A Thousand Splendid Suns Themes

The themes, motifs, and characters in both A Thousand Splendid Suns and Life of Pi compare in their similarities. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, the protagonists, Laila and Mariam grow up in two separately, different lives, until their world collide, and become very close, living with their abusive husband Rasheed. In Life of Pi, the protagonist, Pi, is lost at sea after a shipwreck, where he has to try and survive lost at sea, but while he is with a Bengal tiger. The novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, and the movie Life of Pi share both similarities and differences between the themes and protagonists, where both the book and movie show the will to live, freedom, and truth. They also relate to each other with the same motif

of water in their stories.
In both stories, a theme they share is the will to live. The protagonists are fighting against something or someone. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, both Laila and Mariam want to live, while Rasheed and his abusiveness is against the both of them. Throughout the novel, Mariam and Laila grow a strong relationship, as they are both under the harsh circumstances and the fight to live, “Mariam saw that she(Laila) was no longer struggling. He's going to kill her, she thought. He really means to…. And so Maiam raised the shovel high… She turned it so the sharp edge was vertical, and, as she did, it occurred to her that this was the first time that she was deciding the course of her own life.” (Hosseini, 349). After multiple beatings from Rasheed, this was the last straw, and Rasheed was really going to kill Laila. Mariam would not let this happen, especially after seeing Laila stop struggling, and fighting to live, thinking there was no hope. As an Afghanistan woman, under the strict religion and society views on woman, Mariam knew she was risking a lot was she was about to kill Rasheed. Mariam had the will power, and the strength to protect Laila and herself. In the movie Life of Pi, the character Pi is out, lost at sea on a lifeboat with a full grown Bengal tiger. As the days goes by, Pi creates many things for him to survive with this large tiger. Pi makes his own “boat” made out of life vests and ores, and other things, which he tied to the boat that the tiger, named Richard Parker, was on. He knew that Richard Parker would get hungry and attack him. Although he was tired, hungry and weak, he used his strength to fight for his life, instead of giving up. Laila, Mariam, and Pi show their inner and outer strength, when they fight to live, and have the will to live.
Along with the characters will to live, another theme is the definition of freedom.

Among the circumstances that the protagonists are in, in each setting, they are trapped in someway, and somehow. They want to try and find freedom during their conflict, to get away from the negatives. A Thousand Splendid Suns show how Laila comes up with an escape plan, to leave Rasheed, and she asks Mariam to leave her. She plans the leave in the first place so she can get away from Rasheed, and the harsh society that they are in. Laila tells Mariam about the plan, convincing her to go to this better life, “We’re leaving this spring, Aziza and I. Come with us, Mariam. The years had not been kind to Mariam. But, perhaps, she thought, there were kinder years waiting still. A new life, a life in which she would find the blessings that Nana had said a harami like her would never see.” (Hosseini, 256). For Mariam to leave, she wouldn’t just be leaving her life with Rasheed, but it would be a new beginning her her, a restart where she wouldn’t be labeled as a harami. Freedom to Laila is also not to leave Rasheed, but to live a life, with Aziza, not living the lie that Rasheed isn’t Aziz’s real father, and to get away from the strict rules that are given from society. Although in the book, they get caught and their escape doesn’t work, they thought of their plan, and tried very hard to get to freedom. Freedom to Pi, in Life of Pi, is when he finds land, and is free from his limited life on the

boat. When Pi finds land, the second time, after realizes the first place he landed was a large trap, he is free. After spending many days and months lost, he started to loose his mind, it was just him living with Richard Parker. He had a small amount of resources, and life threatening obstacles and fights along his way. He became free from the mental toughness of living in the conditions that he did. He was free from his mind that was always in survival mode, and he became free of dying out at sea. From Life of Pi, and A Thousand Splendid Suns, from each protagonist and setting, each show its own definition of freedom in the certain situation of being trapped in a way, and the characters finding their own freedom.
Between truth and lies, it sets conflict. In both stories, lies are given and affect others in any way. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Laila lies to Rasheed ever since the got married. She knew that she was pregnant before Rasheed and Mariam took her in. When she did have Aziza, claiming and tricking Rasheed that it was his baby, when it was Tariq's, she kept that lie from him. Later on in the story, when a Aziza was a little older, Rasheed became suspicious and slowly found out the truth. Laila didn’t know that he knew the truth, and that he knew she was lying. Rasheed lost his temper when he found out Laila was talking to Tariq, when he finally told her he knew, and confronted her lie. “‘AND YOU DIDN’T LIE TO ME?’ Rasheed roared. ‘You think I didn’t figure it out? About your harami? You take me for a fool, you whore?’” (Hosseini, 337). From Laila’s lie, it was to protect her and Aziza, but when the lie is out in the open, there are consequences. At this point in the book, her lie came to reality, and she was punished for it. Laila lied about a smaller part in her large conflict, but in Life of Pi, the whole story was changed and told to be a lie. As Pi was in the hospital, to recover from being lost at sea, reporters came to talk to him, asking what happened, since nobody knew how the ship sank in the first place. Pi tells the reporters what had happened, which is shown a majority of the time in the film. He told them the story of how he was alone with a tiger and other animals in the beginning. The two men did not believe him. He then changed his story, changing the animals to be real life people, so then the men could believe him. Pi tried to tell them his story, the real one, with Richard Parker, but sometimes the reality of truth, seems over rated, so Pi had to come up with a lie. This truth goes back to the whole story, from when he was out at sea, showing that the truth could not always be real in other eyes and views. By that, meaning that things don’t always seem real, in this case, the two men didn’t believe Pi’s story. In both A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Life of Pi, the reality of truth is tested and shown in the story.
While there are similar themes between the two stories, there is also a similar motif shown in both.

The motif of water is a dominant, repetitive example in both stories. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, water comes up multiple times, mainly for tragic events that have happened in the book, or people being “swallowed” by water. Laila heard women talking about how Rasheed’s son died a while ago, “‘You heard how his son died?’...’He drowned didn’t he?’... ‘The boy went into the water unnoticed. They spotted him a while later, floating facedown.’”(228). This is just one of many times where water has come up in the book, specifically being “swallowed” or drowning in water. Also when Pinocchio was brought up, and in that movie, Pinocchio and his father were swallowed by a whale in the ocean. In Life of Pi, the ship that Pi, his family, and zoo animals where on sunk, and that’s how he ended up on a lifeboat with Richard Parker. They were lost at sea, surrounded by water, knowing that any second they could die from it. Being shown from both stories, water was showed as a negative and unfavorable appearance toward the characters and the whole stories

itself.
In conclusion, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Life of Pi showed similarities throughout each conflict and story. The few main themes were similar, and the motif of water was frequently shown as a negative aspect in both stories. The novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, and the movie Life of Pi share both similarities and differences between the themes and protagonists, where both the book and movie show the will to live, freedom, and truth. They also relate to each other with the same motif of water in their stories.