A Thousand Splendid Suns

1022 Words3 Pages

Pages 1-80 of A Thousand Splendid Suns, written by Khaled Hosseini, were marvelous. The culture depicted by this novel is Afghanistan culture. This was part of the reason why I chose to read this novel, since I am Arabic I thought that it would be an interesting pick. Another factor which contributed to my decision was my aunt. My aunt told me that she read this book and it was truly breathtaking, one that I would have a hard time setting down. The author of this novel, Khaled Hosseini, was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. This allowed him to relate to his writing and broaden his perspective on the culture. Growing up, Hosseini and his family lived in Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul. This was a thriving, growing cosmopolitan atmosphere. Hosseini enjoyed reading foreign novels in translation, which helped grow him into the astonishing writer he is today. After witnessing the aftermath of war in Afghanistan, Hosseini was moved by …show more content…

As a young teenage girl, Mariam was arranged to marry Rasheed, Jalil's older friend. Rasheed, is a widowed shoemaker from Kabul. This is not the ideal marriage for Mariam, but she has no choice; her father defends the marriage: “True that would be preferable that you marry a local, Tajik, but Rasheed is healthy, and interested in you. He has a home and a job. That’s all that really matters, isn’t it?” (Hosseini 48) This is very common among Afghan women. The women are usually arranged with a male figure, who is able to provide for them and in this situation they are not given a say. This quote stood out out to me because it signifies the difference between living in America today compared to living in Afghanistan. The women are forced into marriages they would not otherwise be in. Personally, if I was forced into a marriage I didn't want I would be very unhappy and have no interest in the man. I can't imagine how these women must feel being forced to live a certain life at such a young

