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A thousand splendid suns critical analysis
A thousand splendid suns book review
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REVIEW OF LITERATURE “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, focuses on mothers and daughters, their legitimate rights and their plight. This novel features a villain and a saintly best friend who commits self-sacrifice to help the friend. It also focuses on Afghanistan’s violent history. The author makes use of straight forward, utilitarian prose and creates characters who are very simple and have emotions just like a fairy tale. It include unhappy families, abusive marriages, violent talibans, oppressive government, plight of women and repressive cultural mores. INTRODUCTION TO THE CHARACTERS MARIAM Mariam is the daughter of Nana (mother) and Jalil (father). She is the illegitimate daughter of Jalil as he had three other wives with nine children. …show more content…
Jalil used to live with his three wives and nine children and used to visit Mariam every Thursday. On her fifteenth birthday, Mariam requested her father to show her a film “Pinocchio” as Jalil was the owner of a cinema but he refused. To protest against this, she forcefully went to his father’s house where she was not being entertained. After coming back to home, she finds her mother commited suicide as she thought Mariam would never return. Now her father had no other choice but to take her to his house. But his three wives forced Mariam to marry a forty-five year old shoe-maker in Kabul, Rasheed to get rid of her. In Kabul, Mariam got pregnant seven successive times but is never able to carry a child to term. This created troubles amidst Mariam and Rasheed. He started domestic violence against Mariam because of her inability to carry a child, particularly a son. Part two introduces Laila, an intelligent and beautiful girl. Tariq is her close friend who lives in her neighbourhood. When war starts at Afghanistan by the Talibans, Tariq’s family decides to leave the city and on these emotional circumstances, Laila and Tariq get intimate. Meanwhile, Laila’s family also decides to leave Kabul but a rocket destroys the house killing her parents and Laila is left alone injured. She is the taken in by Rasheed and
Elli talks about daily life in her neighborhood. Her mother does not show any compassion for her. When Elli complains of this, her mother brings up excuses that are unconvincing. Elli believes her mother does not care for her and that her brother is the favorite. Hilter’s reoccurring radio broadcast give nightmares to Elli, whos family is Jewish. The nights when the Hungarian military police would come and stir trouble did not provide anymore comfort for Elli. One night, her brother, Bubi, comes home with news that Germany invaded Budapest, the town where he goes to school. But the next morning, there is no news in the headlines. The father sends him back to school. He learns the next day that a neighbor’s son who goes to school with Bubi has said the same. The day after, the newspapers scream the news of the invasion. Bubi arrives home, and the terror begins.
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
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
A Thousand Splendid Suns takes place in Afghanistan, more specifically in cities like Kabul, Irat and Muree. The story of this novel happen on a long period of time, approximately from 1974 to 2003. What should be retained from those facts is that the story is going in the Middle East, a Islamic country in which the religion has a major influence in the culture and that Afghan society is known to be misogynist. Also, during the
She sacrificed herself to protect Mariam. Laila had to endure Rasheed desire to keep others safe and sound. The willingness of Laila to protect Mariam signifies their unity as females to stand up for each other. Another act of perseverance in this novel, is when Laila had to give her daughter to an orphanage. When Rasheed’s store caught fire, the financial state of the family got worse and worse. They had to sell almost everything they had and skip meals to survive, the kids got weaker and weaker. Due to Rasheed’s ill temper, he got fired from every job. Therefore, Laila is obligated to take to Aziza to an orphanage where she can be fed well. Laila tries to calm Aziza on their way to the orphanage, claiming, “I’ll come and see you.”(315) Laila had to distance herself from her only daughter. She does this for Aziza’s own good, for her to maintain her health. Even though she tells her that she will visit, Laila struggles to go there. The first few time going there is not a problem, since she in the company of Rasheed. When Rasheed refuses to go visit Aziza, the Taliban soldiers abuse her physically and emotionally. That did not stop her from seeing her daughter, she goes there even though she knows the
Khaled Hosseini’s novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, tells the stories of women in Afghanistan in the late twentieth century. Hosseini shows the women’s strengths, weaknesses, tribulations and accomplishments through their own actions, and how they are treated by other characters in the book, particularly the male characters. Hosseini portrays men in A Thousand Splendid Suns to create themes of justice and injustice within the novel. The justice, or lack thereof, served to the male characters is a result of their treatment and attitudes toward the female characters in the book and towards women in general.
Women are beaten, and it is culturally acceptable. Like routine, women are beaten in Afghanistan almost every day. When a person purposely inflicts sufferings on others with no feelings of concern, like the women of Afghanistan, he is cruel. Cruelty can manifest from anger, irritation, or defeat and is driven by self-interest. An idea that is explored in many works of literature, cruelty also appears in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns in the relationship between a husband and wife. In their case, the husband uses cruelties in the form of aggression are to force his wife to submit. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini’s use of cruelty elucidates the values of both Rasheed and Mariam as well as essential ideas about the nature of
first seen when Mariam’s mother is found dead. This result in an unfortunate event when she is forced to get married at 15 to an abusive man named Rasheed for the next twenty- seven years. Mariam again shows heroism when the second wife to Rasheed moves in and her name is Lila. Mariam protects Lila from Rasheed, becoming a mother figure w...
“Where is the rest of your family,” asked Masoud. Her father came back to bring her after a long time he left her. As a girl, she wanted to be with her family, but she thought about all the things, about her father, then she determined who knows if her father again abandons her. That was the reason she let her father go, and Jameela let all the pain go from her heart.
One aspect of the novel that highlights this struggle is its setting, as it takes place during four time periods, each at a different stage in Afghan history. Throughout these unstable decades, the country’s government went through continuous upheavals with each new government advocating different
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.
Essentially, Laila and Mariam protect each other from Rasheed, but they also protect the other important people in their lives when they are threatened also. Equally important, they protect others, in spite of the lack of protection from the power of oppression.
Maria and Robert fall instantly in love and immediately begin an affair, determined to make the most of what little time they might have together. Maria instills in Robert a new hope for the future and an optimism he has long been without. Pilar, Pablo’s woman, is very fond of Maria and wants Robert Jordan to take Maria with him when the war is over. She also warns him to be careful as Maria is in a delicate state emotionally after her ordeal as a captive at the hands of the enemy soldiers. As they grow closer Robert fantasized about a life they might make together after the war, but also realized that no matter where they might be Maria’s past will always haunt her to some extent