A Thousand Splendid Suns Analysis

Women are often portrayed in stories and tales as the Damsel in Distress. We are the ones waiting in our flowing gowns for the knight to come and carry us away on the back of his white horse. In a Thousand Splendid Suns it is the women who are the warrior princesses, the ones enduring so much. It is the strength of a woman and how they deal with the human capacity for evil that jumps out as the themes of this story. A Thousand Splendid Suns shows the perspective of two women, in which they live their lives both very differently but both show the inner strength of being a woman. It is most definitely not the easiest task of being a woman in Afghanistan, where men have so much power and authority. Both these women stories’ are being told during three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny. Mariam and Laila become allies in a battle with their brutal husband, many miscarriages, mothering a daughter where women are not welcomed, dealing with many deaths of loved ones and somehow showing the resilience of being a woman.

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...

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...rden of it feeling its her fault. Her father giving her to Rasheed to marry, who beats her when she has a baby girl. The baby girl dies three days later with Mariam having many miscarriages afterwards.

Women were born to endure. Mariam's mother proclaims:" Women like us. We endure. It's all we have." How do Mariam and Laila endure after witnessing so much evil and cruelty in the world? They endure because it is simply the only choice they have. Their lives are constantly dictated by male interpretations of the Koran that benefit only the men. Mariam, like her mother, do not survive their ordeal. Laila also suffers but by the end of the book marries better and has a chance at life. They endure through determination, grit, and sticking with their family. Women are given the ability to forgive, and some are even born to forget pain… both physically and emotionally.