mstances of her eventual awakening at the end of the book. Such a struggle and awakening are absent from the experiences of Raju and Margayya, the protagonists in Narayan's novels.
Not only does Jasmine resist the astrologer's forecast, she does so with solemnity, establishing the tone of tragedy. The dead dog she sees immediately afterwards is mirrored in the references to death at the end of the novel. She tells herself in the opening pages that she wants to avoid death, symbolized in the dead dog, but by the end of the novel she has come to accept---with tears---the many deaths she has experienced: "The smell of singed flesh is always with me. . . . I have seen death up close. . . . I cry into Taylor's shoulder, cry through all the lives I've given birth to, cry for all my dead" (Mukherjee 214). The journey from the first meeting with the astrologer to the awakening at the end of the novel is a tragic one, marked equally by suffering and enlightenment. For example, after her husband is killed and dies in her arms, she is raped by Half-Face, who she then st
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