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Critical interpretations of a thousand splendid suns
Critical interpretations of a thousand splendid suns
Critical interpretations of a thousand splendid suns
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The novel a “Thousand Splendid Suns” tells the tale of a oppressing story about two women by the name of Mariam and Lila who undergo tremendous difficulties firstly because they belong to the discriminated gender women. These two women are surrounded by war, domestic abuse, family losses and violence. Hosseini through the use of various imagery and symbolism unearths the plight of women. Novel the "A Thousand Splendid Suns" set against the backdrop of Afghanistan’s recent history it narrates the tale of two woman who were born decades apart but are pitted against each other and brought together through a series of extremely tragic events. Mariam, the illegitimate child of a wealthy businessman from Heart who lacked the courage to marry Nana, Mariam’s mother after having dishonored her. After the suicide of Nana, Jalil is compelled by circumstances to refuge to Mariam. Mariam resents to the limited place in her father's life. On her arrival in Jalil’s house she is exposed to the realities of life and she realizes that her father's place is her life has completely turned since his other wives considered her to be a burden then an asset. She is discriminated at every juncture. She is further tormented for her illegitimacy as coming under pressure from this wives, Jalil decides to get this 15 years old daughter Mariam married to a brutish widowed cobbler 30 years her senior. Pitted against the vagaries of life once again Mariam sees her condition being static. Her married life is filled with fear and her repeated miscarriages dishearten Rasheed and he feels that he shall never be able to father a son. Seeing his hopes being destroyed of fathering a son he subjects Mariam to regular and frequent cruel acts of physical punishment. He ...
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...d that she becomes completely afraid of Rasheed and makes no efforts at all to stand up against Rasheed.
Mariam … for her father for having married her off to a … man thirty years her senior. With the passage of … Mariam … her father and throughout her life preserves since all long she was made to believe that she represented slave. She realizes her wrong of eliminating her father from her life. Paired by her experiences becomes inexpressive in all her relationships. Mariam has experienced only … in her life. Destiny plays a very bitter role in the life of Mariam. Completely shattered and broken down by the … and abuses in her marriage, Mariam has learned a lesson in life and that is not to stand up and fight for her rights. After the arrival of Laila in her life and when she realizes Rasheed … towards Laila and when he compels her to make Laila … for the marriage
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
In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by the author Khaled Hosseini presents the tragedy that Mariam went through. Mariam the unwanted child for her father because he was not married to Mariam’s mother when she get pregnant from him. She lived in a village with her only family member, her mother. One day she left her mother and went to the city that her father lived in. Her mother felt abandoned and committed suicide because Mariam is all she had. After the death of her mother, Mariam moved with her father to Kabul. She was a burden to her father so after some weeks she was forced to marry a forty-five year old man when she was only fifteen year old. She moved to another city with her husband where she had to live with a man that she never
“‘One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.’” (192). In A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini, two girls living dramatically different yet similar lives form a true and lasting friendship against all odds. Their names are Mariam and Laila. All that they possess that is comforting is their relationship with each other and with Laila’s children. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini emphasizes the importance of hope through his development of setting, symbolism, and diction.
Mariam can be seen as the victim of many men’s actions. A victim can be someone who is physically or emotionally hurt from another person’s actions. Because of the choices a person, or a group of people make, people are affected and made victims of the situation. In Mariam’s life, she faced many attacks from men, both physically and emotionally. She was the victim of Jahlil’s actions to send her away in order to keep his reputation. He made her the victim of his lies and actions to make sure society viewed him
...r. Secondly, in “The Story of an Hour”, Mrs. Mallard, representing a typical married women in today’s world, believes her relationship has gotten monotonous with her husband. She does not get to enjoy the freedom which she truly desires. Desperation took over her life which led to her own death. Lastly, in the story of “The Chrysanthemums”, Elisa realizes there is no future in her marriage, which makes her understand her life has become a miserable one. The frustration of this woman caused by her husband soon allows her to recognize no one will ever see her as a valuable and smart person. The absence of attention which men have towards their respective women in the stories mentioned above provoke them to not reach the happiness they wish. It makes them feel like unworthy human beings with trapped dreams which turn out being the main cause of their endangered lives.
...tiple times that they succeeded in getting Rasheed to stop. They were willing to fight back despite the consequences and the fact that they knew Rasheed could bring out so much more anger. Even after attempting to run away and being beaten so badly, they both still showed their bravery. They were on the edge of death, but they still fought every day to stay alive. Mariam shows amazing inner strength when a loved one is involved. Sadness and evil are two things that are very evident in their lives, enough to cause anyone to lose hope in humanity. But, Mariam and Laila are both able to stand up to violence in order to find their courage, inner strength, and even happiness in the end. Life in Afghanistan has always been hard for women, but just like Mariam, women are able to take on these obstacles and overcome them, helping to make the world a safer place for others.
These two women are victims of the power games of men, along with all the other women in their country. They showed so much strength, not only that, but the human capacity for evil. They were reminded every day that “Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.”(pg. 88) Both Laila and Mariam suffer through many things in the book. Laila for the most part has a good life, compared to Mariam’s life. Laila’s life changes dramatically once Tariq leaves, her lover, and heard that he is dead and she is pregnant. Her sudden marriage to Rasheed, because she has no one left in her family alive and Rasheed is the only option for her quite frankly, is a continuance of bad beatin...
