From the start of the story, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Mariam endures thing after thing just as her mother told her she would. After Mariam asks to attend school, her Nana tells her, “Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have” (19) and she said that she would never run out of things to endure. Throughout the rest of Mariam’s life she endures physical pain and mental suffering. It started when Mariam sat outside of her father's house waiting for him the whole night with just a plate of rice and a piece of bread. This opened her eyes to what her Nana had been telling her, that she wasn't wanted by him and he was ashamed of her. When she arrived home she found that her mother had committed suicide because she left to visit her father. “All she …show more content…
Mariam endured the loss of her mom as a 15 year old and for the rest of her life Mariam would have to deal with the fact that she was the one who drove her mom to suicide. It affected her everywhere she went and in everything she did. After that, she had to endure the fact that her dad wanted her gone so badly that he married her off to a man, Rasheed, that was about 30 years old than her and who lived far away. Her new husband scared her for a while but she saw a good side when he found out that she was pregnant. Mariam was so happy to be having a child of her own; however, that happiness was cut short when she had a miscarriage. Mariam “believed that the baby had been an undeserved blessing, that she was being punished for what she had done to Nana”(93). Again, Mariam had to endure the loss of the child that was making this new life a little bit more bearable and her new husband a bit more pleasant. When they found out that Mariam could not have children, Rasheed had no use for her. The children that Mariam wanted stood for hope. She was hopeful that her life would be better and that she could escape that death of her mom, but each time the child is taken from her and so is her
In Part three, a shift in this isolation occurs when Laila becomes a part of her life. An epiphany occurs where Mariam starts to realize the injustices that surround her; The amount of her life wasted with Rasheed, the physical and emotional abused endured from him, and the injustices she knows Laila is about to endure.Then as she starts to bond with Laila, Mariam feels a sense of purpose; the kids look up to her as a secondary mother figure and she has Laila as a companion. So when Rasheed had the intent to kill Laila, Mariam had to act. She has taken justice into her own hands by responding to Rasheed’s physical injustice and the injustices of equality rights towards women at the hands of the Taliban. She later tells Laila that she was simply “acting like a
For her 15th birthday, Mariam asked Jalil if he could take her to his cinema to watch Pinocchio. She also asked if Jalil could bring her brothers and sisters so she could meet them. Both Nana and Jalil thought it wasn’t a good idea, but Mariam insisted on going, so Jalil said he would send someone to pick her up. Mariam did not like this idea and said that she wanted to be picked up by Jalil. Jalil reluctantly agreed. Later that day, Mariam gets the backlash and hate from her mother from her decision: “Of all the daughters I could have had, why did God give me an ungrateful one like you? …How dare you abandon me like this, you treacherous little harami!” Mariam wakes up the next day, disappointed and fed up since Jalil did not come to pick her up. She heads out to town to find Jalil herself. She makes it to his house when a chauffeur tells Mariam that Jalil was “away on urgent business.” She slept outside of his house and was awoken by the chauffeur, telling her that he would take her home. Mariam snatches away from the chauffeur’s grip and turns around towards the house, to see Jalil in an upstairs window. It was then that Mariam figured out that all she was to Jalil was a disgrace. Jalil had always been careful with the information he told Mariam. He may have loved her, but only on his own terms. Once Mariam realizes that her father allowed her to sleep on the street rather than bring her into his
This quote displays a theme in the novel as Mariam gets older. Jalil moves the burden of Mariam onto Nana, and Rasheed blames Mariam for things that go wrong from there.
What the reader understands of the infidelity of Milan Kundera’s characters in The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a mere distraction from the real substance of the story and of the character’s real purpose. Kundera offers the reader a red herring and only through close examination can one dissect and abstract the true essence of each character’s thread that links them to one another in this story. For it is not clearly seen: in fact, it can not be seen at all. It is the fierce absence of the word commitment that is so blatantly seen in each individual, yet the word itself is buried so deeply inside of Tomas and Tereza that it takes an animal’s steadfast and unconditional love to make the meaning and understanding of commitment penetrate the surface.
Imagine hanging on to consciousness by a thin string but still summoning enough energy and courage to save your friend. Imagine becoming a murderer for the greater good, but still being punished for the act. In part three of a Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, the plot is evolving. With a bang Rasheed asks for Laila’s hand in marriage and Mariam is not happy. Since Mariam doesn’t get a say in Rasheed’s actions she turns cold toward the young girl. Then tensions boil until there is a you-stole–my-husband-I-want-him-back ☺ kind of argument between Mariam and Laila. The hatred simmers down while Laila is pregnant with, not Rasheed’s baby, but her friend Tariq’s child. Laila concocts a master plan to steal small amounts of money from
Nana constantly shames her for being who she is and trying to make her feel guilty for just existing. Mariam seems to think that it is justice to leave her Nana and follow her own heart to follow Jalil to Herat. Later in life, Mariam is once again a victim but now of Rasheed. Mariam believes that Rasheed’s abuse is just due to the fact that she feels guilty for causing her Nana’s suicide, being unable to reproduce, being a woman in the first place, and for being born a harami. This all changes once Mariam realizes that she cares for Laila and her children, and that she no longer sees the justness in Rasheed’s abusiveness towards her. When Mariam is being put to death for the murder of Rasheed, she finally finds real personal justice and closure in the fact that she was loved in her life and that she was able to love back. In her final moments, Mariam thinks about the entirety of her life, “Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Miriam thought, that she
Celianne, a fifteen-year-old pregnant girl, was raped when a dozen men raided her home and forced her brother and mother to sleep together. She found out she was pregnant and boarded the boat as soon as she’d heard about it. The child represents the hope of a new life, away from the persecution awaiting back in Haiti. Celianne finally gives birth to a baby girl and the acting midwife prays for the baby to be guided by God, “Celianne had a girl baby. The woman acting as a midwife is holding the baby to the moon and whispering prayers . . .
