Free will versus Destiny

Like every person in our society we go through life setting goals and making a plane for ourselves. Usually that includes going to school and after high graduation we apply to colleges and pick the one of our choice. For most people after college it is off to find the career and pay off those student loans. As much as we all set goals and plans for ourselves sometimes it never happens that way. Things come up, people change and the things that we thought we wanted turn out to be the things that we really didn’t want at all.  I know an education is the only thing that will get me any where in our society but at the same time I want to travel and see this world.  Those are my plans and I will give any thing to make them happen. I have the free will to make it happen; now it is just a matter of destiny. Is it my destiny to one day travel?

In the novel Jasmine, by Bharati Mukherjee, the main character Jasmine so far in the novel goes through life subalternity. I feel that she is running away from her problems rather than staying in one place to confront them. In the first part of the novel Jasmine talks of her life in a small Indian village. At the age of seven an astrologer told her she would become widowed and exiled. She didn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe that someone could tell her what her future held. By the age of seventeen she was widowed and living in her small Indian village.

She remembered what the astrologer had said. I think in some way she feared that it was happening so instead of staying there she moved. She first moved to New York and later to Iowa. In Iowa she meets and marries a man. Soon after they adopt a Vietnamese refugee and then they become pregnant. I feel that she is not in front of her destiny because she had no control over the life of her first husband. I’m sure she felt that if she left her country and started a brand new life somewhere things would be better and what the astrologer said would not be true. 

From the very beginning I feel that Jasmine felt like she had no real beginning especially after knowing that in her culture it was believed that “daughters were curses.” (pg 39) Knowing this would certainly make me want to flee the place that put this belief in my mind. I do feel like she isn’t in control of her life because even after running away to a different country and then marrying a man things still don’t go right. Her husband ends of becoming paralyzed and what the astrologer predicted almost came true again.

I just feel that ultimately in the end we all don’t have complete control over our lives. We can plan all we want and feel that we have everything under control but in the end things don’t go exactly how we have planned for them to go. Jasmine had no control over her first marriage and even now she has no control over what happens to her husband. No matter where she goes in this world she will never feel the complete control that she desires.