The Deliverer by Tishani Doshi
The title ‘The Deliverer’ arises many different
interpretations of what a deliverer could be associated with; some of the most
prominent ideas being hospitals, babies and prophets. These first impressions
help the reader formulate a prediction before reading the poem and in this case
allow us to understand the poem whilst we are reading it. Tishani Doshi used
‘The Deliverer’ to share a story of a young girl’s adoption and the
frequentness of this situation in her country. In some cultures a male baby is
much more valued than the birth of a female due to the fact that it is
important for a son to continue the family name; many baby girls were
disregarded and left to die.
The poems structure is split into three parts with the use
of asterisks in between stanzas, these act as a barrier or a divide between
cultures; one being the characters old home and the other being her new
adoptive home in America. This split between the two cultures presents the
polar opposites of the two places. In addition to this the number of lines in
each stanza is effected by the split, within the third section each stanza has
exactly three lines for three stanzas where as the last section the number of
lines in each stanza slowly recede. One interpretation of this could be that
the number of lines represents the amount of joy being associated with the
child; in the third section it begins with three stanzas to show the initial
joy of the possibility of the new born being a boy but this declines after they
‘feel for penis or no penis,’, indicating that the joy has been lost as the
baby was not male. Another interpretation is that majority of the action in the
poem being a routine as the majority of the stanzas are organised into three
lines but once again the pause at the line previously mentioned above implies
some form of disruption.
Following the ideas of conflicting cultures above, there are
clear differences within the sections with the use of verbs. The child was
treated as an inanimate object in the first and last section with the use of
detached verbs: ‘stuffed’ ‘ abandoned’ ‘toss’, by using these impersonal
actions the reader is given the impression that the mothers described in the
deliverer have been almost conditioned into having no attachment in regards to
their own baby girls. This contrasts with the verbs used in the middle section:
‘seen or touched’ ‘crying’, these verbs come with more relation to emotions and
sensitivity which is lacked in the surrounding sections. The almost juxtaposing
verbs reinforce the barrier between the west culture and east.
Readers may interpret the voice of this poem to be an
American child talking about their adoptive sister from the line ‘this is the
one my mother will bring’ but it could alternatively be interpreted as the
adopted child talking about herself in third person. This interpretation could
explain the conflict of cultures being a key theme throughout the poem; as if
she feels that she is no longer the child that was thrown away by her
biological mother but also realising her loss of true heritage.
The Deliverer could be compared to ‘To my nine-year-old
self’ as they both show a sense of disconnection with themselves or their past.
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