Two roads diverged in a wood...

I don't believe in Fate. I think that we have complete control over the direction our life takes. It is possible to predict where life will bring you because there are outcomes that are certain. Like in chess, you can predict what your opponent will do. In life you can make the same predictions, shaky though they may be. For example, I can predict that if I stay up all night drinking beer, I probably won't go to class tomorrow. Bharati Mukherjee's book “ Jasmine” is all about questions of fate. Will Jane (the main character) be able to overcome her past and make herself a new life in America?

Jane is caught between two worlds it seems. Constantly she compares her life in America to her life in India. It seems however, that she makes these comparisons not as a displaced patriot longing for her ancestral home but more as a refugee who explains what it was she escaped from. We see this in the sharp contrast of Jane and her soon to be mother in law. “Mother” makes quilts to help people in third world countries. Jane is “not sure what Mother imagines. On the edge of the world, in flaming deserts, mangled jungles, squelchy swamps, missionaries save the needy.” Jane has been “out there” and is glad for the safety she now possesses. In an interesting twist of Kurtz's famous last words she says “Oh the wonder! The wonder!” to describe her current life. The Kurtz in question, was the man in Conrad's “A Heart of Darkness” who was at the center of the brutality that Europeans used to conquer Africa. Kurtz's final words, barely a whisper are “The horror! The horror!” These two lives almost parallel each other in certain ways. Jane is trying to control her life and make it more civilized, while Kurtz is trying to control Africa and make it more civilized. The difference is that Jane is trying to accomplish something wonderful and transform her life, while Kurtz only destroys and conquers seeking to replace African savages with European settlers.

Compare the assimilation experience of Du and Jane. When Du first came into Jane and Bud's life, he was wearing an “Aloha, Y'all” t-shirt and a denim jacket. Du watches monster trucks and wants straight teeth instead of toys. On page 19 is a very clear definition of the lines between American and Indian as Jane sees it. A friend of Du's (Scott) is over watching monster trucks on T.V, when Scott is invited over for dinner he grins at Jane with “his perfect teeth” she envies him for his teeth because, as she explains, their was no dentist or doctor in Hasnapur (where she grew up) so her teeth look “as though they've been through slugfests”. It is clear to me, that a gleaming smile is something desirable and a sign of an “American” to Jane. The fact that Jane envies Scott is a sign that she wants the luxuries afforded to Americans but somehow still wants to keep her roots. This is more obvious when we see what Du wanted, and received, for Christmas. “Orthodontics was the present he asked for”. It seems to me that if Jane could afford to fix Du's teeth, she could afford to fix her own. Why doesn't she?

Jane wants to be an American, but she can't or won't let go of her past, however nasty it may have been. In the very first chapter Jane begins a battle with her fate. An astrologer foretold her “widowhood and exile” she rails against this condemnation with “'You're a crazy old man. You don't know what my future holds'”. She is subsequently whacked on the head and suffers a star shaped cut to her forehead. She swims out into the river in a rage and is confronted with the rotting carcass of a dog. When she touches the dog “a stench leaked out of the open body”. She goes on to say:

“That stench stayed with me. I'm twenty four now, I live in Baden, Elsa County Iowa, but every time I lift a glass of water to my lips, fleetingly I smell it. I know what I don't want to be.”

This pretty much sums up what the book is going to be about. The stench is her life in India, which she is desperately trying to escape, but stays with her. This is a reoccurring theme throughout literature; a person confronted with their fate, they fight against it, but in the end it is futile and they end up fulfilling their destiny.

I think the real question is: “Does Jane truly wish to become an American, or is she just seeking something that will release her from her fate?”