Jasmine

During the last reading assignment of Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, we saw Jasmine struggle to find her true identity as she was trying to fulfil the two roles of ‘Jyoti’ and ‘Jasmine’. When she loses her father and her husband in a very tragic accident, she is devastated by their loss and attempts to find herself by going overseas to Florida.

In the last chapter, we encounter a side of Jasmine that we’ve never encountered before. When Half-Face carries her luggage to her room, he takes advantage of her and rapes her and tells her ‘I got things I can do for you and you got something you can do for me, and I got lots of other things I can do to you, understand?’ (113). He rapes the innocent soul and virtue out of her and we quickly see the violent side of Jasmine- she takes the knife Kingsland gave to her on their way to Florida, and stabs Half-Face to death.

I found it interesting when she said ‘We are all put on this earth for a purpose, Mataji would have said. All acts are connected. For every monster there is a hero. For every hero, a monster’ (114) because it sounded like she was justifying her act of killing Half-Face. I’m not saying that women should hide rape incidents as a secret but all I’m trying to say is that she shouldn’t have killed him because she could have been the bigger person and reported her case to the police. This is a debatable question but I don’t think killing is the answer to get revenge on someone. Jasmine needs to start reasoning her action with what she believes in, not what she was told or what someone in the past has said. I think this is a consequence of her struggle to find her identity because if she had known who she was, what her purpose in life is, and what things she lives up to, this incident wouldn’t have happened.