Identity in Jasmine/TED talks

I recently watched a TED talk entitled: "The Universe is queerer than we suppose" given by Richard Dawkins in February 2003. At one point in the video Dawkins said that every molecule in your body was not there five years ago. We also know from copious amounts of studies that prove that memories are faulty, and that people re-remember experiences in the past. Then, the question remains. If you look at a photograph of yourself five years ago, is that really you? No physical part of yourself from the photo remains now, and chances are good, your memories of that time is faulty and inaccurate. Furthermore, the personality that you have is dissimilar to the one you had in the photo. What part of the you from the photograph remains in the you looking at it. Perhaps then, the person that is staring out at you from the photo is not indeed you, but somebody completely different, a shadow in your past.

This question of identity is a very important one in Jasmine. Her name has changed to represent her changing identity. She has had happiness and sadness in all of her lives, and changed drastically throughout. She often talks about how the version of herself now is not the same person as the she is now. She says that "Jyoti of Hasnapur was not Jasemine, Duff's day mummy and Taylor and Wylie's au-pair in Manhattan; that Jasmine isn't this Jane Ripplemayer," (127). She goes on to question "Which one of us is the undeteteced murder of a half-faced monster, which of us held a dying husband, which of us was raped and raped ad raped in boats and cars and motel rooms?" (127). Jasmine is struggling to differentiate herself, and find out when she became who she is now.

Jasmine believes that these things can happen that cause the "long playing record" of life to jump, and thrust new life into a "groove that was not prepared to receive it," yet this can only be caused by an extraordinary event taking place (127).  Dawkins seems to disagree, that change is a natural occurrence, and that in five years you are guaranteed to become a new, different person. One does not need a life changing event to become different. It is a law of nature. He also believes that "matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you," (TED Talk). This is similar to Jasmine's concept of life being pushed around, albeit more scientific. The idea of this constant change, guaranteed by the universe makes Jasmine's plight less dramatic in many ways. Perhaps, we all spend our entire lives changing, thus we are all trying to search for our identity. Perhaps Jasmine’s search through India to New York and later Iowa is a natural event that must occur in all of our lives, just, perhaps ours may be less dramatic than hers.  Perhaps our names also change over the years, and that Jasmine's is more a struggle of assimilation than of self-discovery.

Dawkins TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe.html

Jane as a mother

These will be a series of posts about Jane/Jyoti/Jasmine's roles in the novel, and what that tells us about her.
This will be a fairly short post about Jane's role as Du's mother in Jasmine  by Baharati Mukherjee.

She says that she is "A mother ... no older than a sister" (28) which creates an odd relationship between the two. In one way they are equals, and should be on the same level. They are both expats who have been absorbed into this family. They have both witnessed some kind of devastation, and they both lost someone close to them. We know for the opening chapter that Jane is a widow, and we know that Du made it out of a refugee camp but "his brother didn't". For all intents and purposes, these two are in a similar situation, and have dealt with similar problems in their lives. The dynamic between them, as a result, is not that of a typical parent child relationship. She is not quick to scold him about tobacco in his room, and is out quizzed by him.

Further more, they have both given up their identity. Jane says that "once we start letting go – let go just one thing ... the rest goes on its own down a sinkhole," (29). In this she notes that Du has tried to adjust and become the all American kid, and as a result has lost everything. The example she gives for this is the shrine, and the fact that he "gave it up" (29). This loss of identity is something that both Jane and Du share, and perhaps gives them a special connection. A connection that is not shared by the father.

The TV scene is another good example of the special connection, where Jane and Du watch the American troops arrest Mexican workers. They have both seen terrible situations and empathize with the Mexican immigrants, and as a result, Du swears. We see, though, a break in the connection, as Jane "doesn't know who the were the assholes, the cowboys or the Indians," (27). We see that she is more Americanized than Du is, and could be perhaps a bone of contention between the two.

Power and Freedom in The Handmaid's Tale Part 2

This is a continuation from the previous post.

The following will focus on the power that was given to the novel through the ending chapter, entitled "Historical Notes"

In the end of the Novel, Offred travels into the light or perhaps the dark; she doesn't know what to expect next. To clear up this confusion, Margaret Atwood adds a lecture explaining the existence of this manuscript, set approximately 200 years after the action in the novel. This chapter explains the existence of this story, and some information about the formation and fall of the Republic of Gilead.

I chose this to talk about because I believe it re-emphasises the power of language, referred to in the last blog post. We find out that this manuscript is the transcript of a series of recordings of a women's voice, done after the fact. This alone is interesting because it offers some solutions to the ending of the novel. Quite a bit of evidence is given that she did indeed escape, as she would have had to make these recordings at some point.

We know that someone spoke the words that we just read, and took the time to say them. They were not intended to be written down, but indeed intended to be heard. This was a form of protest perhaps greater than anything else that Offred, or any other had done. She recorded her story to be remembered and heard throughout the ages, and that her voice would resonate throughout time. Indeed, The Handmaid's Tale recordings outlasted Gilead itself, a seemingly indestructible thing. What is astounding is the truly indestructible power that these words ended up having. Could Offred have known that her story would've been told for the next 200 years? Would she have told it any differently?

Professor Piexioto, the professor administering the lecture, offers a series of explanations for this document's existence. He posits that the tapes were designed by a publisher interested in making a quick buck, but indeed the "super-imposition of the voice upon the music tape could not have been done in the last hundred and fifty years"(315).

Perhaps the fact that this is "post facto" (315) as Piexioto says offers an understanding into the novel. I find the idea of Offred reflecting upon everything that has happened, and recording her account in case she never escaped fascinating, and I believe adds a great deal more to Offred's narration. One always remembers things differently when looking back, and I believe that the post facto nature of these calls into question her validity. Further the manuscript is questioned as we know that the order is not necessarily correct, and we again must question what we just read. I was astonished by the power of a few words, and how that completely changed my understanding of the novel as a whole.

The concept of a pseudonym for Luke, Nick, Moira and Janine that were "adopted to protect these individuals should the tapes be discovered," (314) further forces us to question what we have just read. Names mean a lot to a identifying a character, and if these are not their true names, then we have even less knowledge of these few people. It radically changes our knowledge of the world of the book, which is odd for the last 10 pages of the book. It also has some resonance between the names that exist between the handmaids. The fact that Moira and Janine are probably pseudonyms shows that the narrator does not trust us, as the sharing of names in the Red Center was the first sign of trust.