Names & Identities

Many Americans today go through life without ever considering what their name means or what it meant to those who gave it. A name can do so much more than just identify us; it can help to define a person’s character and personality. This idea of an identity behind a name can mean so much more. Nicknames are very common, especially for young children, and I think these nicknames are the best example of how people use so much more of a person’s true personality or true identity to address them. Growing up as a child nicknames that my brothers, sisters and even cousins had meant little to us at the time, but now looking back at it they established what kind of people we would grow up to become. I don’t think that everyone has a destiny, yet everyone is a product of their specific environment. For this reason it may be said that young children given nicknames by their immediate elders can sometimes label them for life, or nickname them appropriately enough to foreshadow the life they may lead.

Jasmine viewed herself as several different people that could be easily identified by each of her distinct names. Her story of ever changing identity and belonging changes Jasmine in many ways and the idea of her changing names is an effective way to identify each of her mindsets or personalities to each aspect of her journey. “I have had a husband for each of the women I have been,” is a bold and solid description of the life Jasmine has lived.

Now one may ask why such a person who has endured so much might allow herself to be empowered by the many different lives and therefore names she carried throughout the novel. Jyoti, Jasmine, Kali, Jane and finally Jase are the different outlooks one “shell” took over her lifetime to trying to be something she wasn’t. It was through all these identities and names that she had led a life, but not her own. Jasmine was reborn into herself as she cries, “I cry into Taylors’s shoulder, cry through al the lives I’ve given birth to, cry for all my dead.” The best way to describe the life, names and identities of Jasmine is through her own words, “adventure, risk, transformation: the frontier is pushing indoors through un-caulked windows.”