Jasmine to Jane

           The Melting Pot, is what the United States has been called when referring to the many cultures and people that have came to the United States and joined together to become one nation. In the book “Jasmine” by Bharati Mukherjee is about a woman named Jasmine that comes to the U.S from a small Indian village and ends up starting a family with a middle-aged banker in Iowa . She also becomes a mother to an adopted Vietnamese refugee and is happily pregnant. When coming to the United States Jasmine becomes Jane Ripplemeyer. When reading the novel the question of how does Jasmine convert into her new life in the United States . Does she buy into the “American Dream” and lose her cultural identity and become part of the melting pot? or does she reinvent herself positively by gaining new and exciting identities? The answer to this is that Jasmine tries to assimilate herself to her new life by leaving most of her Indian lifestyle behind her.
When she first meets Bud Ripplemeyer he decides to call her Jane, because he is unable to pronounce her Indian name correctly. She says that plain Jane is what she wants to be. Bud does not know much about her life back in India . When she talks with Buds mother she does not talk about her life in India . “She can’t begin to picture a village in Punjab . She doesn’t mind my stores about New York and Florida because she’s been to Florida many times and seen enough pictures of New York . I have to be careful about those stories. I have to be careful about those stories. I have to be careful about nearly everything I say. IF I talk about India , I talk about my parents” (Mukherjee 16). She finds it hard to share her life experiences with those around her because she feels that the will not understand. She has a connection with her adopted son Du because they have gone through similar experiences of trying to start a new life in a new country.
When she goes to a PTA meeting for her son’s school she finds herself insulted by the teacher because he tries to speak Vietnamese to her son Du. “I suppressed my shock, my disgust. This country has so many ways of humiliating, of disappointing.” She is offended because people that come to the United States from other countries try hard to leave their old lives behind and start a new one. “There are no harmless, compassionate ways to remake oneself. We murder who we were so we can rebirth ourselves in the images of dreams” (29). Once a person lets go of an identity from their old country it all starts to fade away. For example Du learning English and not speaking Vietnamese is the first step to leaving his old life behind and starting his new one, then his Vietnamese culture starts to fade as his United States identity grows stronger. Jasmine sees Du’s history teacher speaking to him in Vietnamese like a slap in the face. She sees it as an insult because he has tried so hard to assimilate and then the teacher reminds him of the identity he is trying to delete.
In conclusion, in order for Jasmine to start her new life in the United States she has started to let her Indian culture slowly fade away. She has become Jane Ripplemeyer, a mother and housewife to a banker in a farming town in Iowa . The only part of her Indian culture that she has carried over is the spices she uses in her cooking. Everything else she has let go so that she can live the “American Dream.”