What does an ideal mother do? In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, the ideal of mother is described. In the story two mothers, Nana and Mariam, are showed as the model of a perfect mother. Through Nana and Mariam, Hosseini shows that an ideal mother must be willing to sacrifice, must do her best to ensure their children’s survival, and be able to utilize tough love. Throughout the book both moms are constantly sacrificing to make their children’s life better.
The characters of Nana and Mariam show the archetype of a mother by sacrificing to make their children’s life better. Towards the beginning of the book Nana describes Mariam’s birth to Mariam and mentions, “ I cut the chord between us myself. That’s why I had a knife.”(11). As Nana mentioned she sacrificed throughout her pregnancy though the pain and separated the umbilical chord herself because she wanted her child to have the best chance that she could. She also mentions the knife, which could have been use to kill the baby, similar to what Laila almost did with the rusty bicycle spoke. In addition, the knife could have been used to kill herself to end her suffering. Nevertheless, Nana does not carry out this plan and instead she decides to give up her feelings for the child’s. Mariam too goes through moments where sacrifice is necessary. For instance, when the drought hit and Rahseed looses his shoe store she realizes that in order for her family to survive she must ask Jalil, her father, for money. In order to contact her father she travels in the hot sun, calls the mayor, and says, “I know you have important things to tend to, but it is life and death”(310). Mariam swallows her pride and begins to realize her negative reaction towards her father w...
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...e idea of living peacefully she did what Nana did to her. She took her childish dream version of the situation and turned it into reality. Even though it was not the nicest way of telling her that she was wrong it was the best. Since she loved)((use more in P))) her family she decided to be more direct and use tough love to save everyone.
The two mothers despite their differences are both help their family be as successful as possible. Nonetheless, the mothers were successful in showing that an ideal mother sacrifices for her children, does her best to ensure their children’s survival, and uses tough love. Yet, the two moms were not only successful because they showed the ideals of a good mother, but because they passed on the values of a good mother. Nana passed it on to Mariam and Mariam passed it on to Laila, who will pass it on to her next girl names Mariam.
As a result, she wanted to provide a better and memorable childhood for her children by educating them in a better way. For instance, by showing and transmit them love and at the same time doing so with other people and animals. That animals are not just an object or an insignificant life but to treat them as part of the family. She wanted to show them those principles by not having a repetitive cycle about her own experiences as a child.
A wound in which Mariam never recovers from is the death of her mother. Mariam discovers her mother hanged herself when the novel states “Mariam caught a glimpse of what was beneath the tree: the straight-backed chair, overturned. The rope dropping from a high branch. Nana dangled at the end of it” (Hosseini 36). Mariam left her mother to see her father, and she never did forgive herself for that. She always felt that her mother’s death was her fault because she left her, and Mariam will never recover from that wound she suffers. When Mariam leaves her mother she realized every thing her mother did for her. This wound she suffers helps her to realize and appreciate the stuff and people in her life. Another unhealable wound Mariam suffers is her 7 miscarriages. In chapter 15 it states “In the four years since the day at the boathouse. there had been six more cycles of hope raised then dashed, each loss, each collapse, each trip to the doctor more crushing for Mariam than the last”(Hosseini 97). Each baby Mariam loses hurts her more and more. The first miscarriage hurt Mariam so much and each baby after the agony increased. Mariam wants to be a mother and she gets excited when she is pregnant, but every time she gets excited all hope is lost when she loses the baby. Although Mariam has all these miscarriages, it
The story opens up with Mariam’s mother, Nana, calling her a “harami” for breaking a sugar bowl. “Harami” means “bastard child” and Mariam was born out of wedlock, with her father being Jalil, a wealthy businessman. Although it was Jalil’s fault for having an affair with Mariam’s mother, Mariam gets the pain and backlash from her mother for being a “harami.” She did not understand what this meant, though, because she was
The relationships between mothers and daughters is a topic that authors often call upon to tell a story. It is an important part of every culture, which makes the topic relatable to any reader who picks the book up. Junot Diaz understood the universality of mother/daughter relationships and incorporated it in his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Although the book is mainly about Oscar, an overweight Dominican boy from New Jersey and his quest for love, the book also spends a lot of time exploring the relationships between Oscar’s sister Lola and their mother Beli and Beli’s relationship with her mother figure La Inca. Junot Diaz does not write mother/daughter relationships in an honest way and focuses on the conflict in the relationships
Tan uses a simile to describe the resemblance in the circumstances that the four mothers and their daughter face. For example, “... she still came out the same way. Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was a girl. And i was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.”(Tan 215). Tan’s use of language in this quote, explains the connection between mother and daughter, and the stories told between them. Also, the mothers see their own mistakes and flaws in their daughters, and hope to prevent these daughters from suffering the same way they did.
