Immigrants almost inevitably face immense challenges in pursuing the American dream: socially, economically, perhaps even internally. Such struggles are evident in the novel "Jasmine," Bharati Mukherjee's richly descriptive and emotionally powerful novel about a young immigrant woman. Mukherjee vividly brings the theme of rebirth to life in “Jasmine” through the use of multiple international settings and characterizations, following a young girl from her Indian childhood to her American twenties as she searches for an identity she truly believes is hers. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Mukherjee introduces the basis of Jasmine's metamorphosis in the first few pages, as young Jyoti visits an astrologer in her native India. After telling the old man that her future holds great sadness and turmoil, the seven-year-old protests indignantly, then falls while running away and cuts her forehead. The astrologer's ominous predictions would frighten most children, but Jyoti does not run away in fear; rather, she refuses to believe that such a fate awaits her and, instead, creates for herself the hope of a better outcome. Indeed, one gets the immediate sense that this young girl's wisdom surpasses her years. “It's not a scar,” Jyoti shouts at her teasing sisters, “it's my third eye” (Mukherjee 5). Jyoti, referring to her mother's past stories, believed that she would become a sage with her third eye. Jyoti is a strong girl in a weak village where "bad luck haunted wives without dowry, rebellious wives, barren wives. They fell into wells, they were hit by trains, they burned to death heating milk on kerosene stoves" (Mukherjee 41). Jyoti's mother tried to strangle Jyoti the day she was born, hoping to save her fifth daughter from a desperate life. Having been reborn figuratively during her own birth, Jyoti knows that she will survive. Even as a child, it is clear to Jyoti that she is not like others in her neighborhood. With his "third eye", he sees two options for a girl in poor, misogynistic Hasnapur: succumb to her surroundings or reinvent a better life. For Jyoti, the first option is simply not an option. A better life surely awaits Jyoti when, at the age of fourteen, she marries Prakash, a young man with plans for a new life in America. Prakash lovingly gives Jyoti the more American and progressive sounding name Jasmine. With this new identity, the young couple anticipates the promise of reinventing their lives; if only the violence of their Indian life hadn't led to the death of Jasmine's young husband. Still rejecting the haunting words of the astrologer of her youth, Jasmine realizes that she must escape the disillusioned lives of her mother and the old widows; she will become the American wife of her beloved Prakash. Aiming not to leave India, but to get to America, Jasmine finds herself with a forged passport, feeling like "the recipient of an organ transplant" (Mukherjee 103). As an illegal immigrant, however, she must accept any type of transportation, no matter how humiliating and dirty. This sad and empty existence, surrounded by other illegal travelers, brings Jasmine once again to face death. When she is attacked and raped by a demonic man, the man who ultimately landed her in America, Jasmine sees her options again, but there is no choice; he has to kill the man who had tried to kill Prakash's bride. Knowing that her “body was merely the shell, soon to be discarded” (Mukherjee 121), Jasmine can be reborn. Yet the Florida imagined by Jasmine and Prakash is nothing like the"United States of India" in which he awakens. Believing she has "traveled the world without ever leaving the familiar crops of Punjab" (Mukherjee 128), Jasmine makes her way along a highway lined with farmland, garbage cans, and snarling bony dogs. Given new life by a gruff but kind-hearted woman, Jazzy is born and sent to NewYork City with job prospects and advice to transform: "Now remember, if you walk and talk American, they'll think you were born here. Most Americans cannot imagine anything else" (Mukherjee 134). His American name and bearing, however, are not sufficient preparation for New York, with its beggars and "people like me" (Mukherjee 140). Prakash's visit to an old teacher proves even more disturbing, as she finds herself helplessly drifting back to India, regressing to who she once was. Deeply depressed by this man's life, so similar to Jyoti's, Jazzy knows the time has come for a change. Jazzy becomes Jase, the caregiver for the precocious daughter of Taylor and Wylie, a young couple from New York City. This fun and lively nickname that Taylor gave her suits ex Jazzy perfectly, as she quickly adapts to her new surroundings. His new life is America! In the high-rise surrounded by lively young people, Jase will fit perfectly into this world, with "his ease, carefree confidence, and graceful self-centeredness" (Mukherjee 171). She thrives in this home and family, spending money frivolously and falling in love with Taylor. Jyoti, Jasmine and Jazzy would definitely be amazed by such a character. While Jyoti had “burned herself in a garbage can funeral pyre behind a boarded-up motel in Florida [and] Jasmine was living for the future” (Mukherjee 176), Jase is a modern American woman who can do whatever she wants. When Wylie and Taylor divorce, completing this decidedly un-Indian scene, Taylor, Jase, and little Duff become the family Jasmine and Prakash could have been. Yet despite her bright, love-lit apartment, this world soon becomes too small. India invades New York, bringing with it past life and past death, overwhelming Jase in a shocking torrent. The man who killed Prakash, the man who would undoubtedly kill the three of them, stole Jase's identity, right there in front of God and everyone. Indeed, Jase believes, “God's plans have always seemed clearly laid out… I'm going to Iowa” (Mukherjee 189). Just as Duff started her life in Iowa, Jase decides that she too will start a new life in Iowa. . Iowa is a nice place for an American named Jane, the pseudo-wife of a banker named Bud. Here she carries Bud's baby and shares life with their Vietnamese-American son, Du. Thousands of immigrants before Jane might have dreamed of this life, but Jase's silent death is deafening to Jane. Jane is the first person who misses who she was. Her life among miles of rolling hills and farmers desperately tending the land is suffocating, even for the pleasant housewife Jane has become. Jyoti returns to Jane, as she shares disheartening stories from this past life with her family. Life in this house on three hundred acres in Iowa becomes Jane's mud hut in India; caring for her paralyzed husband becomes caring for her depressed mother. Only Du's presence keeps Jane present. Du, who almost strangely shares the same quiet brilliance as her beloved Prakash, and who she believes was the son she and Prakash could have had, is Jane's lifeline. Although they come from two different worlds, Jane and Du share the same background: both killed to survive and both were reborn thanks to their.