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A thousand splendid suns analysis
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A thousand splendid suns summary
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Serial killers may become who they are due to the fact that they may not have the emotional capacity to understand that what they are doing is hurtful and cruel; they may lack the emotional capacity to really feel any emotions at all. Characters in a novel can behave in a similar way, but they may not commit a wrong doing such as murder. In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, the relationships with family members (wives and children, respectively) are greatly different between Jalil and Rasheed. Each character demonstrates varying capacities for emotion; Jalil is very empathetic and apologetic whereas Rasheed is inconsiderate and belittling. Jalil is very insensitive of Mariam’s feelings in the beginning of the novel, but this changes over …show more content…
Although Jalil was embarrassed of her, he is very apologetic for the way that he treated Mariam later in the novel. He wrote a letter to Mariam before he died in which he said:
You were a good daughter, Mariam jo, and I cannot ever think of you without feeling shame and regret...When it comes to you, Mariam jo, I have oceans of it. [Was it because I had a] fear of losing face? Of staining my so-called good name? How little those things matter to me now...But now, of course, it is too late...Now all I can do is say that you were a good daughter, Mariam jo...that I never deserved you...[and] all I can do is ask for your forgiveness. So forgive me, Mariam jo. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me. (359)
Jalil explains how he recognizes that Mariam has always been a good daughter, and he is extremely ashamed of the way that he treated her during her childhood. He thinks that maybe this is his punishment for being heartless, prideful, and a bit of a
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Rasheed always says that a women’s face is her husband’s business only. However, he owns pornographic magazines. Mariam is shocked by this fact at first, but then realizes that she cannot fault him for being the way that God made him. “Surely the women on these pages had husbands, some of them must... If so, why did Rasheed insist that she cover then he thought nothing of looking at the private areas of other men's wives and sisters?... His needs differed from hers... Could she fault him for being the way God had created him?” (75) Jalil does not own pornographic magazines (that we know of) but he is a hypocrite in other ways; he was ashamed of Mariam because she was a harami, but it is his own fault that she was conceived. Nana, Mariam’s mother, told Mariam that Jalil had told his wives that Nana had forced herself onto him, but the reader has no proof that this statement is true. "You know what he told his wives by way of defense? That I forced myself on him. That it was my fault” (6). Nana thinks that Jalil is a “rich man telling rich lies” (5) and a fraud because of
Strong emotions towards another can cause one to act irrationally. In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Rudy, Liesel, and her foster father Hans develop strong emotions towards others that cause them to act rashly. Rudy’s, Liesel’s, and Hans’s actions illustrate the unreasonable actions caused by strong feelings towards another.
Mama said Maria was very pretty before the incident, and that she looked like a princess in her wedding dress at the altar, but after she was stood up, she lost her mind and beauty. Cofer describes her in her mind as a woman with a fat, middle-aged body, a wrinkly face with yellowed teeth like an old lady, and the demeanor of a child, hopping and skipping around. Cofer offers a description of Maria’s decline in beauty and mental health because that is what Mama believes will happen to a woman who is too trusting and does not choose her husband
In Hanan Al-Shaykh’s “The Women’s Swimming Pool,” a young girl convinces her grandmother to take her to Beirut so she could swim in the women’s swimming pool and see the sea. The youthful, curious point of view that this story is in shows the readers that women are expected to act and dress in proper ways that are acceptable to the testosterone driven society from such an early and innocent age as the protagonist. The grandmother is so worried about the certainty of the pool being for women only that she tells the young girl “if any man were to see you, you’d be done for, and so would you mother and father and your grandfather, the religious scholar- and I’d be done for more than anyone because it’s I who agreed to this and helped you.” (Norton Anthology of World Literature, pg. 1168) The grandmother is so worried that she makes the young girl swear by her mother’s grave. This, and the fact that Islamic custom requires girls and women to keep their hair, arms, and legs covered despite the sweltering heat, shows just how conservative the life for the young girl and her grandmother is. Although the young girl is able to see how beautiful the sea truly is, she is not able to swim in the pool that she traveled all that way for because it was time to pray. As her grandmother begins to pray, the young girl realizes that Beirut is a different world than what she is used to, and that she is bound to her traditional
