Dehumanization In A Thousand Splendid Suns

Throughout the novels A Thousand Splendid Suns, Sarah’s Key, and Night, a certain group of people of different race, religion, or culture are treated less humanly than others thus not deserving moral consideration. They are deprived of their rights, forced to become slaves, and are treated like animals. In all three of these novels, the main characters end up surviving the cruelty of dehumanization, both mentally and physically. Within the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam, one of the two main characters, is bombarded with constant physical and verbal abuse from her family therefore; her future does not turn out very well. Amid the book Sarah’s Key, Sarah, also one of the two main characters of her story, does not necessarily receive the

The majority of the women, females of the age 14 and higher, are arranged to marry men much older than them, and in this case, at the age of fifteen, Mariam is forced to marry her husband, Rasheed, who is at least 35 years older than her. The first sign of dehumanization is shown when Rasheed, newly wedded to Mariam, rapes her in her bed and then leaves her to bleed. Although Mariam doesn’t experience much of dehumanization until she lives with her husband, her mother, Nana, was definitely a victim of it. Despite the fact that little Mariam loved her father, Nana always ranted about him to Mariam. She told Mariam that “like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always.” (Hosseini 7). She was also never shy about telling her daughter the truth about women in Afghanistan: “There is only one, only one skill a woman like you and me needs in life, and they don’t teach it in school . . . Only one skill. And it’s this: tahamul. Endure . . . It’s our lot in life, Mariam. Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have. Do you understand?” (17). Later on, Forty-year-old Mariam, suddenly realizes that her crazy mother was right. She grows bitter and slowly starts becoming like Nana. She collectively starts hating men, not only the ones she personally know, but also the men in the

In the beginning of the book, a young Jewish girl and her parents, living in Paris, are captured by the French policemen and are eventually sent to a concentration camp. Already, there are signs of dehumanization as the French, their own people, are forcing countless French-Jewish families out of their homes for no justified reason. The men are separated from their families and are sent to death camps while the women and children stay at the concentration camp for a couple of days. Separation of the families is also a cruel deed as some prisoners are literally scared to death. They are being treated like criminals when no crimes are committed. Even before the roundups of the Jews, they were to wear a yellow star on all their clothing to differentiate them from other races, cultures, and religion. Sarah Starzynski, the little girl, starts to lose her humanity as she “squats against the wall to relieve herself, fighting against the overpowering urge to vomit, her hand clapped over her mouth.”(De Rosnay 30). Her point of view about society is forever broken as she describes the people near her as animals: “People pissing and defecating wherever they could, ashamed, broken, cowering like animals near the filthy floor.” (30). Later on, the women are brutally separated from their children to march to their deaths like the men did. At that moment, Sarah sees