggle making a discrete remark toward it.
What are the different ways that illness is presented as degrading?
1) through the bathos of being in a ‘paris restaurant’ connoting glamour and prestige yet contrasted by the undignifying language of ‘still not finding/ the food on the plate’
2) the semantic field of continual decline of ‘slide and sink’ and in the enjambment of the ‘long, / slow slide’ and ‘vision / as black as stone’ where her blindness is as though impenetrable and vision bereft an irreversible loss and elongates the deterioration.
how is the condition presented
‘when the kids would offer the latest drawing, or show her their new toy’
The condition is presented as deeply isolating where the speaker’s mother is left unable to progress and experience the present stuck in a stasis state with her blindness an impediment yet endeavors to maintain a facade for the sake of her family she would rather be protective than acknowledge the truth.
how is the son presneted?
‘It must have been the usual sop,
inadequate: the locked in son. ‘
The speaker is extremely self - disparaging toward himself perhaps marking his sense of regret and remorse for not articulating and being able to comfort his mother with the caesura signifying how the speaker feels isolated and cut off.
her last week alive (a fortnight back)
The parenthesis highlights how the emotion of the speaker is still incredibly raw.
‘she was watching, somewhere, in the end’
what is the effect of the last line
The line break of the singular stanza indicates the separation of the mother-son relationship through death and therefore represents the speaker’s grief. Unlike previously the appositive of vague and unspecific language consolidates how the mother’s previous attempts to see with purpose and ‘admire films’ with intent was merely a facade that has been exposed through death
how does the title of ‘Guiseppe’ relate to the focus of the poem
Whilst the speaker is describing the Uncle’s account on the murder of the mermaid the real focus is on the uncle where the poem is an allegory concealed with the magic realism of the mermaid to detail how people go along with immorality and seek justification.
