Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Norms of everyday society
Narrative writing about identity
Social norms in the world
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Norms of everyday society
Jasmine
Bharati Mukherjee was born on July 27, 1940 in Calcutta, India. (Pradhan ) She was born into a wealthy family, which assisted her in her dream of becoming a writer. She lived in India, Europe, the United States, and Canada. Migrating to these countries that are so different from her place of birth enabled her to write very powerful novels on immigrant experiences. Mukherjee’s novels focus on exploring the migration and the feeling of alienation that is experienced by these immigrants. (Pradhan) Her works have explored such themes as isolation, sexism, discrimination, the mistreatment of Indian women, and exploring identities.
In Bharati Mukherjee’s novel Jasmine, the character shows some similarities to the author, but there are many differences. Both were born in India, but Jasmine was not born into wealth. Jasmine does not have the same resources as Bharati, so it is harder for her to leave her home and to migrate to the United States. One of the similarities between Jasmine and the author is their drive to go after what they want and to not stop until they get it. Bharati’s drive is to become a writer, and Jasmine’s is to go to the United States. Another similarity is their struggle to find their identity when they migrate to the United States. This is one of the major themes in Jasmine.
One important aspect about the novel Jasmine is that it is not written in chronological order. The novel is written as though the main character is remembering events out of sequence. The author employed this method of writing quite efficiently. It was not entirely confusing and it set a mood of anticipation of what is to come.
The novel starts out when Jasmine is a young girl in India. She is consulting an astrol...
... middle of paper ...
...arries his child. This is evidence that she is steering further away from her Indian values.
Someone may say that Jasmine is about a victim struggling in America or that it is about an immigrant who has assimilated herself into becoming an American. I think it is a little bit of both. I think that the main theme of this novel is exploring identities. Jasmine’s struggle in America and her immigrant experience force her to explore within herself and to discover what she is capable of doing in life. Jasmine has many stages in her life. Even her name changes throughout the novel, becoming more American, which corresponded to the stages in her life. Jasmine went through a metamorphoses in this novel in which she had to suffer many terrible and some wonderful events in order to become the person that she is at the end of the novel when she leaves Bud to be with Taylor.
There are also foreshadowing events that occurred during the story. One event in particular is when she is in art class and asked to draw a tree and she has difficulty in presenting her ideas until Mr. Freeman asks her to make a collage using random items. After putting the collage together, Mr. Freeman comments that it represents pain. Melinda has difficulty drawing details and life into her trees just like in her own life s...
In the first section of the book it starts off with a little girl named Tasha. Tasha is in the Fifth grade, and doesn’t really have many friends. It describes her dilemma with trying to fit in with all the other girls, and being “popular”, and trying to deal with a “Kid Snatcher”. The summer before school started she practiced at all the games the kid’s play, so she could be good, and be able to get them to like her. The girls at school are not very nice to her at all. Her struggle with being popular meets her up with Jashante, a held back Fifth ...
In “My Two Lives”, Jhumpa Lahiri tells of her complicated upbringing in Rhode Island with her Calcutta born-and-raised parents, in which she continually sought a balance between both her Indian and American sides. She explains how she differs from her parents due to immigration, the existent connections to India, and her development as a writer of Indian-American stories. “The Freedom of the Inbetween” written by Sally Dalton-Brown explores the state of limbo, or “being between cultures”, which can make second-generation immigrants feel liberated, or vice versa, trapped within the two (333). This work also discusses how Lahiri writes about her life experiences through her own characters in her books. Charles Hirschman’s “Immigration and the American Century” states that immigrants are shaped by the combination of an adaptation to American...
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007. Print.
Mukherjee begins her essay with an exposition of her and her sister’s story. She uses repetition in order to emphasize the main differences between the two. For example, she states, “I am an American citizen and she is not. I am moved that thousands of residents are finally taking the oath of citizenship. She is not.” This line is used to set up her subject. She is stating that she is an immigrant whose dream was to envelop the American culture, while her sister does not believe that she should be assimilated into it. The use of repetition also appeals to her audience, Americans, by capturing their attention. Many Americans are nationalistic, if not jingoistic, and believe that America is the greatest country in the world. The notion that others do not feel this way may intrigue them, or potentially offend them, causing them to read on in attempt to find flaws within her argument.
“Like many immigrant offspring I felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new, approved of on either side of the hyphen” (Lahiri, My Two lives). Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer Prize winner, describes herself as Indian-American, where she feels she is neither an Indian nor an American. Lahiri feels alienated by struggling to live two lives by maintaining two distinct cultures. Lahiri’s most of the work is recognized in the USA rather than in India where she is descents from (the guardian.com). Lahiri’s character’s, themes, and imagery in her short stories and novels describes the cultural differences of being Indian American and how Indian’s maintain their identity when moved to a new world. Lahiri’s inability to feel accepted within her home, inability to be fully American, being an Indian-American, and the difference between families with same culture which is reflected in one of her short stories “Once in a Lifetime” through characterization and imagery.