For her 15th birthday, Mariam asked Jalil if he could take her to his cinema to watch Pinocchio. She also asked if Jalil could bring her brothers and sisters so she could meet them. Both Nana and Jalil thought it wasn’t a good idea, but Mariam insisted on going, so Jalil said he would send someone to pick her up. Mariam did not like this idea and said that she wanted to be picked up by Jalil. Jalil reluctantly agreed. Later that day, Mariam gets the backlash and hate from her mother from her decision: “Of all the daughters I could have had, why did God give me an ungrateful one like you? …How dare you abandon me like this, you treacherous little harami!” Mariam wakes up the next day, disappointed and fed up since Jalil did not come to pick her up. She heads out to town to find Jalil herself. She makes it to his house when a chauffeur tells Mariam that Jalil was “away on urgent business.” She slept outside of his house and was awoken by the chauffeur, telling her that he would take her home. Mariam snatches away from the chauffeur’s grip and turns around towards the house, to see Jalil in an upstairs window. It was then that Mariam figured out that all she was to Jalil was a disgrace. Jalil had always been careful with the information he told Mariam. He may have loved her, but only on his own terms. Once Mariam realizes that her father allowed her to sleep on the street rather than bring her into his
In addition, Haydar explains her background and the culture of her parents. She tells us that they only practiced what they believed and that her mother supported the belief that covering got rid of judgement. Haydar says, “Covering removes that first level of being judged, of being assessed based on my measurements, and it absolves me of the need or desire to be wanted solely for my looks” (415). She backs up this thinking by telling the reader of her dating experiences and how she knew that she was being liked for who she was beyond her body
Mariam has built a mutual relationship with Jalil in her childhood, with weekly visits every Thursday. Mariam has hid behind a wall of innocence, and Jalil helped her get past the wall with the harsh realities of the world. Mariam was an innocent being at childhood: she was stuck indoors in Kolba. Mariam does not know what is going on around her home, because she has not experienced the outdoors as well as others. All she gets at is from Jalil’s stories, and Mullahs teaching. She does not understand that the world is not as as happy as it seems. In Khaled Hosseini’s novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini uses Jalil’s character to show development in Mariam's life, in order to emphasize how significant the impact of trust breaks Mariam’s innocent in the story.
As Mariam waits for Jalil she finds herself very bored, “She watched a caterpillar inching along the foot of an immature thistle,” her boredom shows that her home can be very dull (30). One of the reasons she decided to leave, “for the first time in her life, headed down the hill for Herat,” was because she wanted an adventure (30). Living with Nana in a small house outside of Herat with nothing to do can be very unentertaining. Mariam was able to believe everything Jalil had been saying because she had not been anywhere outside her home. Mariam had waited for Jalil for a while, “she waited until her legs were stiff,” which shows that she believed everything he said, she believed that he was gonna come (30).
Mariam’s strength is immediately tested from birth and throughout her whole childhood. She has been through a lot more than other children of her age, and one of those challenges is the hope for acceptance. She is looked at as an illegitimate child by her parents, and they say there’s no need to attend school. We learn right away what the word “harami” means when Nana uses that to describe her own daughter. She says, “You are a clumsy little harami. This is my reward for everything I’ve endured. An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harami” (Hosseini 4). Nana especially pushed Mariam away from pursuing her goals. She said there was no need for education and men always find a way to blame it on a woman. This pushed Mariam away from her mom and closer to Jalil, but he refuses to acknowledge her and his wives look at her with cold stares of disgust. Mariam only feels loved by Jalil through all of this, mainly because he brings her things and shows her some love. She asks him to do something with her outside of the kolboa and he first agrees, but never brings her because of his fear with his wives and the structures of Afghan culture that frown upon it. He starts to act as if she was a burden to him and Mariam’s hope for acceptance is crushed. She realizes the truth, especially once she reaches adulthood. In Afghanistan, marriage is not all about love for eachother, it is about traditional role...
