Jasmine Nights – A Study Guide

Title of the Book: Jasmine Nights
Author’s name: S.P. Somtow (Somtow Papinian Sucharitkul)
Genre: semi-autobiographical novel
Year when the action takes place: 1963
Setting: Bangkok, Thailand

Justin, the main character:

• an inquisitive boy
• “I am an alien here” (p.2)
• “life is … a slide show: a compendium of perpetually frozen images, smells, sounds” (p.13)
• “I manufacture my own past” (p.80)
• “Yet I, too, have a dream… it is merely a dream of me and Wilbur and Piet and Virgil and Piak all sitting together in the treehouse…” (p.320)

Style of writing:

• short chapters
• a lot of Greek mythology references
• movie references: Hitchcock’s Psycho, Spartacus
• although it is the story of a 12-year old boy, Justin is often too mature for his age (e.g. “I am gazing at the Platonic ideal of woman” – p.87)

Stereotypes:

• “Everyone knows that all you farang are sex-crazed maniacs.” (p.117)

Comparison The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain:

• Coming of age novels: Both novels trace the moral education of a young boy whose better impulses overcome both self-interest and the negative forces of his culture.
• The klong and the river, a constant presence: Huck’s journey down the river has become part of American mythology, and the issues of freedom and responsibility he confronts still concern American culture.
• The treehouse and the raft. After Huck meets Jim on Jackson’s Island, the two travel down river on a raft that comes to symbolize their brotherhood and freedom, just as Justin’s treehouse.

The Matrix analogy:

• “I am a creature of two worlds” (p.1)
• “Such metamorphoses belong to the realm of myth and it is only now that I begin to see that there is between the real world and the dream world a clearly marcated boundary.” (p.335)

Reference: P.S. Somtow, Jasmine Nights, Asia Books, 2001