11. Jasmine is self-reliant in the sense that she doesn’t really make that deep of connections with anyone. No matter how much Jasmine, or Jase, or Jane say that they are in love with who they’re with and where they are, they never have that hard of a time leaving it all behind. With the exception of Jasmine, whom I do believe loved Prakash dearly, her connections with people are shallow. She claims to be in love with Taylor before she finds out about Wylie’s man on the side. However when the opportunity presented itself for her and Taylor to be together, she ran away. Even though the end to the book was dramatic, she was still able to get up and leave Bud. She didn’t really even say anything to him, she just left. She is also self-reliant through the fact that she never revealed anything about what she had been through to anyone. Her husband had been murdered, she had been raped several times, she had even killed a man, but she still kept that to herself. She dealt with her problems herself on her own time instead of sharing them with others. Some people that I know have a tough time dealing with getting a bad grade on a test by themselves, so I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to handle everything that Jasmine had to on her own. Her strongest relationship was the one with herself. I wouldn’t say that she is very selfish though. She took care of Bud without a complaint, and took care of lots of other people as well. She paid her debts, and kept her promises. She was selfish in leaving Wylie and Taylor, and Bud, but when someone has been through as much as she had it is hard to call them selfish for doing such things, instead of seeing it as doing what they must to carry on.