Violence and Rebirth - Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine. An Analysis

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Ruhr-University of Bochum, language: English, abstract: Bharati Mukherjee’s novel Jasmine is a story of an Indian woman, beginning with her birth and early life in a little town in India, over the emigration to the USA and finally to herself and what it means to become an American. The eponymous narrator in Jasmine, also known as Jyoti, Jase or Jane, passes through one situation and country to another and so is her inner self reborn several times towards a higher level, until she finally seems to have found a place to rest. Throughout the novel, Jasmine experiences numerous situations that bring violence with them. She is not always the subject of these situations, but they are always connected with her. It is not only physical violence experienced, but also mental violence that influences Jasmines further way of life and forces her to be reborn as a different person. The rough pictures that Mukherjee draws of violent moments reflect the psychological pain that comes with the changes of culture and life that Jasmine experiences. The paper will deal with these moments and analyze them according to their meaning for Jasmine.