As the stories progress, each character experiences their own desire for better; they have found something that will better their lives. As they struggle to gain their prize, hardships string into place to hinder their path. Jasmine must overcome the death of her husband to get to America. She must also find her way illegally into the country and settle somewhere suitable. When a man helps her into the country, she is very grateful, but the man rapes her. She kills the man, “the human form beneath it grew smaller and smaller” (Mukherjee 119), and escapes to finish the job she had set out for.
Her realization that she is not alone in her oppression brings her a sense of freedom. It validates her emerging thoughts of wanting to rise up and shine a light on injustice. Her worries about not wanting to grow up because of the harsh life that awaits her is a common thought among others besides the people in her community. As she makes friends with other Indians in other communities she realizes the common bonds they share, even down to the most basic such as what they eat, which comforts her and allows her to empathize with them.
basis of the plot and themes of this novel. The fond memories she possessed of her mother and the harsh ones of her father are reflected in the thoughts and
In her personal essay Mukherjee shows how culture effects someone’s views on the world when she says, “I’ll become a U.S. citizen for now, then change back to Indian when I’m ready to go home. I feel some kind of irrational attachment to India that I don’t to America. Until all this hysteria against illegal immigrants, I was totally happy. Having my green card meant I could visit any place in the world I wanted to and then come back to a job that’s satisfying and that I do very well.”(10). Since Mukherjee was originally from her home of India, the culture she was exposed to followed with her to the U.S. That is the reason for her “irrational attachment” to India and not the U.S., where she had spent most of her life. Her views made her favor India over the
The book will end when the main character turns eighteen and leaves her parents’ home for college. Build on Introduction – 25 to 35 seconds In order to gather some ideas for her story, Nadia began reading other coming-of-age stories. Most of them were novels.
This research study focuses at negotiating the shifting identities of immigrants and their traumas in postcolonial literature with reference to Lahiri’s fiction. The suffering of every immigrant in achieving a shelter and identity in a foreign land often leads to loss of identity. The qualms, agitation and nervousness of immigrants often increase the issues of identity, and immigrants often feel alienated in the midst of exotic land, they even start to think about achieving new identities. Stuart Hall (1987) a famous cultural theorist discusses the issues of cultural identity and migration as he says “Migration is a one way trip. There is no “home” to go back to”. Change in the place and ambience totally change the circumstances in the lives of immigrants in Lahiri’s fiction, they often try to cling to their own cultural identity and costumes. But the cultural effect is often so strong that it deeply affects the identity of immigrants and they ultimately try to change their identities. Immigrants make an absurd attempt to get mingled in the culture of foreign country. Hall discusses “Cultural identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference” (235).
Recent years have witnessed a large number of Indian English fiction writers who have stunned the literary world with their works. The topics dealt with are contemporary and populist and the English is functional, communicative and unpretentious. Novels have always served as a guide, a beacon in a conflicting, chaotic world and continue to do so. A careful study of Indian English fiction writers show that there are two kinds of writers who contribute to the genre of novels: The first group of writers include those who are global Indians, the diasporic writers, who are Indians by birth but have lived abroad, so they see Indian problems and reality objectively. The second group of writers are those born and brought up in India, exposed to the attitudes, morale and values of the society. Hence their works focus on the various social problems of India like the plight of women, unemployment, poverty, class discrimination, social dogmas, rigid religious norms, inter caste marriages, breakdown of relationships etc.
Mahasweta Devi, always writes for deprived section of people. She is a loving daughter, a clerk, a lecturer, a journalist, an editor, a novelist, a dramatist and above all an ardent social activist. Her stories bring to the surface not only the misery of the completely ignored tribal people, but also articulate the oppression of w...
V. S. Naipaul, the mouthpiece of displacement and rootlessness is one of the most significant contemporary English Novelists. Of Indian descent, born in Trinidad, and educated in England, Naipaul has been placed as a rootless nomad in the cultural world, always on a voyage to find his identity. The expatriate sensibility of Naipaul haunts him throughout his fiction and other works, he becomes spokesman of emigrants. He delineates the Indian immigrant’s dilemma, his problems and plights in a fast-changing world. In his works one can find the agony of an exile; the pangs of a man in search of meaning and identity: a dare-devil who has tried to explore myths and see through fantasies. Out of his dilemma is born a rich body of writings which has enriched diasporic literature and the English language.