People who come from other parts of the world that look a little different than the ones from the USA, have to endure all the hatred , racism and the stereotypes people have of them. I’ve had to endure with that all my life and trust me sometimes it’s not easy. I feel down and upset because even if I look the tiniest bit of different, they have something to say to bring me down. In the book A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Husseini which takes place in Afganistan, the main characters, Mariam and Laila, absolutely have no choices in their marriage. They are forced to do what Rasheed wants them to do, or else he beats them. Both of them survive because of each other and their support. In this book, Endurance requires patience, knowledge and sacrifice.
In the novel, Mariam has to be patient in order to endure. Right when Rasheed and Mariam think their marriage is going good, she miscarries. Rasheed’s attitude completely changes. After four years of marriagebetween Mariam and Rasheed, she miscarries six more times. Rasheed takes it personally and believes that Mariam is a completely useless nineteen year- old. He beats Mariam after that, continously. Most women in other parts of the world would leave. She could have also committed suicide but she stays and does not because Nana taught her to be
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strong and continue. Mariam and Laila didn’t know that you also have to have some type of friendship with someone in order to endure.
Laila and Mariam pretty much hated each other before Laila had her kid . Rasheed was beating Mariam when Laila finally decided to physically stop him. Mariam a couple of days later, brings up when Lila stood up for her. She is confused as to why she stood up for her, if supposedly they are enemies. They both grab a cup of tea and start to enjoy eachothers company. That’s when they both start talking more. If Laila wouldn’t have intervened when Rasheed was beating Mariam, they would still hate each other. Also Rasheed would have killed one of them in a
beating. In this world, if you are a leader, you have to lead by example if you want what you tell people to do. Nana did that and sacrificed her own life in order to show Mariam that she has to keep enduring or else death. Nana and Mariam are talking when Nana says “‘there is only one skill a woman like you and me need which they don’t teach it in school, tahamul, endure, women likie us we endure is all we have’”.This is basically foreshadowing what the book is about. However when Mariam hears Nana “‘I’ll die if you go I’ll just die’”that’s when later on Nana commits suicide and teaches Mariam to be strong and continue. At the end, Mariam kills Rasheed and kiills herself. Endurance requires patience just like Mariam had to do when Rasheed beat her. It also requires some type of friendship like when Laila realized she needed to step forward when Rasheed was beating Mariam. And lastly, you have to sacrifice something or someone. In this case Nana sacrificed her own life to show Mariam she needed to either continue or else death. In the USA we have choices, in the Middle East it’s either endure or die.
Mariam and Laila face a lot of social injustice yet they do not attempt to challenge the issues because they are told to endure all forms of pain and social injustice. From a very young age, Mariam was told by her mother that all she needed to do was to withstand any pain and suffering, it’s the one skill she needed.” Endure . . . Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have”(17). In addition, Laila also suffered the injustice of society since she was a single mother it was not safe for her to live on her own so she had no choice but to marry Rasheed. The society gave women no choice but to endure and that’s the main reason why Laila and Mariam were unable to take a stand. However, close to the end of the novel Mariam decides to take initiative and fights back. She finally takes action because she is driven by the love she has for Laila and her child since they are the only family she’s had that loved her. So when Rasheed her husband attempts to choke Laila to death, Mariam reflects on how much injustice she has faced and how unjust both her husband and the society have been towards her and other women. At this point, Mariam realizes that she must end her and Laila’s suffering once and for all. So she takes Rasheed’s life. Although Mariam is executed as a form of punishment, she is very successful at taking a stand to end the oppression and injustice. Mariam knew her actions were fatal yet she still did what she knew was right. Furthermore, she sacrificed herself and didn’t regret her action instead she was pleased that “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” ( 329). Her actions freed Laila and her child from Rasheed’s abuse and helped them build a better life. Thus Mariam was successful and did not want to endure the injustice or see Laila suffer, she did it by
Rasheed was the man in the relationship and Mariam was the typical wife that did her wifely duties and stayed home while he goes and works and provides money. He treats her as if she’s worthless and means nothing to the world. When he eats he doesn’t look at her or speak to her, he is demanding, and tells her how worthless and uneducated she is. This then leads to him becoming abusive punching her, slapping her, kicking her, speaking rudely to her, he did this to damage her. A lot of this occurs because Mariam can get have his son and she is also considered a harami. Everything she does infuriates him and blames all the issues on her. She constantly tried to avoid making mistakes and did everything to his liking, but he always found a way to abuse her and blame it on her. Rasheed did not care about anything but himself he abided by the patriarchal stereotype ,which is being the dominant one throughout society and making women inferior. Mariam felt powerless and fearful. She was a victim of abuse and oppression. She married a man that said everything he did was normal in a relationship. Even though Mariam was in a violent marriage she became a strong women and soon she overcomed these
I came into this class under the impression that I already wrote well enough and wouldn’t need to improve. However, as I progressed through the semester I learned that there is always room to grow. The first paper I produced was not at the level I was hoping but after I actively decided to improve my writing my papers became much better. Looking back on my work in the class I wonder how much my writing has changed and where I still have room to improve. Without evaluating my work I can’t hope to become any better. Through this class I have grown much as a writer but there is still more I can learn.
