The Deliverer Flashcards
(7 cards)
Why does the poem begin ‘the sister here is telling my mother’?
The initial ambiguous relationship between mother and daughter reflects the poems broader exploration of what it means to be a mother or daughter.
What is the effect of the listing ‘crippled or dark or girls’?
The blunt listing conveys how the children are reduced to labels.
Being a girl is seen as a form of disability or otherness
What is the effect of the verbs ‘covered/stuffed/abandoned’ that are used to describe the treatment of the female babies in the poem?
The verbs convey how female children are treated brutally and inhumanely
What technique is used here and why?
‘One of them was dug up by a dog’
Plosive alliteration - this conveys how the young girls are seen as secondary or almost inferior to animals
What is the significance of the two main settings used in the poem
It might be suggested that Milwaukee Airport represents the more modern west, which is contrasted with the more traditional east, represented by the convent.
What is the significance of the title?
May relate to the biological mother or the speakers mother who transports young girls and ‘delivers’ them to a new family.
There are also religious connotations of ‘deliverance’, suggesting that the young girls are saved from the unholy evils of ‘genderide’
What does the phrase “the girl grows up on videotapes” suggest?
The metaphorical image describes how, as the girl grows older, she revisits memories of her troubled youth
