Blue. Red. Green. Yellow. White. Black. Colors. They can have positive or negative impacts on characters in literature. Khaled Hosseini clearly reveals this concept in A Thousand Splendid Suns. In the novel, Hosseini uses various colors to symbolize emotions, reveal thoughts, and foreshadows the events in the characters’ lives.
Colors can have positive meanings in literature. In the novel, Hosseini uses the colors green, blue, and white to show some positive aspects. Green means growth and hope. When Mariam wore “...a green hijab over her hair”, she wore green in hope of seeing her father (29). She also grew as a person though because she learned what type of person her father was. When she grew stronger as a person, it caused her to open
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her eyes more and be more cautious. Blue may symbolize security and high positive. It can also be associated with the truth. Mariam went to her new house with Rasheed and could see that “it had once been blue”(58). This could mean the house could have been secure before. In this house, some truth will be reveal. Mariam and Laila will see truly what kind of a “man” Rasheed is. They will also find out about themselves and how much they have grown. It could somewhat be closure for the two ladies because it’s said that the truth will set you free. The blue skies demonstrates that it’s going to be a good day, or at least start off good. Along with positive colors, white falls in this category. White in literature symbolizes light, purity, and innocence. “Kabul was eerily silent, quilted in white…”(87) foreshadows some light in the town. Mariam is pregnant and is expected to have her child. Everything is going good and it’s a positive time in Mariam’s life. When characters in the story wore white, it could symbolize their innocence. While Hosseini uses colors to show positive effects, he also uses them in a negative way.
In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini uses the colors yellow, black, red, and green to show negative effects. In literature, yellow means decay. “His nails were yellow-brown, like the inside of a rotting apple” symbolizes that Rasheed will do some dangerous things with his hands (53). He ends up strangling and abusing his two wives, Mariam and Laila. Using yellow as the color of his nails could also foreshadow his death towards the end of the book. It is important to the story because without Rasheed acting the way he did towards the women, they would not have grown as strong as they did mentally. The women had enough courage to stick up for each other and against Rasheed. The color black symbolizes death, mystery, & chaos. In Part Two of the novel, Mammy received the news of the death of her sons. The days after the funeral, Mammy laid in bed most days and “she wore black” (145). It was a devastating time for her and she was falling apart. She wore black to represent the death of her sons and the misery she was going through. She also suffered from Outward Manifestation Inward Strife which occurs when the body shows signs of emotional stress. “Chest pains and headaches, joint aches and night sweats, paralyzing pains in her ears, lumps no one else could feel” (141) shows some of the signs Mammy was having during her time of stress. She was taken to the doctor but they found no
physical illness. Similar to the meanings of the color black, red can also mean death. Other emotions of red are hate, anger, and sacrifice. At one point in the novel, Rasheed forced pebbles into Mariam’s mouth and made her chew them. The blood she spit out along with the pebbles and fragments of broken molars shows the sacrifice she made in order to continue to chew the pebbles and not make Rasheed more upset. Rasheed eventually gets more violent with Mariam and punches her. In addition to negative meanings in literature, the color green could represent decay. Mariam’s faith in her father decayed the day she “wore a cream-colored dress that fell to her knees, cotton trousers, and a green hijab over her hair” (29). Her father didn’t show up like he said he would and spend the day with her. That was the day she felt as if her innocence was lost because she felt as if her father betrayed her. Using colors in literature can help readers interpret meanings and dig deeper into thoughts. The meanings could be positive, negative, or a mixture of both. The usage of various colors in A Thousand Splendid Suns help bring out emotions, thoughts, and events occurring in the novel.
I have very good sight. One moment they were white, the next red, the next blue. Then I got it. They were a woman’s dresses”. At first, I did not pay attention to the colors of the dresses, but then I realized the pattern of colors in order. In this case, I believe white represents light, goodness, and pureness. The red represents anger, blood and possibly murder. The last but not least, the color blue that represents wisdom, loyalty, and truth. It seemed to me that the author used colors symbolizes the story from the beginning to the end. I believe it is a hint for us to what to expect and what not to since Jeffries was right all along the
Colors are very important in novels because they help the reader understand the deeper meaning of the topic. The Great Gatsby novel is one of the most well-known books ever to be written. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the narrator, Nick Carraway, describes a tragic story of a rich man, Jay Gatsby, in search for his true love, Daisy Buchanen. Daisy and Gatsby were previously in love, but Gatsby left for war and Daisy left him for more money. Jay Gatsby constantly throws extravagant parties hoping that his true love will visit one night and they will fall in love again.
In conclusion, Fitzgerald uses colours to express the different themes in the novel. The colour grey in the Valley of Ashes symbolizes all of the corruption, while the colour blue represents the reality that is blinded throughout the plot, and green represents all of the jealousy and envy. In the end, the colours have a lot of important significance to the book, just as certain colours may have importance to people.
