Who Am I? by wallstreet on Blogster

My name is Jonathan but some people know me as Jon, Frank, and “Big Guy”. We all have names for ourselves, our pets, our family and even our most pristine possession, what is exactly a name? According to Webster’s Dictionary a name is “a word or phrase that constitutes the distinctive designation of a person or thing”. As for our main character Jasmine she has gone by many names from Jasmine, Jyoti, to Wife and Jazzy. Throughout the book she has changed the way people address her even though her name throughout the whole book has been essentially Jasmine, she has changed the way people address her several times and we come to the question Does she own her name or is she allowing her name to shape who she is.

In the book Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, we know our main character as Joyti and throughout the book her identity changes as time passes. We see many names that she is recognized as from Jasmine to Wife and even Jazzy. But we come into a problem and start to notice that her name owns her, and she does not own her own name. Originally in the beginning of the book she had a unique Indian name that was given to her by her father in her tribe and as time passed and she moved away from her tribe she beings the process of changing her names and each time she does this she loses a bit of her identity. She becomes less Indian and less of a tribeswoman so that she could fit into her surroundings and not stick out like a sore thumb.

This can be problematic because she shows that she is willing and capable to change herself around others and not keep a firm grip on her own identity. So essentially she allows the names that she is given to guide her life. She is called Wife, so she acts, talks, and walks like a wife should, and she still looses a bit of her identity as an Indian tribeswoman. She is called Jasmine, she acts, talks and walks like an American woman should so that she does not draw attention to herself so that others can clearly see that she a tribeswoman from India. With this she is essentially running away from her old identity and runs towards a new one, for some reason each new identity that she assumes she is not happy with and moves onto another. With each new identity she loses some of her old identity until it can get to a point where she has completely lost what makes her Joyti, what makes her Jasmine and she is no longer the girl that grew up in a small tribe, she is now someone she does not even recognize.

Everyone has gone through times where they are searching for a new identity, from childhood we seek out new friends that like to play, and we assume names and identities from that. Through adulthood where we believe that we have found our identity but have not allowed our growing up experiences loose our original identity that we had gained at childhood. This is a natural process that everyone goes through, but to an extent this can be good. For the case of Jasmine, she has gone through so many identity changes that she does not even know whom she is anymore, she has lost her own sense of identity and cannot even recognize herself. She is at the extreme of the spectrum but we all have these experiences.

1 comment on Who Am I?

robburton said 4 months ago

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Who Am I?

April 21, 2008 / by wallstreet

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