In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini, people tend to make decisions for others employing their guilt through the use of manipulation. At this point in chapter three, Mariam spoke with Mullah Faizullah and told him that she wants to go to school and get a proper education. After Mariam states this, she hopes that her tutor can speak with her mother for her permission. As he expresses Mariam’s want to attend school, Nana immediately turns it down and refuses, to tell Mariam that women only need one skill in their life, which is to endure. Nana is exceptional in the skill of manipulation against her daughter Mariam by prying into her guilt.
He knew that if he took her in she could have his son. Rasheed then became violent with Laila just like he did with Mariam. If Laila ever talked back to him he would slap her, if she said something more intelligent than him or proved him wrong he would call her stupid say that she was uneducated. When she became pregnant with his son he couldn't wait to teach his son how to act like him. Rasheed made sure Laila was having boy because if he had a girls she wouldn't be dominant in life, she would be considered a harami. Mariam did not like Laila because she saw her as a threat but she also felt bad for Laila because Mariam knew how it felt to not be wanted and to be a victim. Later in the story they became close and Mariam looked at Laila and her kids as if they were her children. Mariam cared for Laila and her safety that they decided they would try to escape and start over. But that did not work out. The police brought them right back home and Rasheed tortured them but throwing Laila and Aziza into a room and looking the door and boarding the windows and threw Mariam in a shed outside. He kept them there for days without food or water. He saw this as a punishment for them disobeying his rules. The violence that Mariam and Laila endure is through this patriarchal society where the man is the dominant individual and can do anything he wants to his wives, even his
From start to finish, one could see how much Mariam values Laila, Aziza, and their friendship. The first example is when Mariam vows to help Laila while they are in the hospital for Laila’s unborn child: “I’ll get you seen, Laila jo. I promise” (287). This simple promise is a deep portrayal of Mariam’s desire to help Laila find a doctor and deliver her baby. Additionally, one can see Mariam’s love for Laila when she protects her from Rasheed’s grip of death, “‘Rasheed.’ He looked up. Mariam swung. She hit him across the temple. The blow knocked him off Laila” (348). Rasheed was going to kill Laila, but Mariam steps in and knocks him off of her with a shovel to save her life. Mariam forms a tight-knit bond with Laila, and when Hosseini includes their relationship, one can see how Mariam values Laila enough to kill another man. The author also describes their relationship after Mariam and Laila discuss plans for leaving: “When they do, they’ll find you as guilty as me. Tariq too. I won’t have the two of you living on the run like fugitives.” … “Laila crawled to her and again put her head on Mariam’s lap. She remembered all the afternoons they’d spent together, braiding each other’s hair, Mariam listening patiently to her random thoughts and ordinary stories with an air of gratitude, with the expression of a person to whom a unique and coveted privilege had been extended” (358). The love Mariam has for
He does the ultimate insult by comparing her to her “perfect” cousin. When the grandfather died though, it was a different story. In the story when she was looking at her dead grandfather in the casket it states, ““Why do you always do this to me? Why? Why did you have to be so stubborn and unfriendly, so impatient and unloving?
In conclusion, every person stands for a single quality but yet it is up to the human psyche to make-up what the individual stands for. This is proven by Mariam’s heroism to sacrifice everything she had for the ones she loves, the shadow within Rasheed to change Mariam into the person she never wanted to become, and the trickster inside Rasheed that grew when thins didn’t go his way. Therefore the human psyche can be very powerful and can only evoke the emotion, actions and ambition within one.
“The Harem Within” is a pioneering work that opens discussion of women’s rights in Islamic societies. With her humble life story Mernissi gives not only a voice to Moroccan women, but stands her advocacy for individual freedom and battle against the harem within. The narrative is a literature example that figures the women discrimination and appeal for