A Thousand Splendid Suns
1242 Words | 3 Pages
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.
Read More
Handmaid's Tale Women Quotes
691 Words | 2 Pages
This quote displays a theme in the novel as Mariam gets older. Jalil moves the burden of Mariam onto Nana, and Rasheed blames Mariam for things that go wrong from there.
Read More
Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns
1101 Words | 3 Pages
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.
Read More
Who Is Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns?
604 Words | 2 Pages
He is able to capture the realness of the time and setting through his words, and write for a purpose. As a result, it can be said that he uses this work of historical fiction less as a theatrical stage and more as a platform to introduce the audience to the inhumaneness of Afghanistan. He not only incorporates the Taliban’s grueling “beard lookout men,” who patrol the roads in their fancy Toyota trucks in hopes of finding “a smooth-shaven face to bloody,” but he also displays the horrific and bloodcurdling abuse of women that exists at the hands’ of men and the feelings of great despair and pain that these women face as a result. Living in a state of unbearable fear of the next beating, the next detonating bomb, and the next brutal attempt of the Taliban, the lives of these characters feel almost too real to not be true. Resultantly, the reader is left to wonder whether or not this added literary dimension of realness is actually an introspective study of individuals that Hosseini has long
Read More
Thousand Splendid Suns
747 Words | 2 Pages
As her family is packing up to leave Kabul, a stray rocket hits her house, leaving her unconscious and her mother and father dead. Laila wakes up in Mariam and Rasheed’s house, and they take care of her as she heals from the explosion. While she’s staying in their home, Rasheed decides he wants to marry her. Mariam protests, but Rasheed doesn’t care what she thinks. Laila agrees to marry Rasheed because she is pregnant and can pass the baby off as his. When Laila tells Rasheed she is pregnant, he is overjoyed. He hopes for a boy, and during Laila’s pregnancy he treats her like a queen. When Laila delivers a baby girl, Rasheed is disgusted by the smells and sounds baby Aziza makes. Rasheed neglects Aziza and implies that the baby isn’t his. Laila decided that she was going to run away soon after baby Aziza was born. Laila, Mariam, and baby Aziza get to the train station and find a man that they think is willing to act as their relative but instead he tells the authorities. The women are taken to a police station, and then sent home. Rasheed punishes them by putting them in separate hot rooms without water or food for one day. He then threatens to kill them if they try to run away again. Laila gets pregnant again, and this time gives birth to the boy Rasheed has been hoping for. They name him Zalmai,
Read More
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
1099 Words | 3 Pages
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...
Read More
Afganistan: A Woman's Nightmare
702 Words | 2 Pages
What if you risked being assaulted every time you left your home? How would you feel if your husband was in control of every aspect of your life? Afghanistan women encounter both of these circumstances on a day-to-day basis. Many are faced with physical and emotional abuse by their husbands and families. Women’s rights in Afghanistan were majorly affected by the rule of the Taliban, a government group who stripped women of their human rights, established discriminating laws, and whose legacy still affects Afghan women today.
Read More
Symbolism In A Thousand Splendid Suns
907 Words | 2 Pages
Jalil is a wealthy movie theater owner in the small town of Kabul who is a well known figure of the village and lives in a large house with his three wives who have given him many children. Mariam is one of his children however she was born into the world as a harami, a bastard child, so she lives with her outcasted mother at the edge of the village in a Kolba. Jalil visits Mariam every week, when he visits he pretends to care deeply for her due to his own pity and guilt
Read More
Arranged Marriages In The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini
1421 Words | 3 Pages
Some of these marriages are extremely dysfunctional while others seem to be practical. These marriages are considered different from forced marriages and are an acceptable type of marriage in Afghan society. Some arranged marriages lead to poor or horrific outcomes for the brides in order to separate from her spouse. Occasionally these marriages shift into being forced marriages. In the article “Afghan girls bound by family betrothals” the author states “In Kapisa province, just north of Kabul, an 18-year-old girl shot and killed herself because her family would not break off her three-year-engagement to a drug addict.” This exhibits how certain family’s decisions for their children are atrocious. In addition it shows how an arranged marriage turned into a forced marriage. At times young women may run away from as a threat tactic to their family reported by the article “Afghan girls bound by family betrothals.” A 17-year-old girl who ran away from her home for a few days resulted in her parents letting her marry the man that she loved rather than who they set her up with. This shows how some parents would be tolerant enough to let his own daughter marry the person she
Read More
The Space Between Us andA Thousand Splendid Suns
1287 Words | 3 Pages
In architecture, contrast is used to create a dramatic entrance. The observer moves from a small, dimly lit space to a grand room full of light where they feel the impact of the room because of its contrast with the previous one. Similarly, authors, the architects of a book’s plot, use contrast to emphasize a character’s struggles and triumphs. In both The Space Between Us by Thirty Umrigar and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, the authors use the contrast between two lives to emphasize the power of money, education, and gender within Afghan and Indian society.
Read More
A Thousand Splendid Suns Setting Essay
660 Words | 2 Pages
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
Read More
Culture In A Thousand Splendid Suns
1459 Words | 3 Pages
In his novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, Khaled Hosseini skillfully illustrates many aspects of Afghan culture to the reader. The novel explores the struggles that have plagued Afghanistan, and how they have affected the lives of its people. Through the story’s two narrators, Mariam and Laila, the reader is presented with examples of how the nation’s culture has changed over time. Through “A Thousand Splendid Suns” Khaled Hosseini emphasizes the struggle in the area between traditional beliefs and progressive changes, specifically as they relate to women’s rights. Throughout history it has been shown these that progressive reforms are unable to coincide with strict Islamic beliefs.
Read More
Women’s Rights within A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
1407 Words | 3 Pages
From the 1950’s until around 1985 the Soviet Union had Afghanistan under its control. This Soviet involvement in Afghanistan caused the ideologies of communism to spread into the Afghanistan culture. One of the communistic ideas that were assimilated into was the thought that every person is equal. This idea made life a lot easier for the women of Afghanistan. One of the freedoms they were given under Soviet control was the allowance of woman being educated, “The government had sponsored literacy classes for all women. Almost two-thirds of the students at Kabul University were women now… women who were studying law, medicine, engineering” (135) Hosseini expresses this through the character Laila. Laila’s father, Babi, was a professor and strongly urged the necessity for Laila to get an education. He was so dedicated that he would help out Laila with her homework every night. Hosseini expressed this when Laila claimed “Babi thought that the one thing that communists had done right- or at least intended to- ironically, was in the filed of education… More specifically the education of women.” (135). To Babi there was nothing more impertinent than the education of woman in Afghanistan. He knew that when half the population is illiterate the country cannot properly aspire to new and better things. Along with the new right to learn, women’s requirement to cover their skin was relaxed all throughout Afghanistan. ...
Read More
General Criticism of Araby by James Joyce
1439 Words | 3 Pages
Joyce, James. “Araby.” Literature: The Human Experience. Abcarian, Richard et al.,. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. 92-96
Read More
A Thousand Splendid Suns
899 Words | 2 Pages
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.
Read More

Open Document

Wait a second!

A Thousand Splendid Suns