Some of the areas that Maria would like to address are marital concerns (the romance, hanging out with people other than her husband’s coworkers, communication, spend more time doing outdoor activities), concerns regarding pleasing her parents even during adulthood (the guilt she feels about her parents making sacrifices to send her to the United States to obtain her college degree), and the pressure of her religious background (being Catholic and feeling that she could not divorce her husband, even if she wanted).
Rasheed is Mariam’s husband, and later becomes Laila’s husband. He is a very conservative man that wants his wives to be covered. He thinks that men will look at them and he does not allow that. The first time Rasheed is introduced in the novel, he is already shown as being not the nicest. He wasn’t necessarily rude to start, but he was not welcoming. All that he really wanted was a son. He is a widower that lost his wife and son in years previous. He wants a son that can fill that spot. Mariam gets pregnant making Rasheed very hopeful he’ll have a son, until Mariam has a miscarriage. She can’t have children. Because of this, Rasheed no longer sees any reason to respect her. He begins to physically and verbally abuse her, causing Mariam to become unfriendly and closed off. To get the son he wants, he married Laila. Rasheed got his son. He treated his son very well, but abused his daughter and wives. “Rasheed raised the belt again and this time came at Mariam” (Hosseini, 241). This quote shows the abuse that Rasheed gave to his wives. When they didn’t do what he wanted, he would beat them. He is a cruel man that causes a lot of anxiety and stress to the wives
Mariam and Ko have an on going love, hate relationship. Before Ko was a “bad guy”, he was her first and only love. Ko, once known as καλό παιδί, or Nako, lost to his last opponent αγάπη μισητής (Roni), who had given Ko a “never ending” spell of hatred. Once a tender loving god, is now a bitter, cold, non-spirit.
Alsana faces the expectation of fulfilling her proper role as the subservient, good muslim wife; however, she subverts this tradition by actively fighting against her husband Samad and, therefore, maintaining her sovereignty. When Alsana expresses her support for her husband’s motion during a PTA meeting, the other wives look “over to her with the piteous saddened smiles they reserved for subjugated Muslim women” (Smith 110). This perception fails to take into account the conflict that occurs under the surface of their seemingly traditional marriage. Before she finally expresses support for him, “Samad pressed Alsana’s hand. She kicked him in the ankle. He stamped on her toe. She pinched his flank. He bent back her little finger and grudgingly raised her right arm while deftly elbowing him in the crotch with her left” (Smith 110). Physical violence is the hallmark of the power struggle within Samad and Alsana’s marriage; it is the manner in which Alsana expresses her defiance to the proper role that it is assumed she should take in her marriage. This physical violence is so common, in fact, that as they violently fight in their garden, their twins calmly watch, placing bets on who will win (Smith 167). This normalization of the violence further highlights how innate it is to their
Initial Reflective Essay When I first thought of what I wanted to do with my life after college, the first thing I thought of was helping people. The next step in deciding what I wanted to do with my life was to examine how I could accomplish this goal. I started pondering and I was thinking about how much I love to take care of my body. Health care and personal hygiene has always been an important factor in my life. So I decided to major in Health Sciences.
