Disappointment and Dead Space

        When we live in a world where things are rarely as they appear to be, disappointment is imminent.  We learn the art of disappointment as children when we are denied having our every whim fulfilled.  As we grow, we accept the world for what it is and adjust our outlook accordingly.  This does not ensure, however, that we will not still face the occasional let down.  Without these obstacles, would our moments of victory and achievement be less meaningful and deserved?  In the novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, the main character Jasmine faces her fair share of miscalculations.
        When Jasmine becomes a seventeen year old widow, condemned to a life of loneliness and isolation, she flees her native land of India in search for a greater life in America.  She asks the question of “Can wanting be fatal?” (142, Mukherjee)  Jasmine knows what her life will consist of if she chooses to stay in India.  When she realizes that her life will remain a painful struggle with loneliness and  a lifelong battle of acceptance, she feels her only choice is to start over.  She sees America as it is on a brochure, a clean and safe place of opportunity where everyone is smiling and successful.  Her interpretation of America is no different than any interpretation of a glorified product.  Do the “as seen on TV” products ever work as well as the commercials tell us they do?
        When Jasmine relocates to America, after a long and challenging journey, she finds herself in a world of simulated Punjabi cultural comforts.  She is taken in as the widow of a favored and beloved student, and works for the family cleaning and cooking for her room and board.  Her host family clings to the comforts they find such as “the Indian-food stores on the block, Punjabi newspapers and Hindi film magazines at the corner newsstand.” ( 146, Mukherjee)  Jasmine does not share their need for familiarity in a foreign land.  Instead, Jasmine is only reminded of her past in which she is desperately trying to outrun.  She feels that she is “spiraling into depression behind the fortress of
Punjabiness.” (148, Mukherjee)  She feels that the enclosure of familiarity and protected Punjabi environment is drowning her hopes and dreams of a new life in America.  She feels her culture is holding her back by dictating her set life plan, and is in a defeated states when she flees to America, only to be greeted by the same feelings of loneliness and widowhood.
        Jasmine soon realizes that, “American clothes disguised my widowhood.  In a T-shirt and cords, I was taken for a student.  In this apartment of artificially maintained Indianess, I wanted to distance myself from everything Jyoti-like.  To them, I was a widow who should show a proper modesty, of appearance and attitude.” (145, Mukherjee)  Ever since her life has been destroyed by the bomb that killed her husband, Jasmine has been searching for a greater meaning in her future.  The Indian code of conduct dictates that her life will be spent in mourning.  In her eyes, she would be mourning not her husband, but her life of what she could have been if he were still alive.  America was her chance to start over and recreate her hopes and dreams.  When she is put in the came corner and bullied by her cultural mandates, she resolves to destroy who she was in order to find what she can become.
        Jasmine knows more than others the nature of disappointment.  It is an inescapable emotion that occasionally rules our lives if we allow it to.  Much like Jasmine, we all experience the harsh reality of loss and let downs.  Disappointment does not discriminate or judge, we are all subject to its effects.    However, we are also like Jasmine in the respect that we have the power to do something about our defeats.