In architecture, contrast is used to create a dramatic entrance. The observer moves from a small, dimly lit space to a grand room full of light where they feel the impact of the room because of its contrast with the previous one. Similarly, authors, the architects of a book’s plot, use contrast to emphasize a character’s struggles and triumphs. In both The Space Between Us by Thirty Umrigar and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, the authors use the contrast between two lives to emphasize the power of money, education, and gender within Afghan and Indian society.
King Lear is a complicated man, that cannot be only talked about in good or bad. We can argue he is a bad father and a bad king, but does this make him such a bad man who deserved the suffering he has gone through?
The story is about Mariam, who is a young girl growing up just outside of Herat, Afghanistan. Mariam lives with her mother, Nana, and only sees her father, Jalil, once a week because she was born as an illegitimate child. Because her parents were not married when she was born. Growing up, Marian resented her life and wished she could be a part of her father’s life more. On Mariam’s fifteenth birthday, she asks Jalil to take her to watch Pinocchio, a cartoon movie, for the first time. When he does not appear she goes and sleeps outside of his house. Mariam’s mother, believing Mariam had abandoned her, commits suicide. Jalil is forced to take Mariam in and she is happy at first, however she is then married off to a shoemaker named Rasheed, who lives in Kabul, forcing her to leave her hometown and move there with him. Mariam is unable to conceive a child because she would always lose the child due to her health complications. As the result of multiple miscarriages, the relationship grows into an abusive relationship.
As stated previously, Nana was shamed not only by her former employer and his employer’s wives, but her own father, the only other man in her life. The pivotal result from this is her severe depression which she kept through her life with Mariam. One of the specific factors contributing to Nana’s depression is Jalil’s betrayal and irresponsible actions with one of his employees. A result of this is Nana having to birth Mariam herself, cutting the umbilical cord and all. However, Mariam, the only other person in Nana’s life that actually loves, cares for, and stays with her, has Jalil visit their little hut that he built for Nana. Every week, she attempts to dress herself up in her most appealing clothes and masquerades herself behind a face which says that she is fine as a single mother, when in reality, she is not. “Despite her rants against him when he was around, Nana was subdued and mannerly when Jalil visited” (20). In sum, Nana’s passionate hate for the man who turned her life inside-out affects her daily mood and mindset, ultimately leading Nana to her
From page fifty-eight to fifty-seven of Albert Camus’s The Stranger he uses the relentless Algerian sun as a motif for the awareness of reality that pursues the main character, Meursault, throughout the passage. When each motif appears in the novel such as this passage, Meursault’s actions change. This exemplifies that the light, heat, and sun trigger him to become debilitated or furious. Albert Camus sets up this motif in the passage to indicate to the reader that this motif shows the major themes of this novel. This motif shows Meursault’s emotion, how the imagery of weaponry affects Meursault’s actions, how the sun is a representation of society, and how the sun weakens Meursault.
quite a good thing and that God is doing the right thing in letting it
Next let us examine Mariam's plight. She is denied the chance to go to school. "What's the sense schooling a girl like you? It's like shinning a spitspoon." She lives with a cruel mother. "You are a clumsy little harami. This is my reward for everything I've endured. An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harmi"(4). She has a neglectful father. "Mariam kept thinking of his face in the upstairs window. He let her sleep on the street. On the street. Mariam cried lying down"(35). Her mother commits suicide and Mariam blames herself. "You stop that. These thoughts are no good, Mariam jo. You hear me, child? No good. They will destroy you. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault no". Mariam nodded, but as desperately as she wanted to she could not bring herself to believe him"(44). She is forced into marriage to a man she does not love. "I don't want to," Mariam said. She looked at Jalil. "I don't want this. Don't make me"(47). She is sent to live in a strange city were she does not know anyone. She has a physically abusive husband. "Then he was gone, leaving Mariam to spit out pebbles, blood, and the fragments of two broken molars"(104). Her husband is cruel and says hurtful words to her. She can not do anything right in his eyes. When he is not ignoring her he is being verbally or physically abusive towards her.
Suffering can be defined as an experience of discomfort suffered by a person during his life. The New York Times published an article entitled what suffering does, by David Brooks (2014). In this article, Brooks explains how suffering plays an important role in our pursuit of happiness. He explains firstly that happiness is found through experiences and then, suffering can also be a motivation in our pursuit of happiness. In other words, suffering is a fearful but necessary gift to acquire happiness. This paper is related to motivation and emotion, two keys words to the pursuit of happiness (King, 2010).