Names

                There is one thing that everyone in the world has, and that is a name.  Some people go by a nickname or change their name but they always have some kind of a name that they go by.  I think that a person’s name is a bigger part of their identity than some may think.  If you change your name, you are also giving yourself the opportunity to become a totally different person.  Actors and actresses do it all the time in movies, T.V. shows, plays, etc.  They have their normal daily lives but when they have to film and play the part of someone else, they try to become a totally different person (I say try because some people are better at it than others).  Other than some make-up and a different wardrobe, they still look the same as their normal selves.  But they don’t act like themselves anymore; they act like the person whose name they have adopted.

                In the story Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine goes through many changes in her life, and with every new “life” she begins, she has a different name. 

The reason behind changing your name is to get away from something old and to adopt something new and maybe even exciting.  Whether it is to change your identity and who you are as a whole or it could be that you just don’t like your name and you want a newer and “better” one.  Jasmine, except for one time, never gave herself a new name.  The names were always given to her, most of the time by the man in her life at that time (although there were a few names given to her by Bud’s ex-wife).  She never got to choose what name she was given but she changed herself to her adopt a new life that she thought the new name would bring her.  One example of this is when she marries Prakash.  Before the marriage she was just Jyoti, a poor Indian girl who lived with her mother and followed all the Hindu rules.  After she married Prakash, which is about when she started going by Jasmine, she started calling him by his name which was taboo in the Hindi culture.  She started working by selling detergent from door-to-door and keeping the cash to herself, because she didn't know if Prakash would approve of her working.

 Jasmine was always running away from her past.  You could argue that she was running towards something better, but she didn’t have an ultimate goal that she was running to.  She just knew “what she didn’t want to become (5)”.  So every time she was given a new name she took it as an opportunity to become someone different than she was before.  It’s almost as though she was just “borrowing” the names she was given.  Every time something bad happened and she knew that she didn’t want to continue living that way, she would get rid of that old name and the life that came with it and try to find another one that was better than her old life.

           I think that when someone changes their name, it makes it easier to change their way of life also.  If she never had changed her name, she might have not been able to run away from her past as easy.  Instead of ending up on a boat to America, she might have ended up living with her mother and brothers again after Prakash died.  But the name change acted as a "mask" that she could hide behind and run away from her past with.  It was kind of a safety net for where as long as a mask was on, she could forget her past and find a better life.