The Self as a Shell (Metaphor)
"The villagers say when a clay pitcher breaks, you see that the air inside it is the same as outside. Vimla set herself on fire because she had broken her pitcher; she saw there were no insides and outsides. We are just shells of the same Absolute" (15). Jasmine recalls this truism before explaining how one of her childhood friends, Vimla, self-immolated after her husband died in his early twenties. She says, "In Hasnapur, Vimla's isn’t a sad story. The sad story would be a woman Mother Ripplemeyer’s age still working on her shell, bothering to get her hair and nails done at Madame Cleo’s" (15). The metaphor is of a person being like a pitcher or a shell—an empty container that obscures the fact that what's inside the pitcher is no different from the air outside of it.
The June Sky in Hasnapur as Steel Wool (Simile)
"The late June sky, rough as steel wool, sent him greening rains at just the right time" (63). Jasmine uses this simile to describe the fortuitous weather conditions enjoyed by Vancouver Singh, the man who buys her father's farm after he's bored by a bull.
Du's Arrival on American Sand (Simile)
"Du also remembers clothes lying flat on the beach, as though the people inside had been zapped by aliens" (107). Jasmine relates the uncanny, surreal experience of Du arriving on an American beach and relates it to her own experience of watching Kingsland and Little Clyde shedding their ship clothes.
Wylie's Publishing Job (Simile)
When Wylie describes her job to Jasmine, "she explained about the money to be made signing up celebrity interviews, writing about divorces and drug cases, society murders, child abuse, and rape. She made them sound like grave robbers" (169-170). Wylie's experience of and relationship to murder, sexual violence, and abuse differs from Jasmine's; for Wylie, these tragedies are monetizable scandals. For Jasmine, they're trauma she has experienced first hand. For Jasmine, this casual relationship to trauma sounds like the worst kind of exploitation—like robbing a grave.
