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Understand the lesson-the thousand splendid suns-by Khaled Hosseini
400 words Analysis of A Thousand splendid suns(novel
Conclusion for khaled hosseini's thousand splendid suns
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The novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is separated into four sections with the first part told from Mariam’s perspective and the second part from Laila’s perspective. Thus, Part III alternates between Mariam’s and Laila’s point of view with each chapter. In Part III, we begin with Mariam’s perspective. Rasheed digs Laila out of the rubble of their home, and Mariam slowly nurses her back to health. Laila is essentially a stranger to Mariam, which helps to explain why Mariam calls her simply “the girl”. Nevertheless, Mariam is a natural caretaker - it is more surprising that Rasheed is so eager to take care of Laila as well. Not long afterward, a man named Abdul Sharif comes to the house and says he was in a hospital with Tariq, whose lorry had been caught in crossfire on the …show more content…
The arrival of Abdul Sharif echoes the arrival, earlier in the novel, of the man from Panjshir: these strangers tend not to bear good news. Giti’s death had allowed Laila to begin to understand how loss and grief can affect a person, but only now can she truly comprehend the extent of Mammy’s suffering. And once again, she feels ashamed of this earlier inability, which reveals just how personal and intimate suffering can be. On the other hand, it soon becomes clear that Rasheed’s apparent kindness has hidden his true goal - to take Laila as his second wife. Mariam begs him not not, but Rasheed threatens to turn Laila out onto the streets. Rather than being ashamed himself of his actions, Rasheed knows that as a man whose wife does not have family or other supporter, he can do whatever he’d like. His threats to Mariam take advantage of her kindness and goodness - the fact that Mariam would do whatever she could not to condemn Laila to a life on the streets or in a refugee camp, even if that means accepting Laila as Rasheed’s second wife. It now makes even more sense why Mariam refuses to call Laila by her name. Surprisingly, Laila agrees to wed Rasheed
The sentiment from Laila’s childhood, that people should not have more children if they have already given all of their love to their other children, informs her reaction to becoming pregnant with Rasheed’s child because she was worried that she would repeat history by not loving Rasheed’s child as much as she loved Tariq’s. Laila did not feel that her mother loved her as much as she loved her brothers. She felt as if her mother had no love to give her because she had already given it all away to her two sons. When Laila became aware that she was pregnant with Rasheed’s child, she contemplated killing it inside the womb because she did not believe that she could love
Rasheed tries to convince Mariam that the only way to keep Laila safe is by marrying her. He ends up hiring a man named Abdul Harif to tell Laila that he had met the love of her life, Tariq, in the hospital and that he had died. Laila is told this right when she finds out that she is pregnant with Tariq’s child. Rasheed had hired Abdul Harif to tell Laila this because he wanted to get Laila to marry her. When Rasheed brings up marriage to Laila, she jumps on board right away, and falls into Rasheed’s trap. After Rasheed and Laila get married, he treats her like a queen. He becomes very protective of Laila. Almost all his attention is spent on her, and in a sense, forgets that he is even married to Mariam. But him acting affectionate and caring does not last very long. When Laila gives birth to a baby girl, named Aziza, Rasheed starts to treat Laila how he treated Mariam when she could not successfully carry a child full term. Again, Rasheed ends up not getting what he wants, and therefore he turns onto Laila. The abuse, both verbal and physical, starts to get worse in the household. A particular situation that displays just how violent the abuse in their household can get is when he locks Laila and Aziza in their room, and Mariam in the shed because they tried running away from Rasheed and the abuse. He leaves them without water or food, and it ends up almost killing Aziza. This is where Rasheed falls into the paradox of power again. “ ...the 16th century Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli insisted that compassion got in the way of eminence. If a leader has to choose between being feared or being loved, Machiavelli insisted that the leader should always go with fear. Love is overrated” (Lehrer The Power Trip). Rasheed would rather have his own family be completely afraid of him and almost
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
In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, a theme that is developed throughout the novel is the sacrifice and perseverance of the main female characters. When Rasheed raged at Laila for refusing to have sex with him. He immediately thought that this is Mariam’s influence on her. Since Mariam throughout the years have developed the confidence to say no to Rasheed. As the only method of expression that Rasheed is familiar with is abuse. Stomping towards Mariam’s room with a leather belt, Rasheed prepared himself to beat his wife. Laila who is not on good terms with Mariam in this part of the novel, tries fiercely to stop him. When things got out of control, Laila gave up, screaming, “You win. You win. Don’t do this. Please, Rasheed, no
The way that men are represented in A Thousand Splendid Suns begins with Hosseini’s characterization of Jalil, and his treatment of Mariam. Jalil’s concern with his image and reputation greatly outweighs his concern for Mariam’s well being when she is in Herat. Before he sends her away to an unfamiliar city with an unfamiliar man, when she tries to call him out, he gets defensive, “as if he were the one to whom something was being done.” (page
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.
