51 pages • 1 hour read
Bharati MukherjeeJasmine
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Names
Jasmine’s names throughout the novel represent her character and circumstances in each episode. Jyoti means “light” or “radiance,” a reflection of the bright-minded girl who defies the fate predicted by the astrologer.
Jane, the name given to her by Bud, is a plain, American name, but Bud uses it in reference to Calamity Jane, a courageous troublemaker. Jasmine, meanwhile, connects it to the Charlotte Bronte’s heroine Jane Eyre, who nurses her much older husband, Mr. Rochester. Both comparisons stray from the mark: Jasmine is not a freewheeling outlaw, nor does she have the kind of ever-burning passion for Bud that Jane Eyre felt.
Jasmine, the name Prakash gave her seems most appropriate, so it is important at the end of the novel, Taylor no longer calls her by the nickname “Jase,” but instead addresses her as Jasmine. He acknowledges that he is willing to accept Jasmine for who she is, not what he wants her to be. Jasmine is a climbing, flowering vine, and that constant movement upwards symbolizes Jasmine’s personal growth throughout the book.
The Tornado
Jasmine is referred to often as a force of nature, a tornado, whose role in the novel is to “leave a path of destruction” (182). From her upbringing in rural India, to her husband’s death at the hands of terrorists, to the upheaval she causes in the Hayeses marriage, to the influence she wields over Darrel, to the impact she has on Bud’s world—and ultimately the destruction of it—the tornado is an apt symbol for the chaos that Jasmine leaves in her wake.
The Knife
A fellow refugee to America gives Jasmine a knife before they part ways after getting off the smuggling trawler, saying, “You con count on dat at least, when de end of de world come in” (107). These words prove prescient. Later, Jasmine after Half-Face, the captain of the trawler, rapes her, Jasmine faces a choice symbolically marked by the knife: do violence to herself, thus accepting her repressive culture’s idea that a woman who has been raped is “impure,” or do violence to her attacker, for the first time getting a vicious kind of justice. Jasmine uses the knife to murder Half-Face, a moment that represents her drive to fend for herself.
The Hogs
Symbolic of the frustrations of life and the ever-heavier burdens that rural famers carry, the hogs are representations of the yawning, ceaseless demands of banks and corporations, creatures that will become crazed the instant their payments and profits are withheld.
The hogs also represent the coming change to middle America, where the farms are bought, subsidized, and reconstructed to be plazas, strip malls, and boutique golf courses. No matter what the farmers do, there is no way to stop this societal progression.
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By Bharati Mukherjee
