A Thousand Splendid Suns Themes

The themes, motifs, and characters in both A Thousand Splendid Suns and Life of Pi compare in their similarities. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, the protagonists, Laila and Mariam grow up in two separately, different lives, until their world collide, and become very close, living with their abusive husband Rasheed. In Life of Pi, the protagonist, Pi, is lost at sea after a shipwreck, where he has to try and survive lost at sea, but while he is with a Bengal tiger. The novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, and the movie Life of Pi share both similarities and differences between the themes and protagonists, where both the book and movie show the will to live, freedom, and truth. They also relate to each other with the same motif

Among the circumstances that the protagonists are in, in each setting, they are trapped in someway, and somehow. They want to try and find freedom during their conflict, to get away from the negatives. A Thousand Splendid Suns show how Laila comes up with an escape plan, to leave Rasheed, and she asks Mariam to leave her. She plans the leave in the first place so she can get away from Rasheed, and the harsh society that they are in. Laila tells Mariam about the plan, convincing her to go to this better life, “We’re leaving this spring, Aziza and I. Come with us, Mariam. The years had not been kind to Mariam. But, perhaps, she thought, there were kinder years waiting still. A new life, a life in which she would find the blessings that Nana had said a harami like her would never see.” (Hosseini, 256). For Mariam to leave, she wouldn’t just be leaving her life with Rasheed, but it would be a new beginning her her, a restart where she wouldn’t be labeled as a harami. Freedom to Laila is also not to leave Rasheed, but to live a life, with Aziza, not living the lie that Rasheed isn’t Aziz’s real father, and to get away from the strict rules that are given from society. Although in the book, they get caught and their escape doesn’t work, they thought of their plan, and tried very hard to get to freedom. Freedom to Pi, in Life of Pi, is when he finds land, and is free from his limited life on the

The motif of water is a dominant, repetitive example in both stories. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, water comes up multiple times, mainly for tragic events that have happened in the book, or people being “swallowed” by water. Laila heard women talking about how Rasheed’s son died a while ago, “‘You heard how his son died?’...’He drowned didn’t he?’... ‘The boy went into the water unnoticed. They spotted him a while later, floating facedown.’”(228). This is just one of many times where water has come up in the book, specifically being “swallowed” or drowning in water. Also when Pinocchio was brought up, and in that movie, Pinocchio and his father were swallowed by a whale in the ocean. In Life of Pi, the ship that Pi, his family, and zoo animals where on sunk, and that’s how he ended up on a lifeboat with Richard Parker. They were lost at sea, surrounded by water, knowing that any second they could die from it. Being shown from both stories, water was showed as a negative and unfavorable appearance toward the characters and the whole stories