Choosing and Being Chosen

  “For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?”—Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536).

  Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine delves into one of the most contentious and broadly debated dilemmas of the human experience: do we make our own choices, or are those choices made for us?  This philosophical question has brought major change to the Western world, most notably during the Protestant Reformation.  Across global boundaries, however, other cultures and their subalterns have looked within to examine if they have a choice in their world experience.  Jasmine, Mukherjee’s main character, is an active character, while Mukherjee uses other characters to achieve a balance of those who behave and may indeed believe their life is predetermined.

  From the first line of the story, Jasmine believes she is a fighter, not a fleer.  She boldly denounces the astrologer who foretells her ultimate despair: “No…You don’t know what my future holds!”(3).  She is constantly challenged to accept Fate by her family in India, yet she adamantly holds on to her independence.  She refuses an arranged marriage in her home country, and dismisses her grandmother’s words of caution after a dog bite that it was not Jasmine’s actions that saved her life, but rather her destiny.  All of this conjecture is foolish to Jasmine, and thus chooses to move to America.  Mukherjee does not overlook the role of predetermination in our lives, however.

  Du, Bud and Jane’s (Jasmine’s Iowa-given name) adopted son is a paradigm for fate.  Du arrives from Vietnam as a refugee, and seems completely bewildered by what is going on around him.  He takes his Americanization seriously, but it seems his assimilation is not much of his choice, but rather what was supposed to happen.  Du is immediately shocked and allured by McDonald’s, a renowned fixture of Americana: “Du jumped down from the back, leaving the new coat on the seat” (14).  This is what Americans do: they eat at McDonald’s.  Du seems to just appear in the novel, and we haven’t learned entirely what or who brought him here, but it seems implausible that Du set out for America.

  All throughout the novel, Jasmine seems determined to live life on her terms.  An interesting stylistic component about the novel is that Jasmine’s quotations are in the active voice.  Nothing is “imposed” on Jasmine; she creates her perceptions: “We murder who we were so we can rebirth ourselves in the images of dreams.” (29).  Mukherjee’s language is quite deliberate here.  “We murder” is clearly an action people choose; “we can rebirth ourselves” is another example of free will.  While Jasmine realizes that part of her must die to make room for the new, she is confident that they are her choices, and not anyone else’s.

  Mukherjee takes great scruples to articulate her viewpoints on important life themes.  The language of Jasmine teems with deliberation.  Mukherjee’s use of characterization and setting are quite striking: both devices drive the active/passive point home quite clearly and in an easy-to-read manner.  While we may make our own choices, we cannot plan for what will happen to us, and it will be interesting to see if Jasmine has any plan of action for when the time comes that she cannot choose what happens to her.