Compare And Contrast Mariam's Relationship With Her Mother In A Thousand Splendid Suns

A person’s fundamental beliefs and attitudes can be greatly influenced by the people in their lives. As an illustration, the presence of parents in a child 's life can influence them greatly. Parenting goes far beyond the care of the child, as parents also have a significant influence on the child’s personality, emotional development, and behavioral habits. Like in Karen Thompson Walker dystopian novel The Age of Miracles, the protagonist 's parents also have a crucial impact on her self-discovery. The novel is an inventive story, combining classic coming-of-age themes with the horror of a natural disaster of apocalyptic proportions.

Hardships endured by Two Afghan women. If we could all put our problems in a pile and see other people's; we'd take ours back. According to Sighn (2013) "women in Afghanistan have been going through gender equity in its severe form since ages. Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns depicts the plight of women behind the walls of Afghanistan during several invasions in the country".

The injustice Mariam endures in the novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, leads Mariam on a struggling journey impacting her future path in life. The injustice that Mariam endures leaves a permanent mark on her life and impacts her from the beginning. Life wasted no time throwing the cruel injustices of life at Mariam. Mariam was marked a harami, otherwise known as a child without a father, even though her father Jalil was alive, near, and well. “She understood then what Nana meant, that a harami was an unwanted thing: that she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person that would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance.”

Her husband happens to become Rasheed. He finds Laila unconscious after a bomb went off, dissipating her entire family. Rasheed then takes her in and nurses her back to health. He feels that because he saved her, he should be rewarded, “The way I see it I deserve a medal”. Rasheed later practically forces her to have sex with him.

She knew how much of an abomination killing her husband would be to society, but she loved Laila enough to risk the punishment. Instead of running away from Kabul with Laila, Mariam stayed behind so that Laila would never get in trouble for killing Rasheed. She was then arrested and later shot for murder (371). Mariam sacrificed her own life so that Laila could marry Tariq and live happily and freely with her family. She gave up everything, even her life for those whom she loved, even though they biologically were not her children.

In this chapter, Foster discusses the importance of viewing a story from the perspective of the character. This accounts for fully understanding the character’s background and weighing that with the current occurrences. After taking into account Laila’s familial and religious background along with her new situation with Rasheed, this passage has a lot more weight. In the situation Laila is in right now, she likely feels repressed and alone. Because of this, she confides in her memories with Tariq.

In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam is presented as a Christ figure in a Muslim society through her humble and forgiving qualities and the sacrifice of her life and freedom. When Hosseini wrote this novel, many people were stereotypical of Muslims. Hosseini presented Mariam this way to show the readers that although people may have different beliefs, they are not as different as one would

When the word love is heard, what comes to mind? Is it that special connection once shared with a long lost lover? Or maybe it wasn’t a lover at all but a friend, who not only loved you for you, but showed you how to love yourself. In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns,author Khaled Hosseini portrays love in many different ways. Three vital themes concerning love outshines many of the themes throughout this novel.

The novel starts by introducing Mariam, in the beginning, she’s a self-conscious young lady with a mother who is despicable and suffers from depression. Her father has entirely different family and shuns her when she tries to be indulged in his life. Mariam is the banished child, due to Nana and Jalil having intercourse while unmarried, resulting in Mariam being illegitimate. At a young age, she was forced to marry a severely abusive man named

Mariam longed to place a ruler on a page and draw important-looking lines”(Hosseini ). Mariam is an example of how women are banned from an education and whose life could have been changed by education. Instead of being educated, she is sheltered by her mother and lives the rest of her life without high expectations of herself. Nana teaches her that an Afghan woman has to endure the life that is chosen for her because she does not have a say. Nana even says "There is only one, only one skill a woman like you and me needs in life, and they don't teach it in school.

Equality of genders is a basic human right that all should posses. However, in the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, the reader explores Afghanistan’s true nature of extreme gender inequality towards women and how it affects all the characters within the novel. The novel explores how within a marriage, women have unequal rights, undergo major amounts of physical abuse, and are emotionally and mentally tormented by their very own supposedly beloved husbands. A marriage is defined as a union of two people as partners in a personal relationship.

Maria is trying to grow up too fast and she put her family to the side instead of being grateful. In this story, conflict, characterization, and symbolism all have an effect on the overall theme.

However, after a long time of struggling against the society and the loss of her two sons in addition to that, her role as an ideal feminist challenger is no longer dominant. Much like Mariam, Laila is a victor. The difference between Mariam and Laila is Laila has been defying the norms of the culture throughout her life, unlike Mariam, who was submissive for the early years of her lifetime. Laila represents a hope for woman in the male dominated culture, as she goes on to escape from her abusive husband, finds happiness, pursues education, and contributes back to the society postwar. The male characters are also notable to observe from the novel because the patriarchal society, as well as for the comparison purpose.

Mariam’s character as being playful to Aziza and Zalmai shows that she is like a mother to them on the grounds that she played with them to bring about

Rasheed however asks her to wear a burqa before going out. He makes it very clear to Mariam and later on to Laila, that a “woman 's face is her husband 's business only”. However when Mariam fails to bear a child, after several miscarriages, Rasheed begins to torture her both physically and mentally. Rasheed also becomes cross on Laila when she gives birth to a girl child. Later on Laila gives birth to a boy, but this does not improve her status in front of Rasheed.