Does Your Name Control You?

We all are given names when we are born. Some of us get these names from a book, others get named after family members, and some named for religious reasons. During our lives, we also receive nick names from our friends and family that describe us or help shorten our name. We take these names and give them meaning through our actions, though sometimes we allow these names to take control of our lives. Why are names important?

The main character in the book I just finished, Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, goes through a transformation of multipule names allowing some of them to shape and control her life. In the beginning of her life she is named Jyoti. Jyoti is born in Punjab, India into a loving family which has their father killed by a bull in a freak accident. Her brothers marry Jyoti off, where her husband calls her “Jasmine”. She transforms into Jasmine for her husband to leave the feudal India and become a “new kind of city woman.” Tragedy strikes again, this time killing her husband in a bombing.

She attempts to go back to the feudal Jyoti after her husband is killed, but can not. She journeys to America in search of the college that her late husband was going to attend. She acquires a new name after being raped, Kali, the god of death.  Wondering through America she happens upon a saint by the name of Lillian Gordon. Lillian transforms her once again into “Jazzy”, an American girl.  With Jazzy’s transformation complete she is sent to New York in search of her husband’s old professor. She found herself back in a feudal India taking care of the professor’s parents for 5 months losing all the wealth of knowledge gained from Lillian.

            Finally, Jasmine takes matters into hands getting a green card from the professor and contacting Lillian’s daughter, Kate. Kate helps Jasmine get her a job looking after Taylor and Wylie adopted daughter, Duff. “Jase” then becomes what her new employers want her to become; “humorous, intelligent, refined, destitute, (and) affectionate.” Jase becomes a “day mummy”, a “caregiver”, and part of the family, not “illegal, not murderer, not widowed, raped, destitute, (or) fearful.” This is all ruined when one day she believes to sees her husband’s killer at a hotdog stand. Out of fear she vanishes to the west, Iowa, were she is more new names to conform to.

In Iowa she becomes “Jane” the lover of a banker, Bud. Jane assumes the role Bud’s nurse/lover after he is shot in the back by a disgruntled farmer. Bud’s jealous ex, Karin, names Jane “tornado” and “gold digger” because she does not fully understand Jane’s role in Bud’s life. This is until Karin realizes what Jane has been doing for Bud and comes to the realization that she stayed through the mess of taking care of him. Soon Jane begins to receive post cards from Taylor and Duff with promises of visiting. Jane is then given a choice that only she can make. Which name does she want to become Jane or Jase?  Wanting the love and since of family that Jasmine felt in New York, she chooses to go west with Taylor.

Without experiencing these wide ranges of lives, lived through several names, how could she had made the choice on what name she wanted to live as. Though she allowed her names to first determine where her life would lead her, Jasmine ended up choosing which life she wanted to become and live. She had many chances to become all of her names again, but wanted to become Jase, the loving mother and wife of Taylor and Duff.