Jasmine

7 Pages 1634 Words

Jasmine: Survivor or Victim?

At times in life satisfaction is hard to achieve. A person may not ever be satisfied with the way things may be working out. People tend to live according to what they see others doing. If you see a person’s life and you think it’s better than yours you may strive to make you life ditto another person’s life. In Bharati Mukherjee novel “ Jasmine”, the main character Jasmine seems as if she is lost in life and always thinks that someone around her has a better life than hers. Jasmine struggles with never being satisfied with her life so she moves every time she feels that thinks should be changed. Often times if a person cant accept problems they run from them, and that exactly what Jasmine does. Jasmine began her life in India where there is a huge amount of domestic violence going on partially dowry murders, Could this be what jasmine is running from all along? Jasmine was a widow in India at the age of seventeen and became very isolated and depress, this is what cause her to move to America. Jasmine didn’t really know that the same thing that goes on in India also existed in America, so no matter where she ran she had to face something. The main thing Jasmine will face will be learnt assumptions that people may have about her and how she is living.
Sometimes in America people rarely realize the types of violence that goes on the serious extent that it happens in. There are many learnt assumptions in other countries about America because in other countries it’s being taught that America is home of the free. In “ Ways of Seeing” John Berger states, “ The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe”(106). This shows how a person can view something and first look at what they know about that image and then view it according to what is already know. Rarely do people look at others and judge them by what they see in front of them, they first search for things they...