Tishani Doshi: Selected Poems Literary Elements

Third person narrator; an individual that is part of the events of the poems

Iambic Tetrameter

In "The Immigrant's Song" the first simile can be found when the narrator is describing the immigrant parents while they were enjoying their lifestyle in their original homeland. The simile is "when our mothers' headscarves hung like white flags on washing lines." The second simile in "The Immigrant's Song" takes place after the immigrants have moved to a new country and are reminiscing upon their ld life and their friends who were left behind. These friends are gone, "our old friends who are unravelling like fairy tales in the forests of the dead."

A heavy example of alliteration can be found in the first stanza of "The Immigrant's Song" and these repetitions are so pronounced that they could be considered anaphora as well. The phrase "Let us not speak" is repeated at the beginning of three separate sentences in the first stanza.

The irony of the poem "The Immigrant's Song" is that in the attempt to forget about the past life the immigrant's had and their family and friends, the poem ends up focusing on these exact things. By repeatedly saying things like "Let us not remember the first smell of rain," or "Let us not name our old friends," the author ironically focuses on these exact details and brings them to the forefront of the reader's mind.

Sonnet

19th Century, Starts in India where the immigrants originally reside and then transitions to a new country

Melancholy, Reminiscent, Home-sick, Morose

The protagonists are the immigrants and their mothers. While their is no human antagonist, the antagonists could be considered the obstacles the immigrants have to overcome in their lives.

In their home country, although it is familiar to them, these individuals are faced with many hardships and widespread violence. Their family members are killed and kidnapped; "Let us not speak of men, stolen from their beds at night." Additionally, as mentioned later in the poem, the immigrants are burdened with stories of war and abandonment. Their secondary major conflict is when they travel from their home to a new country to set up a different life.

The climax is when the family is forced to find a new place to cal home because of the war and violence that has tore apart their families and their homeland. Reaching this new land and experiencing the vast cultural, linguistic, and societal differences is the climax of the poem "The Immigrant's Song."

One quote that emphasizes oreshadowing and the future is "Let us stay here, and wait for the future to arrive, for grandchildren to speak in forked tongues about the country we once came
from." We can see foreshadowing in this part of the poem because these lines hint to the idea that the grandchildren will grow up in this country and become more and more alien to the country their own grandparents emigrated from.

One of the major understatements throughout the entirety of the poem is the violence and heavy casualties that are taking place in the country, a factor that eventually coerces many people to flee. This can be seen in the line "Let us not name our old friends who are unravelling like fairy tales in the forests of the dead." The line itself doesn't sound so harsh, especially with the mention of fairy tales, but the phrase unraveling in the forests of the dead is an understatement to mean they have been slaughtered and are now part of a pile of bodies large enough to create this forest.

The violence which is mentioned in "The Immigrant's Song" is a historical allusion to the violence that took place during the India-Pakistan partition. As Britain divided the two countries, Hindus and Muslims from Pakistan and India respectively had to flee their homes due to the violence between both sides. Most historians state that Muslim uprisings were more violent, however a considerable amount of historians also state the opposite.

An example of metonymy can be found in the lines that say "And when we break bread in cafés and at kitchen tables with our new brothers." The word brothers is used to represent all citizens of the country which the immigrants have travelled to, especially those who have been living in this new country for generations.

There are multiple examples of personification throughout the poem, as one of its main focuses is on vivid description of the environment and atmosphere of the immigrants' homeland. The most significant one gives human qualities to the sky when it states "Let us not speak of the long arms of sky that used to cradle us at dusk."

A hyperbole can be found near the beginning of the poem. "When coffee beans filled the morning with hope." Although the smell of coffee may have been a comforting and optimistic presence, it is difficult to argue that these coffee beans literally filled the area with hope, especially because of all the horrific events taking place at the time.

Tishani Doshi does not use onomatopoeia in the selected poems. Instead, she tries to describe those sounds through other means, such as comparisons to the things around them.