The Full Text of “The Deliverer”
The Full Text of “The Deliverer”
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“The Deliverer” Introduction
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Tishani Doshi's "The Deliverer" addresses the horrifying reality of gender discrimination and female infanticide in India. The poem illustrates how the cultural devaluation of women's lives combined with extreme poverty can lead women to abandon babies deemed a burden by society: those with dark skin, a disability, or who are female. The speaker's mother brings one such abandoned baby girl to the United States, where she's adopted by American parents. The poem ends by returning to India to describe the horrific reality of giving birth for women like the girl's biological mother, who have little freedom over their bodies and lives. The poem suggests that a society's treatment of women and other marginalized groups directly corresponds to its treatment of its most vulnerable population: children. "The Deliverer" was published in Doshi's first poetry collection, Countries of the Body, in 2006.
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“The Deliverer” Summary
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The poem begins in a convent in the Indian state of Kerala. The speaker's mother is talking to a nun who is telling her that the children who live at the convent have ended up there because they are disabled, dark-skinned, and/or female.
She explains these children were abandoned. They'd been left naked and alone in piles of trash on the street, shoved in garbage bags, or left right in front of the convent itself.
One child was pulled out of the ground by a dog snuffling for something to eat; the animal thought the top of the child's head sticking out of the dirt was a piece of wood or bone that it could gnaw on.
The speaker's mother chooses this child to take with her.
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The second part of the poem takes place at an airport in Wisconsin, in the United States.
The couple who will adopt the child stands at the arrivals gate. As Americans, they are well-versed in the formalities of the situation and understand what is expected of them.
Because they haven't met the baby yet, they don't yet know that she has a thing for pulling the hair off people's hands. They also don't know about her history and the fact that her mother attempted to bury her.
Even so, they're crying. The speaker's mother later tells the speaker that they were all crying, herself included, as she handed the baby over and felt the absence of her weight in her arms.
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As the baby grows up, she watches videos of this exchange in which she’s handed from one woman to another. She imagines her own obscure origins.
She pictures the day she was born, in a decrepit, rudimentary shelter outside of town.
This is where mothers go to give birth, during which they see another body slide out of their own.
They determine whether the baby has male or female genitals; if female, they discard the baby along with the other female babies.
Then they walk with heavy steps home, where they will be expected to have sex with their husbands again.
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“The Deliverer” Themes
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Gender Discrimination and Infanticide
"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.
The speaker's mother takes this baby to the United States to be adopted, but the poem doesn't present this as a straightforward happy ending. Instead, the narrative shifts back to India in its final stanzas, offering readers a glimpse into the lives of the mothers who abandon these children in the first place. They are not monsters, these lines reveal, but rather victims of a brutal, unjust, deeply misogynist system.
The speaker describes one mother trekking out to "some desolate hut" far from her village in order "to squeeze out life." This birth is not an occasion for celebration or joy, but rather one marked by isolation, pain, and disgust; the baby "slither[s] out from" the woman's body as though it were a snake, a horrifying image that hints that this woman did not have much of a say in getting pregnant. She certainly doesn't yet seem to feel any affection for this baby, at least, which is likely a coping mechanism given what she must do next. The mother checks to see if the baby has a penis or not, a chillingly clinical examination with life or death results: the boys get taken home while the girls get tossed onto "the heap of others"—a pile of dead or dying baby girls.
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.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-4
- Lines 5-11
- Lines 22-32
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Poverty, Motherhood, and Adoption
"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.
In parts of India, families reject children who are "crippled or dark or girls" because they feel they will be too great a financial burden. The poem describes mothers actively abandoning these children in ways that seem unimaginably cruel to those accustomed to romanticized depictions of maternal love, but the women who discard their children don’t do so out of intentional cruelty; they simply don't have the resources or freedom of choice necessary to make better decisions for their children. In a humane and stable society, such children would be treated no differently from their peers. But because these babies were born into a culture where there is little opportunity, they are cast out in anticipation of the fact that society will not want them. Where money and resources are scarce, the poem implies, life is often treated as cheap.
Meanwhile, the American parents who adopt the girl from the convent are said to "know about ceremony / And tradition, about doing things right." The Americans seem to think of themselves as morally superior for being able to treat this child "right," yet the main reason they can adopt her is that they're wealthier than the women who give birth to babies like her. The poem implies that the Americans are not intrinsically more appreciative of human life. Rather, their relative affluence allows them to see and treat life differently. They have the resources to ensure that this child won't face the same hardship as she would in India; when she grows up, she won't be expected to "lie down for [...] men" as her mother was, so she'll have a chance at a better life.