In Part three, a shift in this isolation occurs when Laila becomes a part of her life. An epiphany occurs where Mariam starts to realize the injustices that surround her; The amount of her life wasted with Rasheed, the physical and emotional abused endured from him, and the injustices she knows Laila is about to endure.Then as she starts to bond with Laila, Mariam feels a sense of purpose; the kids look up to her as a secondary mother figure and she has Laila as a companion. So when Rasheed had the intent to kill Laila, Mariam had to act. She has taken justice into her own hands by responding to Rasheed’s physical injustice and the injustices of equality rights towards women at the hands of the Taliban. She later tells Laila that she was simply “acting like a
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
This passage from pp 173-174- from Khalid Hosseini's novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns is significant because Hosseini displays many different literary devices, such as symbolism, imagery, and allusion which describes the social issues in the novel Laila faces, and describes how Laila and the citizens in Afghanistan live during the Soviets violation in Afghanistan, as this was a major part in this novel. Moreover, this passage is also important because it allows the reader to understand how hard it is to live in an area where war is developing and explains how the action one takes, surrounded by war. Secondly, Hosseini conveys the social issues, chaos and anxiety due to the political rivalry. One literary device, which Hosseini uses, is allusion. Hosseini uses allusion by illustrating war when he addresses, "Then the rugs were folded, the mountains fired on Kabul, and Kabul, fired back at the mountains, as Laila and the rest of the city watched helpless as old Santiago watching the sharks take bites out of his prize fish" (A Thousand Splendid Suns p.174). Khaled Hosseini refers to the The Old Man and the Sea , describing the old man's lack of talent to do anything as the sharks eat the fish, to how destitute and vulnerable the citizens of Kabul feel. This shows the cultural values in Afghanistan because the people living are unwilling to move. On the other hand, part of the reason the people want to stay is their desire near the Middle East, where their religion, Islam started. Another example of literary device that Hosseini uses in this passage is imagery. Hosseini uses imagery to let the reader understand and to visualize distinctly what is occurring in the passage. A context consisting of imagery often contains rich words tha...
Laila--an originally young girl pregnant with her best friend’s child--became obliged to marry Rasheed once hm and Mariam nurse her back to health after a bomb injuries her and kills the rest of her family. Originally, Mariam and Laila did not understand each other, but after awhile Laila and Zalmai became the reason that Mariam found hope in the world. Through Rasheed’s wrath and lust, they helped each other through their abusive situations and found support in one another. The end of Mariam’s life resulted from Mariam’s love for Laila. She searched all her life for something that gave her life purpose, and she found it in Laila and her children. She described Laila and her children as flowers that bloomed in her life and brought back hope for a better ending. When she began to see the end for Laila, she took matters into her own hands for the first time in her life, stating that she “it occurred to her that this was the first time that she was deciding the course of her own life” (349). After murdering Rasheed, and saving Laila and her children, Mariam faces the inevitable consequences of death. She reminiscents her life, feeling very content with herself and what she has accomplished. She thought “of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable
Both Laila, the lucky girl with breathtaking beauty, whose luck suddenly vanishes, and Mariam, the unlucky and illegitimate daughter, whose luck goes from bad to terribly worse, become dynamic and complex characters. This transformation is brought about by the gradual revealing of Hosseini’s motivation. In fact, Hoesseini is evidently motivated to reveal the truth, and let the emotional and physical realities of Afghani women’s lives be known to the
The novel A Thousand Splendid Suns explores the plight of women in Afghanistan; the focus is put on three women Nana, Mariam and Laila. Women in Afghanistan often face difficult and unfortunate situations. In this essay we will examine some of these unfortunate situations for women.
The centre of economy and the focus of many lives, the power of money is punctuated by the difference in wealth in Bhima and Sera’s lives in The Space Between Us. The importance of money is stressed in A Thousand Splendid Suns with the contrast between Mariam’s father’s prosperity and her mother’s poverty and the difference in Laila and Mariam’s lives before and after war. Centred on the newly abolished caste system, the distinction between Bhima and Sera’s financial situations underlines the difference money makes in their society. While Bhima is forced to live in a slum, Sera enjoys the luxury of her home and the employment of Bhima. Another luxury Bhima can’t afford is to welcome Maya’s baby. Instead she is forced to watch her granddaughter suffer from the emotional effects of an abortion. While Sera eagerly awaits the birth of her own grandchild she is the one who financially facilitates the abortion of Bhima’s great-grandchild. Furthermore, because of the pre-existing social constraints of the caste system, Bhima is not permitted to sit on the same furniture or use the same dishes as Sera. Similarly, Mariam’s life is also restricted by her mother’s pove...
Throughout “Araby”, the main character experiences a dynamic character shift as he recognizes that his idealized vision of his love, as well as the bazaar Araby, is not as grandiose as he once thought. The main character is infatuated with the sister of his friend Mangan; as “every morning [he] lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door…when she came on the doorstep [his] heart leaped” (Joyce 108). Although the main character had never spoken to her before, “her name was like a summons to all [his] foolish blood” (Joyce 108). In a sense, the image of Mangan’s sister was the light to his fantasy. She seemed to serve as a person who would lift him up out of the darkness of the life that he lived. This infatuation knew no bounds as “her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance…her name sprang to [his] lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which [he] did not understand” (Joyce 109). The first encounter the narrator ex...
In a nation brimming with discrimination, violence and fear, a multitudinous number of hearts will become malevolent and unemotional. However, people will rebel. In the eye-opening novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini, the country of Afghanistan is exposed to possess cruel, treacherous and sexist law and people. The women are classified as something lower than human, and men have the jurisdiction over the women. At the same time, the most horrible treatment can bring out some of the best traits in victims, such as consideration, boldness, and protectiveness. Although, living in an inconsiderate world, women can still carry aspiration and benevolence. Mariam and Laila (the main characters of A Thousand Splendid Suns) are able to retain their consideration, boldness and protectiveness, as sufferers in their atrocious world.