Bharati Mukherjee Desire And Duty Quotes
Jacob Holthaus
Ancillary Essay 2
Professor Wales
Desire and Duty In the world we live in today, beliefs and influences are what impact us the most. Some people are born into their beliefs and really have no opportunity to decide for them selves what they want to believe in. Your beliefs and your religious views create your outlook on life and make you live a certain way. The novel Jasmine opens with the phrase, "Lifetimes ago...” (Mukherjee, 3) in which an astrologer predicts Jasmine 's widowhood and exile, frames the discussion of whether fate or free will dictate her life’s trajectory. This relates very closely to the theme of desire and duty. Due to Jasmines religious and cultural orientation, she has been programmed to believe in predestination. Her desire to become reborn into something free willed and American will contradict everything that was ever influenced to Mukherjee. In the novel she acquires different names for herself, each name has a important reason and story behind it, almost as chapters in her life. Today …show more content…
Taylor never seems to scorn Wylie 's decision. Taylor does not seem to consider it a wife 's duty to remain with her loving husband and daughter. Jasmine in the end cycles back to the astrologer, "It isn 't guilt I feel, it 's relief. I realize I have already stopped thinking of myself as Jane. Adventure, risk, transformation: the frontier is pushing indoors through uncaulked windows. Watch me re-position the stars, I whisper to the astrologer who floats cross-legged above my kitchen stove."(Mukherjee, 187) The astrologer 's position above the stove recalls Vimla 's suicide scene. Jasmine intended to follow the same ritual after Prakash 's death. She brought his suit to America in order to make a pyre. Jasmine mentally has the astrologer hover above the stove, as if to commit a kind of sati. The image seems to symbolize a ritual death of
Ancillary Essay 2
Professor Wales
Desire and Duty In the world we live in today, beliefs and influences are what impact us the most. Some people are born into their beliefs and really have no opportunity to decide for them selves what they want to believe in. Your beliefs and your religious views create your outlook on life and make you live a certain way. The novel Jasmine opens with the phrase, "Lifetimes ago...” (Mukherjee, 3) in which an astrologer predicts Jasmine 's widowhood and exile, frames the discussion of whether fate or free will dictate her life’s trajectory. This relates very closely to the theme of desire and duty. Due to Jasmines religious and cultural orientation, she has been programmed to believe in predestination. Her desire to become reborn into something free willed and American will contradict everything that was ever influenced to Mukherjee. In the novel she acquires different names for herself, each name has a important reason and story behind it, almost as chapters in her life. Today …show more content…
Taylor never seems to scorn Wylie 's decision. Taylor does not seem to consider it a wife 's duty to remain with her loving husband and daughter. Jasmine in the end cycles back to the astrologer, "It isn 't guilt I feel, it 's relief. I realize I have already stopped thinking of myself as Jane. Adventure, risk, transformation: the frontier is pushing indoors through uncaulked windows. Watch me re-position the stars, I whisper to the astrologer who floats cross-legged above my kitchen stove."(Mukherjee, 187) The astrologer 's position above the stove recalls Vimla 's suicide scene. Jasmine intended to follow the same ritual after Prakash 's death. She brought his suit to America in order to make a pyre. Jasmine mentally has the astrologer hover above the stove, as if to commit a kind of sati. The image seems to symbolize a ritual death of