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.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 4-11
- Lines 12-21
- Lines 22-32
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Deliverer”
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Lines 1-4
OUR LADY OF ...
... dark or girls."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.
Thick, back-of-the-throat /c/ alliteration and consonance add intensity to these lines:
How she came to collect children
Because they were crippled or dark or girlsThe growling /r/ and /g/ sounds adds to the effect. The lines are sharp rather than soft and comforting.
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Lines 5-11
Found naked in ...
... mother will bring. -
Lines 12-15
MILWAUKEE AIRPORT, USA ...
... doing things right. -
Lines 16-21
They haven't seen ...
... her empty arms. -
Lines 22-27
This girl grows ...
... Outside village boundaries -
Lines 28-32
Where mothers go ...
... their men again.
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“The Deliverer” Symbols
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Garbage
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.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 6: “Covered in garbage, stuffed in bags,”
- Line 31: “Toss the baby to the heap of others,”
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“The Deliverer” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
The poem's devastating imagery portrays the bleak reality of life in an extremely poor, patriarchal society. Early on, for example, the speaker describes abandoned children "Covered in garbage" and "stuffed in bags." This disturbing imagery illustrates how worthless these children are considered: they're treated like pieces of trash. In one of the poem's most horrific scenes, the speaker describes a little girl who "was dug up by a dog." The dog, catching sight of the child's "head barely poking above the ground," thought the child "Was bone or wood, something to chew." The mention of "bone" casts a deathly shadow over the scene, symbolizing the fact that many children in this world are doomed from the moment of their birth.
The imagery in the poem's final section considers things from the point of view of the mothers who abandon these children, revealing that they, too, have no real control over their lives. The speaker describes how these women give birth in broken down "hut[s]" outside of town, where they "squeeze out life, / Watch body slither from body." There's nothing remotely romantic or exciting about such scenes; birth instead seems traumatic, isolating, and painful. The word "slither" is particularly disturbing; normally one would think of snakes slithering, not children. This suggests how disconnected these mothers are from their babies. Perhaps they had no say in getting pregnant and birth feels like another violation. Or, maybe, they are trying to protect themselves. Having no means of keeping these children alive, they dissociate from an event that, in more fortunate circumstances, would be celebrated.
They then "Feel for penis or no penis," and if there is no penis, they "Toss the baby to the heap of others." This imagery is cold and clinical. These women simply can't afford to love their female babies, the poem implies. They throw them out without acknowledging their humanity, then "Trudge home to lie down for their men again." The word "trudge" means to walk slowly and heavily, with great difficulty, so it's clear that these women aren't running off to their men out of love or pleasure. They are prisoners of their society's rules about gender, no more valuable than the babies they left to die.
Where imagery appears in the poem:- Lines 5-10: “Found naked in the streets, / Covered in garbage, stuffed in bags, / Abandoned at their doorstep. / One of them was dug up by a dog, / Thinking the head barely poking above the ground / Was bone or wood, something to chew.”
- Lines 28-32: “Where mothers go to squeeze out life, / Watch body slither out from body, / Feel for penis or no penis, / Toss the baby to the heap of others, / Trudge home to lie down for their men again”
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Diacope
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Asyndeton
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Alliteration
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Juxtaposition
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"The Deliverer" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Convent
- Kerala
- Milwaukee
- Ceremony
- Fetish
- Twilight corners
- Desolate
- Trudge
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(Location in poem: Line 1: “OUR LADY OF THE LIGHT CONVENT”)
A community of nuns.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Deliverer”
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Form
"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.
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Meter
"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.
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Rhyme Scheme
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.
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“The Deliverer” Speaker
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The speaker of the poem is the daughter of the woman who "deliver[s]" an abandoned baby girl from India to her adoptive parents in America. Because the poem is based on the experiences of Doshi's own mother, the speaker can be interpreted as Doshi herself.
Despite narrating the poem in the present tense, the speaker isn't actually at the convent in Kerala or the airport in Milwaukee; her mother tells her about these events later on. The speaker also isn't present in the poem's devastating final scenes, which describe women going off to some "desolate hut" to give birth, abandoning their female babies, and then trudging back "home to lie down for their men again." Instead, she is imagining what the reality of birth looks like for very poor women in an intensely patriarchal society.
