English Poetry Essay Examplar

Tishani Doshi ‘The Deliverer’ and Debjani Chatterjee ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’ ;

Compare the methods both poets use to explore otherness ;

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‘The Deliverer’ and ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’ both explore otherness- the quality of being different from what is familiar in a dominant culture. Both poems, thus, relate to the audience the experience of being the ‘Other’, imbuing the foreign and outcasted with humanity and rarely relayed empathy. In ‘The Deliverer’ Doshi outlines the narrative of a baby girl in free verse, ‘abandoned’ at a convent ‘doorstep’, who is later adopted, through the perspective of the deliverer’s (to the parents) daughter, a chilling account of neglect of baby girls, the Other in a patriarchal society ‘where mothers go to squeeze out life’. In ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’ Chaterjee describes a more quotidian form of otherness as a child steps into the classroom, removing her ‘chunni’ and shedding her ‘language, name and identity’, made to conceal everything that makes her distinct; Asian. Both poems use third person pronouns, the semantic field of abandonment, contrasting settings and different form to share the alienating, dehumanising experience of otherness. ;

Both ‘The Deliverer’ and ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’ explore otherness through the semantic field of abandonment, outlining what existing outside of the dominant culture begets to the individual. In ‘The Deliverer’, as the subject steps into the classroom, she ‘removed’, ‘undid’ and ‘shed[s]’ foundational human qualities such as her ‘language’ and ‘name’ but also ordinary, daily items like her ‘clothes’ and ‘chunni’. Doshi uses the past tense verbs ‘removed’, ‘undid’ and ‘shed’ to connote abandonment and a sense of loss in favour of ‘neat conformity’. To be allowed ‘entry’ into the classroom, the symbol of the dominant culture and the boundaries of societal acceptability, it is necessary to ‘shed’ otherness and threats to the perceived norm. Similarly, in ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’, the semantic field of abandonment is used to reflect society’s tendency to expel otherness. Chatterjee uses the past tense verbs ‘abandoned’, ‘stuffed’ and ‘passed’ to describe the subject’s physical neglect to connote the undesirable- the female. As in ‘The Deliverer’, in this poem the subject’s abandonment is linked to their otherness, revealing a stark portrait of a society’s unwillingness to expand its borders of acceptability. In other words, both poems feature abandonment of otherness through the neglected subject. ;

Both ‘The Deliverer’ and ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’ explore otherness through third person pronouns used by the speaker, which frame the subject as inherently Other. In ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’, the subject is referred entirely to as ‘she’, seemingly already stripped of her ‘name’ and ‘identity’, already subsumed into ‘cultural anonymity’. The repetition of the pronoun ‘she’ strips the subject of her humanity, only referred to as separate to the speaker, implying that ‘she’ is the Other. ‘She’ has no distinct identity without a name and is robbed of the subversive power of the Other. Similarly, in ‘The Deliverer’, Doshi uses an indefinite pronoun in ‘one of them was dug up by a dog’ and frequently refers to the baby as ‘she’ and ‘her’. Like in ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’, the subject’s name is never used and is distinctly feminine. As a result of her anonymity, the subject becomes a nondescri pt, impersonal symbol of the ‘children... crippled or dark or girls’, the Other who is abandoned. She is not merely an individual but another identity branded Other. Therefore, both poems use third person pronouns to frame the subject as the Other. ;

However, both ‘The Deliverer’ and ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’ use different form to demonstrate responses to otherness. In ‘The Deliverer’, Doshi’s use of free verse, with stanzas varying between 2 or 3 lines, reads like a personal account, a deftly articulated record of pain caused by the process of otherness. In particular, ‘my mother said’ and ‘they are crying’ draws comparison to anecdote recalled in a conversation, indicating the humanity of the Other and the personal pain of exclusion. However, in ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’, Chatterjee uses 2 four line stanzas and formal verse with an ABBB rhyme scheme. The regularity connotes a more routine, quotidian form of otherness- mundane and constant. The nouns rhymed in each stanza with ‘chunni’, ‘entry’ and ‘mystery’ in the first and ‘identity’, ‘conformity’ and ‘anonymity’ in the latter sums up what happens to otherness; the ‘identity’ is abandoned to be granted ‘entry’ to conform to society. Thus, both poems use form differently to describe different account of otherness. ; ;

‘The Deliverer’ and ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom both use a contrast in setting to explore otherness, defining the border between acceptability and the Other. In ‘The Deliverer’, the child is born ‘in some desolate hut outside village boundaries’ whereas the American parents ‘wait at the gates’. The ‘village boundaries’ symbolise the border of acceptability within the society, with the girl falling strictly beyond them as the Other while the parents waiting at the ‘gates’ symbolise transition, from otherness to societal integration. Similarly, in ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’ a transition in setting is marked as ‘before’ the subject steps into ‘the classroom’ she removes her otherwise acceptable ‘chunni’ and ‘shoes’ for ‘entry to a temple of secular mystery’. In particular, the religiously coded act of undoing her ‘shoes’ to move into the oxymoronic ‘secular’ ‘temple’ imply the differing levels of respect granted to otherness and the dominant culture. As in ‘The Deliverer’, the contrast in setting marks a transition into societal integration and the shedding of otherness to acceptability. Therefore, both poems use contrasting settings to define the boundary between acceptability and the Other. ; ;

In conclusion, ‘The Deliverer’ and ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’ both explore otherness through the semantic field of abandonment, third person pronouns, contrasting settings and form. ‘The Deliver’ is a harrowing account of the abandonment of a child, the innocent Other, who is neglected and subsequently transition through acceptance through her adoptive American parents while Doshi reminds us that cruel rejection of otherness is far from the first or last and mothers continue to ‘squeeze out life’ and ‘trudge home to lie down for their men again’. Whereas, ‘An Asian Child Enters a British Classroom’ describes a more routine form of otherness as the subject sheds her ‘identity’, which makes her the Other, in exchange for ‘cultural anonymity’ and ‘conformity’. Both explore different yet disturbing consequences of otherness, relaying to the audience cautionary tales of what happens when we choose not to understand and what society forces the rejected Other to lose. ;