Half Face Analysis

Jasmine grows up in India, she has an incident with an astrologer that leaves her with a star shaped scar on her forehead. This is what her fate had brought her, a third eye, she calls it. Her family does not care about her fate or the scar, only who and when she will marry. But how will Jasmine marry someone with the big, ugly, scar on her forehead, will her future husband not like it? This was a sign. Jasmines fate will lead her on an adventure to America, from state to state, continuously running until she leaves her fate behind and ultimately becomes Americanized. She is fated to a life of “...widowhood and exile…” a life of negativity (3). “Now your face is scarred for life! How will the family ever find you a husband?” (5) She was seven then, fourteen now. Her first husband was named Prakash Vijh, he was a good man that she fell in love with, a man that always wanted to protect her, a man that wanted to move to America with her. She wanted a baby, in her culture women get married and have babies, it is a tradition. He, however, did …show more content…
They ended up staying in a room together, and he raped her. She went to take a shower, clean herself from what had just happened. “I determined to clean my body as it had never been cleaned… and to purify my soul with all the prayers I could remember from my father 's and my husband’s cremations,” (117) she tried cleaning the shame from what had just happened, she did not want to feel it anymore. She felt as if she were dying, that is why she did not care if she died at that moment, and that is why she pulled out a knife to slit her throat. She stopped herself because of what she believed in, “I didn 't feel the passionate embrace of Lord Yama… I could not let my personal dishonor disrupt my mission.” (118) Her mission kept her alive. She slit his throat instead, she had to put that anger somewhere, she could not let him live after what he had done to