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“The Deliverer” Setting
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"The Deliver" begins at the Our Lady of the Light Convent in Kerala, a state in southwestern India. The specificity of this setting grounds the poem firmly in reality. This isn't an anonymous, exaggerated tale that's too horrible to be true, but rather a real story from a real place involving real people.
The nuns at this convent take in children who have been abandoned by their families for various reasons, including having dark skin, having a disability, or simply being female. The poem's imagery in its opening section paints a vivid picture of the way extreme poverty and misogyny can lead to the devaluation of human life: this is a place where unwanted babies—those whom society deems undesirable and a burden to their struggling families—are left in piles of garbage or buried in the dirt.
The second part of the poem takes place in a very different setting: an airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a state in the American Midwest. Here, a set of adoptive parents wait to meet the baby girl the speaker's mother has brought from the convent. The juxtaposition between these two places is intentionally jarring. One is a shiny airport with happy, excited parents; the other is a hellish place where babies are tossed out like trash. This contrast, the poem makes clear, is the result of vast socioeconomic divides, not essential differences in character. The American parents in the poem have money and support that the Indian mothers who abandon their children simply do not have. What's more, the poem hints that the girl's adoptive parents will never fully understand the world she came from; they "Don't know [...] how her mother tried to bury her."
The third part of the poem then returns to India, as the now older girl imagines the circumstances she was born into. She pictures women giving birth "in some desolate hut / Outside of village boundaries." This illustrates the immense poverty these women face while also hinting that they leave town with the express purpose of abandoning their baby girls (it is technically illegal, so they must do so away from onlookers). The disturbing descriptions of "squeez[ing] out life" and watching "body slither out from body" further convey that giving birth is not a happy, celebratory occasion for these women, who in all likelihood had little say in getting pregnant in the first place. The image of tossing a baby girl onto a "heap of others" is meant to be chilling. It emphasizes that abandonment is not an isolated issue nor the result of one terrible woman's terrible choice; rather, it is the result of a misogynistic society that doesn't offer women many choices at all.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Deliverer”
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Literary Context
Tishani Doshi is a poet, journalist, and dancer. Doshi was born in India but moved to the United States to study at Queen's College in North Carolina; she later studied writing at Johns Hopkins University before working in London and, eventually, returning to India. Her world travels are reflected in the global scope of her poetry, which often explores issues of immigration, economic hardship, alienation, and systemic violence.
"The Deliverer" was published in Doshi's debut poetry collection, Countries of the Body, in 2006. The book won the Forward Prize, and the poem later appeared in a 2016 anthology of Forward-winning works titled Poems of the Decade. As the title implies, Countries of the Body explores the relationship between memory and the body. Doshi has written that "The Deliverer" in particular asks whether there is a "knowledge in the body that allows" the girl to "know that she was abandoned, half buried in the ground, left for dead, will she be able to imagine her beginnings?"
Historical Context
"The Deliverer" was inspired by a true story. Doshi says her mother "did take a baby to America" and that the heart of the poem is that
The male child is still preferred over the girl child in India. Female foeticide and infanticide are still widely prevalent, so much so that it is illegal in India for a clinic or doctor to tell parents about the sex of their baby during the pregnancy. Many Indian women don't have access to birth control and therefore have little control over their reproductive rights, which takes us to the final image of the poem [...]
It is illegal for Indian women to abandon their babies, which is why so many of them resort to "bury[ing]" them or going far outside of town to give birth rather than leaving them somewhere they might be found.
India has made some strides toward reproductive rights for women in recent years; in 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that women of any marital status can receive abortions up until the 24th week of pregnancy (previously only married women or rape victims had this freedom). Still, with only 25% of Indian women participating in the workforce and with little access to education and land ownership, many women—especially in rural areas—have no way of exercising their right to abortion or any way of providing for children on their own.
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More “The Deliverer” Resources
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External Resources
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Trash Bin Babies: India's Female Infanticide Crisis — Read about India's problems with female infanticide and one of many creative solutions that has recently helped save lives.
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The Poet's Life and Work — Learn more about Doshi in this biography from the Poetry Foundation.
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Tishani Doshi's Website — Links to books, reviews, and introductions to specific poems by Doshi herself.
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Indian Women Poets — Check out some examples of Indian feminist poetry.
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