Sisters have, for a long time, been a staple of what it means to band together. Even if not related by blood, the bonds women have created throughout history have been strong. The idea that women form bonds in the face of hardship plays a key role in Khaled Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. Hosseini holds the belief that these bonds are not only incredible but necessary for their survival. Especially in the face of hardship and adversity, Hosseini believes that the friendships and sisterhoods women have is what keeps them alive. In one example, Rasheed, the husband of Mariam and Laila, blames Mariam for Laila denying him what he wants and decides to beat her as a punishment until Laila stops him. Later, Laila and Mariam realize
Women are beaten, and it is culturally acceptable. Like routine, women are beaten in Afghanistan almost every day. When a person purposely inflicts sufferings on others with no feelings of concern, like the women of Afghanistan, he is cruel. Cruelty can manifest from anger, irritation, or defeat and is driven by self-interest. An idea that is explored in many works of literature, cruelty also appears in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns in the relationship between a husband and wife. In their case, the husband uses cruelties in the form of aggression are to force his wife to submit. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini’s use of cruelty elucidates the values of both Rasheed and Mariam as well as essential ideas about the nature of
The centre of economy and the focus of many lives, the power of money is punctuated by the difference in wealth in Bhima and Sera’s lives in The Space Between Us. The importance of money is stressed in A Thousand Splendid Suns with the contrast between Mariam’s father’s prosperity and her mother’s poverty and the difference in Laila and Mariam’s lives before and after war. Centred on the newly abolished caste system, the distinction between Bhima and Sera’s financial situations underlines the difference money makes in their society. While Bhima is forced to live in a slum, Sera enjoys the luxury of her home and the employment of Bhima. Another luxury Bhima can’t afford is to welcome Maya’s baby. Instead she is forced to watch her granddaughter suffer from the emotional effects of an abortion. While Sera eagerly awaits the birth of her own grandchild she is the one who financially facilitates the abortion of Bhima’s great-grandchild. Furthermore, because of the pre-existing social constraints of the caste system, Bhima is not permitted to sit on the same furniture or use the same dishes as Sera. Similarly, Mariam’s life is also restricted by her mother’s pove...
Rasheed tries to convince Mariam that the only way to keep Laila safe is by marrying her. He ends up hiring a man named Abdul Harif to tell Laila that he had met the love of her life, Tariq, in the hospital and that he had died. Laila is told this right when she finds out that she is pregnant with Tariq’s child. Rasheed had hired Abdul Harif to tell Laila this because he wanted to get Laila to marry her. When Rasheed brings up marriage to Laila, she jumps on board right away, and falls into Rasheed’s trap. After Rasheed and Laila get married, he treats her like a queen. He becomes very protective of Laila. Almost all his attention is spent on her, and in a sense, forgets that he is even married to Mariam. But him acting affectionate and caring does not last very long. When Laila gives birth to a baby girl, named Aziza, Rasheed starts to treat Laila how he treated Mariam when she could not successfully carry a child full term. Again, Rasheed ends up not getting what he wants, and therefore he turns onto Laila. The abuse, both verbal and physical, starts to get worse in the household. A particular situation that displays just how violent the abuse in their household can get is when he locks Laila and Aziza in their room, and Mariam in the shed because they tried running away from Rasheed and the abuse. He leaves them without water or food, and it ends up almost killing Aziza. This is where Rasheed falls into the paradox of power again. “ ...the 16th century Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli insisted that compassion got in the way of eminence. If a leader has to choose between being feared or being loved, Machiavelli insisted that the leader should always go with fear. Love is overrated” (Lehrer The Power Trip). Rasheed would rather have his own family be completely afraid of him and almost
In the story, the narrator is forced to tell her story through a secret correspondence with the reader since her husband forbids her to write and would “meet [her] with heavy opposition” should he find her doing so (390). The woman’s secret correspondence with the reader is yet another example of the limited viewpoint, for no one else is ever around to comment or give their thoughts on what is occurring. The limited perspective the reader sees through her narration plays an essential role in helping the reader understand the theme by showing the woman’s place in the world. At ...
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.
War ravaged the land and tore people apart emotionally and physically. One recurrence that came about during the war was the raping and “ruining” of women. To be ruined meant that a woman was raped and/or tortured so severely that she would no longer be capable of having sex. In a culture that values the fertility of its women, this lead to the breakdown of many communities. A perfect example of this breakdown would be in the case of Salima and Fortune. Salima was taken into the bush and raped for 5 months and when she returned home her husband, Fortune, turned her away. This violence committed against Salima caused her to be forced from her community, and it also forced her to take up work at Mama Nadi’s. Here she has to endure a change of identity in order to do the work required of her and to come to terms with her past. At the end of the play, Salima dies and states the haunting words; “You will not fight your battles on my body anymore”(94). These last words sum up just how intrusive the war has become in the lives of everyone in its path and also represents a clear shift in Salima as an individual. Instead of the woman who just wanted her husband back at the end of the play, we are left to contemplate a
Through Mariam's checkered background and the diverse people which formed her character, the reader is able to see how much the actions of others around us can contribute to the makings of one's own self-worth. Mariam experienced many conflicting ideas coming from others about what she is accredited to do and her worth in the world. However, Mariam only truly discovered her purpose when she meets Laila and her children, where she is finally able to see her own worth through the salvation of their love and