The mother is a selfish and stubborn woman. Raised a certain way and never falters from it. She neglects help, oppresses education and persuades people to be what she wants or she will cut them out of her life completely. Her own morals out-weight every other family member’s wants and choices. Her influence and discipline brought every member of the family’s future to serious-danger to care to her wants. She is everything a good mother isn’t and is blind with her own morals. Her stubbornness towards change and education caused the families state of desperation. The realization shown through the story is the family would be better off without a mother to anchor them down.
The children also argue with their mother often. The children think that their mother, with no doubt, will be perfect. They idealize their mothers as angel who will save them from all their problems, which the mothers actually never do. The children get angry at their false hopes and realize that their mothers aren’t going to...
The main idea of the essay is to demonstrate the different ways in how Annie Dillard, the speaker, thinks and admires her mother’s personality and her qualities. This essay is not unusual because every daughter feels admiration and Proudness toward their mothers, even if they express their feelings in many different ways. As the speaker says, she takes pleasure in describing her exceptional mother and is proud of the lessons her mother taught her. The style of some mother’s uses to teach their kids is always in the beginning of their lives which lead them to have success or failure.
A mother is someone that would risk a speeding ticket to get her child to a hospital. A mother is someone that cooks for her family delicious food. A mother is someone that loves her children, even when they disrespect her. A mother is someone who risks all she has for her children. A mother is a HERO! The qualities of a hero are being intelligent, caring, and courageous. Two heroes that display these aspects are Odysseus from the epic The Odyssey and a modern mother. Odysseus, a soldier and a leader, on his journey back from the war of Troy, let the Cyclopes eat his men. In contrast, a modern mom saves her children by rushing to the hospital to save them.
To understand fully the implicit meaning and cultural challenges the film presents, a general knowledge of the film’s contents must be presented. The protagonist, Tita, suffers from typical Hispanic cultural oppression. The family rule, a common rule in this culture, was that the youngest daughter is to remain unwed for the duration of her mother’s life, and remain home to care for her. Mama Elena offers her daughter, Tita’s older sister Rosaura, to wed a man named Pedro, who is unknowingly in mutual love with Tita. Tita is forced to bake the cake for the wedding, which contains many tears that she cried during the process. Tita’s bitter tears cause all the wedding guests to become ill after consuming the cake, and Tita discovers she can influence others through her cooking. Throughout the film, Tita’s cooking plays an important role in all the events that transpire.
In both these works, the mothers play the most important role in the development of the plot. They represent the pillars of strength and they are the ones that hold the family together and the hope alive. In Lorraine Hansberry's work, Mama is a widow, mother of two children and the head of the household: "There are some ideas we ain't going to have in this house. Not long as I am at the head of this family." (Hansberry 51) Mama is aware of the high position she is awarded in the family, since her husband is dead and she is left in care of the family. Qualities like independence and strength surround her and give her and air of authority. She takes charge when others hesitate and she gives courage to the insecure. "You just got strong willed children and it takes a strong woman like you to keep'em in hand, (Hansberry 52) her daughter-in-law tells her at one point. This symbolizes the love and respect she carries for her, but also the power that Mama radiates over the whole family.
Throughout the novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Mariam and Laila are constantly having their inner strength challenged from birth to death. They both had different lives growing up, but they both lived in the same society, meaning that they both dealt with the disrespect from the Afghani culture.
Nana is the character who plays the role of Mariam's mother. Based on the novel, one can say Nana spent most of her life being occupied with domestic duties like cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry. She lived the typical lifestyle of a woman from Afghanistan. Women in
The novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is set in Afghanistan. It covers about a 50 year time period from the 1950’s to the mid 2000’s. Hosseini uses allusions to actual Afghani events to depict the ever changing liberties that the women of Afghanistan endure with the lack of stability in Afghanistan’s government.
However, on a deeper level, we all have a Giver of sorts in our lives, and that we all have people who pass on memories and stories of what life was like before us. She said that her mother was her “Giver” and she was the “Receiver” during her mother’s last days. She would sit with her mother and all her mother wanted to do was tell her stories of her life.