The story’s title character, whose name suggests the grafting on of a new identity, has found a means of escape from her life of labour and single parenthood in Panther Burn, Mississippi, by marrying a black Muslim from Chicago. While the minister reads traditional marriage vows, Roselily, the poor mother, dreams of a life such vows do not promise. In her dream, she sees herself, as a little girl in her mother's white robe and veil. The marriage is her chance to “be on top,” for her four children to be “at last from underneath the detrimental wheel”(m: 4). Yet the life she foresees in Chicago promises to be a nightmare; the marriage veil will merge with the veil (purdah) she will have to wear as the wife of a Muslim. When she hears the phrase “to join this man and this woman,” Roselily “thinks of ropes, chains, handcuffs, his religion. His place of worship. Where she will be required to sit apart with covered head” (LT:
A couple years back I watched Nicholas Kristof’s documentary, Half the Sky. There is a scene where the camera closes in on a Cambodian girl’s face. She is young and the youth plays in her sheen cheeks and lanky hair. The girl is a former sex slave. In this documentary, the narrator guides the image, detailing how empowerment and education will allow her to change the world around her.
Rasheed and Laila's marriage starts in deceit, due to the fact that the main reason Laila agrees to marry him is because she finds out she is pregnant and know that she won't be able to support her child alone. Laila then came up with the plan of marrying Rasheed and sleeping with him so that he would believe that the child was his, this starting a relationship with lies. This influences Laila to continue to lie and deceive Rasheed, something she was not accustomed to before, as she was always honest to her parents. Laila, unlike Mariam, who stayed truthful, learned to rebel against Rasheed even without his knowledge. She did this by stealing money from him and formulating an escape plan.
While reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, there is a whirlwind of ideas that are thrown your way. Adams introduces Arthur Dent, who is an average 30 year old man in England that is about to get his house destroyed in order to build a bypass; however, the next day the Earth explodes. Dent is blown off the Earth and travels through space with numerous unique characters. Despite being a science fiction book with an alternate universe where the Earth explodes, the characters hold a goofy and light hearted attitude towards the array of negative events that take place. Adams utilizes numerous literary elements in the novel such as, tone, the theme of absurdity, and satire.
In the novel, Mariam never loves anyone outside of her family because of the isolation of her home and the fear that Nana attempted to instill in Mariam. The most recurring lesson Nana tries to teach Mariam is that her father and all men lack devotion and respect towards women. Once, Nana explained, “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam” (Hosseini 7). Such a statement held true meaning, however, Mariam failed to understand how it applied to her until Jalil, Mariam’s father, pressured her into an arranged marriage. On the contrary, in Osama, while facing sentencing for dressing as a boy to collect income for her family, Osama avoids execution to instead be married to a man significantly older than her (Moinfar, Osama). Unfortunately, situations like these closely resemble the reality of today in which women are forced into marriage, to have children, and are treated as possessions for the rest of their lives. The next example is an instance in A Thousand Splendid Suns where Hosseini forms a relationship of unrealistic circumstances. In the novel, Laila grows up next to her neighbor Tariq. Over the years they grow more and more fond of each other until they fall in love (Hosseini, 113). A true relationship happens to be a very rare occurrence in this society, therefore, including this relationship in the novel might possibly give readers a false-sense that arranged marriages are infrequent
Dona Maria is the marquesa of Montemayor. Marquesa defines pure love as not being possible. ”She refused to believe that anyone(herself excepted)loved anyone.”(16) Marquesa struggles to find and maintain a lasting companionship because she is secluded due to her childhood. Her love “necessary was it to her love that she attract attention, perhaps admiration, of her distant child.”(14) The valuable lessson that Marquesa learns about human relationships is that
First, Anowa being a strange woman who refuses to get married and when she finally does decide to get married the man whom she picks is not fitting of her mother’s expectations this is the rift that starts the fall of Anowa. In the Global Crossroads World Literature Badua tells Anowa that “Marriage is like a piece of cloth… and like cloth; its beauty passes with wear and tear” (Iglesias, Mays, and Pierce103). The cloth signifies strength and beauty of a marriage but without the proper consideration and care it will not last. Badua tries to tell her daughter that what may look good today later on may not be so pleasant and may very well rip apart in time ; but because Anowa’s pride she replies to her mother “I like mine and it is none of your business. I do not care, Mother. Have I not told you that this is to be my marriage and not yours?”(Iglesias, Mays, and Pierce103). Anowa’s determination to follow through with her decision seems to be just like many young ladies today who refuse to adhere to the voice of their mother and although the decision they make may be wrong they would rather be stubborn than to admit that the truth of their m...