Dehumanization In A Thousand Splendid Suns

Throughout the novels A Thousand Splendid Suns, Sarah’s Key, and Night, a certain group of people of different race, religion, or culture are treated less humanly than others thus not deserving moral consideration. They are deprived of their rights, forced to become slaves, and are treated like animals. In all three of these novels, the main characters end up surviving the cruelty of dehumanization, both mentally and physically. Within the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam, one of the two main characters, is bombarded with constant physical and verbal abuse from her family therefore; her future does not turn out very well. Amid the book Sarah’s Key, Sarah, also one of the two main characters of her story, does not necessarily receive the

worst of dehumanization until after she escapes the concentration camp. It is later on when she finds her brother dead in their cupboard back home that she realizes how cruel humanity can really be. All along the narrative Night, Elie goes through a variety of brutality, inhumanity, and barbarity. He pushes through all the hatred with his father, but when his father dies he nearly gives up himself. Luckily, the war was over in time, but it did not necessarily give Elie any happiness for many years. These victims, during the time and place of their novel, are considered minorities of society and eventually fall victim to dehumanization at the cruel hands of fiendish people.

In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, the Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini writes about the discrimination and dehumanization of women caused by most men in Afghanistan.

The majority of the women, females of the age 14 and higher, are arranged to marry men much older than them, and in this case, at the age of fifteen, Mariam is forced to marry her husband, Rasheed, who is at least 35 years older than her. The first sign of dehumanization is shown when Rasheed, newly wedded to Mariam, rapes her in her bed and then leaves her to bleed. Although Mariam doesn’t experience much of dehumanization until she lives with her husband, her mother, Nana, was definitely a victim of it. Despite the fact that little Mariam loved her father, Nana always ranted about him to Mariam. She told Mariam that “like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.” (Hosseini 7). She was also never shy about telling her daughter the truth about women in Afghanistan: “There is only one, only one skill a woman like you and me needs in life, and they don’t teach it in school . . . Only one skill. And it’s this: tahamul. Endure . . . It’s our lot in life, Mariam. Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have. Do you understand?” (17). Later on, Forty-year-old Mariam, suddenly realizes that her crazy mother was right. She grows bitter and slowly starts becoming like Nana. She collectively starts hating men, not only the ones she personally know, but also the men in the

Taliban who discriminate women and make them wear specific clothing to cover their whole body in the heat of Afghanistan. Sadly, this 2007 novel is based on a true story and therefore, society is not yet eliminated of dehumanization.

Sarah's Key is a novel by Tatiana de Rosnay which talks about one of the most dehumanizing events in history: the Holocaust.

In the beginning of the book, a young Jewish girl and her parents, living in Paris, are captured by the French policemen and are eventually sent to a concentration camp. Already, there are signs of dehumanization as the French, their own people, are forcing countless French-Jewish families out of their homes for no justified reason. The men are separated from their families and are sent to death camps while the women and children stay at the concentration camp for a couple of days. Separation of the families is also a cruel deed as some prisoners are literally scared to death. They are being treated like criminals when no crimes are committed. Even before the roundups of the Jews, they were to wear a yellow star on all their clothing to differentiate them from other races, cultures, and religion. Sarah Starzynski, the little girl, starts to lose her humanity as she “squats against the wall to relieve herself, fighting against the overpowering urge to vomit, her hand clapped over her mouth.”(De Rosnay 30). Her point of view about society is forever broken as she describes the people near her as animals: “People pissing and defecating wherever they could, ashamed, broken, cowering like animals near the filthy floor.” (30). Later on, the women are brutally separated from their children to march to their deaths like the men did. At that moment, Sarah sees

what dehumanization did to her mother as she describes her mother “had become gaunt, and pale, and she never smiled or laughed. She smelled rank, bitter. Her hair had become brittle and dry, streaked with grey. The girl felt like her mother was already dead.” (66). This image of her mother is the last memory of any of Sarah Starzynski’s relatives alive.

Eliezer Wiesel tells his true story about his experiences in the Holocaust through his book Night. Over the course of his autobiography, he explains the dehumanization of himself, his family, and the Jews while being under the Nazis’ supervision. The first act of dehumanization commences when Elie and the rest of his Jewish community are obligated to leave their homes in Sighet and into the concentration camps. At one point in the book, the Jewish people are cramped into wagons, a minimum of 80 each. A German soldier comes up to them and declares that “if anyone is missing, (they)’ll all be shot, like dogs….’”(Wiesel 22).Outside of the wagon, German civilians also compare the Jews to being like dogs for their poor conditioning and savage-like characteristics for food. This implies that they are not capable of having good human qualities like they are meant to have. Later, men and women are separated like herds and are marched to the crematories. Elie describes the excruciating sight of “children in the flames” (30). This dehumanizes the Jewish people because they could smell, hear, and see their loved ones being burned to death, most unclothed. This also really shows that the Germans did not have any respect for their prisoners. Many hours later, Wiesel is sent to a concentration camp where he is tattooed a name: A7713. This is the part where Eliezer Wiesel loses his respect for himself because “after that (he) had no other name” (39). The quote: “I did not move. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, before my very eyes, and I had not flicked an eyelid” is one of the numerous examples of true humanization that is displayed throughout this autobiography. Unfortunately, after the war, Eliezer Wiesel was the only living family member left, but is now married to his wife Marion Wiesel.

Overall, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Sarah’s Key, and Night have a lot of sadistic and inhuman moments that could make anyone cringe of the horrible treatment. David Livingstone Smith, a professor in Philosophy and author of several books, once said: "We all know, despite what we see in the movies that it's very difficult, psychologically, to kill another human being up close and in cold blood, or to inflict atrocities on them". This quote questions how easily extermination is done in the world, including these three realistic books. Altogether, every victim of each book went through extreme harassment involving severe dehumanization from the hands of the wicked.