Reverse Psychology

I scrambled around in my room and grabbed the most important items: the baby blanket, my stuffed bear who I refused to name, a weeks worth of clean underwear, and my wind-up Somewhere over the Rainbow music player. I shoved it all into my red chip-n-dale bag, threw it in my little wagon, and stormed down the street. My brother did something that day that I just could not believe; he ate the last Oreo. Not only did he eat it, but he bragged about getting the last one. I mean really, that was just mean. I’d had enough. I was seven at the time, and thought my life had reached its peak. By the time I reached the end of my block I realized something… I have nowhere to go. I headed back up to my house to find something even more unbelievable. My jerk brother locked me out! He didn’t even care that I had left, so I had to sit my sad little self on the porch and wait for my parents to get home from work. I wound up getting in trouble by the end of all of this because of my attempted run away. Where’s the justice in that?

The question awaiting us all is was I running toward something or running away from something? Either direction, I was running. Obviously I had no where to go since I wound up back on my porch. Behind the surface of my experience lies the actuality in it: I was running away from something in hopes of running toward something better. All of us have at least one moment in our lives where too much is enough; we’ve had it. Getting out of the situation is the only answer. This may seem like a plausible solution, but where do we go? We all know the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, so what is it that we’re running to?

In the novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee we see the character Jasmine, Jane, Jyoti (we’re still working on what to call her) is obviously running away from one life in hopes of improvement in another. “We are all shapes of the same Absolute” (15). Having this believe could be at the root of the envy Jasmine seems to have for everyone but herself. She now lives in Iowa with her husband Bud as the ‘other.’ By reading the novel it seems as though nothing has changed from the Hindi culture she once lived to the now American culture she resides. She cooks for Bud, cleans for Bud, makes love (practically alone) with Bud, etc. etc. “He is happy. I am happy enough” (21). We can sit and argue about the reasons for why Jasmine ran away from one life to another, a completely different life, but it is clear in the idea that all she really wants is improvement in her life. In her Hindi culture Jane was considered a wasted child. One because she was a female, two she had four other sisters and therefore no dowry to give a husband, and three, she was incredibly intelligent.

Jane talks about her genuine foreignness and how it not only frightens Bud, but it frightens herself. He calls her Jane, so she adopted the name as a means of being Plain Jane. It helps her stand back in the crowd, to not seem so foreign. She wants to be one of the regulars, a part of the norm. I can’t say that I blame her, being the odd one out isn’t always fun. The question then holds why did she run away in the first place and what exactly is she running to? I think Jane believes herself to be in an aggressive stage at this point; she thinks she’s in charge. She left her home, went to America, and is now a part of a stereotypical “American farm family.” What more could a girl ask for? Here is my thought…

Reverse psychology – one of my favorite expressions. This is the process through which you sway someone to your side of the question at hand by using their debate for the opposing position. Getting someone to believe what they don’t want to believe. The thing I love about reverse psychology is the way the person getting convinced acts. They think they won the argument, that they’re on top, when in reality, they just got played. At this point in the novel I believe Jasmine feels she is on top. What I see is her getting used. She ran to a country in hopes of a better life. She married a man and is not a part of what she believes to be a good family. No worries, right? Is that really how it is, or is she convinced by some other motive? Jasmine ran toward this lifestyle so she could fit in. She ran away from a lifestyle where she wasn’t receiving the respect she deserved, and is now in a place where she feels wanted.

This is that reverse psychology. She makes a mockery of herself and acts practically like a sensual porn-star to arouse her husband, cooks for the family, and sort of just sits back to watch what’s happening around her. Knowing deep down that she doesn’t fit in doesn’t bother her because she is convinced that she is a part of that culture now. It just makes you wonder: what happens if this destination wasn’t what she wanted as the final stop? There’s almost an anxiety in the air when I think of where she will go next, or how she will handle this reality. Was this what she was running to, or is a rest stop on the way to her destiny?