The colors in the hat are extremely significant. Its purple velvet flap creates the image of royalty, and the rest of it, green, represents money. This is the only time that green is mentioned in the story, for money is not something that they have, which even the mother cannot dispute. In addition to the hat, the sky of their once “fashionable” neighborhood is the color of “a dying violet,” and the house...
F. Scott Fitzgerald used the imagery of colors in his masterpiece The Great Gatsby. The colors are used very frequently as symbols, and the hues create atmosphere in different scenes of the book. White is a clean and fresh color, but the author shows how it can be tainted as well. Next, yellow illustrates the downfall of moral standards of the people of West Egg. Lastly, green, the most dominant color in the book, symbolizes wealth and Gatsby's unattainable dream.
Colors, are something to be determine, not just colors, they mean many things depending on the way people analyze them. Colors are important in life, not only in life but also in books. One book that really describes that is The Great Gatsby. In The Great Gatsby, colors represent many different things. One of the major colors are yellow and gold. In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes these colors and associates them with different things. For example, gold represents real wealth and yellow represents fake gold. Fitzgerald associates colors with different things by really describing them in depth. For example, the green light at Daisy’s is just a green light, but Fitzgerald made it so that it would represent much more than that and that is what made The Great Gatsby such a great novel. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald associates yellow and gold in depth with different things. In life people sometimes make bad decisions and do bad things to gain money. Very similar to the novel, where Jay Gatsby gains money from bad ways, while he could have gained it from good ways.
Throughout history, colors have been used as symbols in literature. When people see or hear certain colors, they automatically associate them with symbols and feelings. For example, red is love, blue is sadness, and purple is royalty. Many of these symbols are universal. You could go anywhere in the world and ask someone how yellow makes them feel, and they would say happy. Some great examples of color symbolism are in the novel The Great Gatsby. Well-known symbols as well as new meanings are used to enrich the story. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, he used the colors gold, white, green and blue to symbolize deeper meanings.
Throughout the novel, 'The Scarlet Letter,'; Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates the themes with various dramatic colors. Of the array are the colors green and gold, where green symbolizes different aspects of nature such as tranquility, security, and gloominess, whereas gold represents all that pertains to luxuriance, serenity and goodness. In certain chapters, it seems as if one color is codependent with the other.
In the book The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a vast amount of colors to represent characters in the book. For instance, Gatsby is, if not, the main character in the book. Every single color in the book has to do with Gatsby. The three main colors in this book or most used colors are red, yellow, and black. These three colors seem to have the most meaning.
Why are colours important when trying to symbolize what is taking place in the mind of the setting and the characters of literature? Tennessee Williams have once said “ Symbols are nothing but the natural of drama the purest languages of play.” Tennessee William has exactly used symbolism and colour quite effectively in his play A Streetcar Named Desire. An impressive story about fading southern belle Blanche Dubois and her failure into insanity. A Streetcar Named Desire consists many symbolism and knowledgeable use of colour. This helps the audience to connect scenes and events to the themes and issues that Williams presents within the play, just as desire and death, and the conflict between the past and present of America. The significance of colours is a central theme in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire; the author uses colours to reflect states of mind, make further commentary on particular characters, and what sorts of things specific colours represent.
Whether the color being symbolized contradicts their lifestyle or correlatively fits the characters lifestyle. After reading Tenesse Williams's literature we can conclude he uses the symbolism of color to emphasize certain atmospheres and characteristic features of places or things in his literature. The author also uses color in objects in his literature as well to symbolize their meaning in the story. By doing so he contrasts the characters personal traits and lifestyles. Which creates a more clear and better visual for the reader. The characters being symbolized by color is what the author thought fit that specific character. Therefore we can conclude in literature symbolism takes form of a figure of speech where an object, person, or situation has another meaning other than its literal
Khaled Hosseini, author of A Thousand Splendid Suns, is indisputably a master narrator. His refreshingly distinctive style is rampant throughout the work, as he integrates diverse character perspectives as well as verb tenses to form a temperament of storytelling that is quite inimitably his own. In his novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, he explores the intertwining lives of two drastically different Afghani women, Lailia and Mariam, who come together in a surprising twist of fate during the Soviet takeover and Taliban rule. After returning to his native Afghanistan to observe the nation’s current state amidst decades of mayhem, Hosseini wrote the novel with a specific fiery emotion to communicate a chilling, yet historically accurate account of why his family was forced to flee the country years ago.
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.
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.
In summary colors can symbolize a lot of things. In many different cultures we use colors to describe a feeling or a way of life. For Sumita the colors of her outfits played a major role in the way she felt about herself. Her blue sari represented the color of possibilities and made her feel better about the trip and not knowing her husband. For instance, on the plane ride to the United States she started to feel physically sick about embarking on her new life. In order to make herself feel better she started thinking about all her beautiful saris that were in her suitcase such as her purple silk saris and cotton woven ones that reminded her of the Bengal countryside. She describes green saris that are like young bananna plants and grey ones that remind her of a lake from back home.