The Deliverer Flashcards
(15 cards)
Doshi’s poem begins by establishing the location, “___”, which is a home for abandoned or endangered children in South India. (The Deliverer)
“Our lady of the Light Convent, Kerula”
The prejudice against female children is emphasised through Doshi’s use of tricolon in the polysyndetic list “___”. Placing girls at the end of this list demonstrates how they are of the least importance and places their discrimination on similar levels to ableism and racism. (The Deliverer)
“crippled or dark or girls”
The simplicity of the verbs “___”, “___”, and “___” emphasise the babies’ brutal rejection. (The Deliverer)
“covered”, “stuffed”, and “abandoned”
Doshi’s use of plosive alliteration describing a baby as “___” reinforces this brutality. Furthermore, the dog mistaking the baby for “___” suggests how female children are discarded and dehumanised. (The Deliverer)
“dug up by a dog”, “bone or wood”
The baby’s head “___” exacerbates the secrecy and shameful act of infanticide, suggesting the abandoned girls are intended to be forgotten and dismissed. (The Deliverer)
“barely poking up above the ground”
Doshi’s choice to label the baby’s “___” suggests the speaker in this stanza feels an aspect of revulsion at her identity before her assimilation as an American adoptee as she feels disgusted at her ties to the culture that rejected her. Therefore, she portrays her own behaviour as maladaptive and perverse. (The Deliverer)
“fetish for plucking hair off hands”
The speaker’s adoptive mother claims “___”, however the emotive expression is juxtaposed by her “___”. Doshi perhaps intended to portray the speaker as detached from her own emotions in comparison to her adoptive parents due to the prolonged effects of trauma which impact her relationships. (The Deliverer)
“We couldn’t stop crying”, “empty arms”
Detachment is reinforced in the speaker’s reference to herself as “___” who “___”, suggesting she feels disconnected from her childhood and identity. (The Deliverer)
“This girl” who “[grew] up on video tapes”
The speaker’s fractured identity is portrayed further in her recounting being “___”. The enjambment here perhaps suggests the elongated lack of stability she felt as an adoptee, and her lack of security has resulted in an identity split across homes and cultures, resulting in her feelings of detachment. (The Deliverer)
“passed from woman / To woman”
The “___” the girl returns to could allude again to the secretive and dark cultural issue of child abandonment, something relegated to night to preserve anonymity and escape shame. (The Deliverer)
“twilight corners”
Doshi uses a semantic field of marginalisation when describing the “___” the speaker was abandoned from, suggesting this fate is shared by other girls in India who are born in similar environments. (The Deliverer)
“desolate hut / Outside village boundaries”
The village is described as a place “___”, which serves as a pun, insinuating both the physical act of birth and the death often caused by the abandonment of the female babies. (The Deliverer)
“Where mothers go to squeeze out life”
A potential biblical allusion occurs during the speaker watching “___”, perhaps linking women to original sin through serpentine imagery which may attempt justify the discrimination female children. (The Deliverer)
“body slither out from body”
Doshi uses linguistic parallelism to emphasise the significance of the baby’s gender for their future, feeling for “___”. (The Deliverer)
“penis or no penis”
The poem concludes with a single-line stanza, as the women “___” after they “___”. Here, Doshi portrays women as both callous and complicit in the abandonment of their children as well as victims to an exploitative patriarchy who perpetuate the cycle of child abuse and neglect, as represented through the ___. (The Deliverer)
“trudge home to lie down for their men again”, “toss the baby to the heap of others”, cyclical structure
