Abandonment/cultural expectations/gender discrimination in ‘The
Deliverer’:
LOAS:
1- Cultural expectations create a hierarchy of human value, leading to
gendered dehumanisation and abandonment
2- Cycles of abandonment for females across different cultures- link to
title, subversive
3- Cultural pressures detracting from childbirth in a restless cycle of
female oppression
In ‘The Deliverer’, Doshi presents cultural expectations as dehumanising
forces that decide value based on arbitrary traits, leading to
abandonment. This is conveyed by the fact that children are ‘abandoned
at their doorstep’ due to being ‘crippled or dark or girls.’ The tricolon here
serves to group these varying forms of prejudice- disability, racism,
gender- as one, emphasising the deeply entrenched social imperative of
being able to provide financial support in a culture where children are
viewed as assets. In placing ‘girls’ as the final category of this
polysyndeton, Doshi structurally draws attention to the harsh reality that
girlhood alone is enough to warrant rejection. As such, Doshi puts forward
the notion that children who do not adhere to idealised images of health,
beauty and masculinity in these cultures are viewed as worthless, in the
confusion of the dog in thinking ‘the head [of a buried child]…was bone or
wood, something to chew.’ The dog may act as a microcosm for the brutal
indifference of society in Kerala, wherein such children are
indistinguishable from the inanimate objects of ‘bone or wood’, unworthy
of care. The dog’s inability to recognise the child’s head as human reflects
the larger social blindness towards the lives of these children, in which
they are dehumanised to being disposable- ‘something to chew.’ Through
this, Doshi criticises how cultural prejudices reduce human beings to mere
commodities, rendering the lives of these vulnerable children ‘found
naked in the street’ invisible and expendable in a culture valuing
conformity over compassion.
In ‘The Deliverer’, Doshi presents the cyclicality of female abandonment
and suffering across different cultures to emphasise its prominence. In the
Western setting of ‘Milwaukee Airport, USA’, the reader may expect the
dissolution of such abandonment that characterises Eastern Kerala. Doshi
hints to this through the title of ‘The Deliverer’, which connotes to saviour
and rescue in mirroring the religious saying ‘deliver us from evil.’
However, Doshi subverts this in presenting the adoption of these girls as
tokenistic. Despite seeming to be compassionate in the overwhelming
emotions of ‘We couldn’t stop crying’, Doshi undermines this through the
Deliverer’:
LOAS:
1- Cultural expectations create a hierarchy of human value, leading to
gendered dehumanisation and abandonment
2- Cycles of abandonment for females across different cultures- link to
title, subversive
3- Cultural pressures detracting from childbirth in a restless cycle of
female oppression
In ‘The Deliverer’, Doshi presents cultural expectations as dehumanising
forces that decide value based on arbitrary traits, leading to
abandonment. This is conveyed by the fact that children are ‘abandoned
at their doorstep’ due to being ‘crippled or dark or girls.’ The tricolon here
serves to group these varying forms of prejudice- disability, racism,
gender- as one, emphasising the deeply entrenched social imperative of
being able to provide financial support in a culture where children are
viewed as assets. In placing ‘girls’ as the final category of this
polysyndeton, Doshi structurally draws attention to the harsh reality that
girlhood alone is enough to warrant rejection. As such, Doshi puts forward
the notion that children who do not adhere to idealised images of health,
beauty and masculinity in these cultures are viewed as worthless, in the
confusion of the dog in thinking ‘the head [of a buried child]…was bone or
wood, something to chew.’ The dog may act as a microcosm for the brutal
indifference of society in Kerala, wherein such children are
indistinguishable from the inanimate objects of ‘bone or wood’, unworthy
of care. The dog’s inability to recognise the child’s head as human reflects
the larger social blindness towards the lives of these children, in which
they are dehumanised to being disposable- ‘something to chew.’ Through
this, Doshi criticises how cultural prejudices reduce human beings to mere
commodities, rendering the lives of these vulnerable children ‘found
naked in the street’ invisible and expendable in a culture valuing
conformity over compassion.
In ‘The Deliverer’, Doshi presents the cyclicality of female abandonment
and suffering across different cultures to emphasise its prominence. In the
Western setting of ‘Milwaukee Airport, USA’, the reader may expect the
dissolution of such abandonment that characterises Eastern Kerala. Doshi
hints to this through the title of ‘The Deliverer’, which connotes to saviour
and rescue in mirroring the religious saying ‘deliver us from evil.’
However, Doshi subverts this in presenting the adoption of these girls as
tokenistic. Despite seeming to be compassionate in the overwhelming
emotions of ‘We couldn’t stop crying’, Doshi undermines this through the
