The boy standing outside
In the poem, Dharker repeatedly casts the same situation in a different light. Someone stands outside the speaker's door and with each new stanza, a different word is used to describe him. These include a terrorist, a freedom fighter, a hostile militant, a guerrilla warrior, a martyr, a child who resembles the speaker's son, and a child who resembles the reader's son.
The reconstruction that takes place in the poem demonstrates that religious, cultural, political, and social factors will strongly influence a person's perception. Context depends entirely on who is looking at and defining the situation. The speaker in "The right word" peels back all these layers of perceived identity (terrorist, freedom fighter, etc.) until she arrives at what is underneath: a child.
The speaker
The speaker in "The right word" is concerned with finding the correct language to communicate the situation occurring just outside her door. At several points in the poem, the speaker seems frustrated because of the words she uses and the contexts they will evoke in the reader. The speaker questions whether she provides the wrong description, claims to fail at describing the situation adequately, and wonders at the usefulness of words at all. In the end, action is more important to this speaker than words. She invites the boy standing outside her door to come in and eat with her family.
The speaker's decision to accept the boy into her home illustrates the choice to break down the barrier of words (and discard all the baggage that these words carry).
The reader
The speaker in "The right word" directly invokes the reader by stating that the boy "looks like your son, too" (Line 28). In doing so, the speaker conjures familiarity between this boy, whom some would call a terrorist, and the reader. Dharker's choice to address the reader directly implies that the poet's aim is to use this poem to persuade people to think more deeply about their own perceptions and relationships. "The right word" asks readers to imagine themselves in the speaker's situation.
