Friendship in "A Thousand Splendid Sons" by Khaled Hosseini

1614 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: A thousand splendid suns analysis

“Without relationships there would be no form, no creation, no intelligence, no love and no universe”. Relationships are defined as emotional bonds between people whether they are peers, parents or admirers. This specific quote by J.J. Dewey expresses that without relationships love, specifically ceases to exist. An important type of relationship in our society is friendship. Women, specifically create nurturing and emotionally-fulfilling bonds with each other. They can create satisfying exchanges of ideas and feelings and find a way to increase inner strength and fulfillment in each other. An example of strong female bonding occurred in an epic novel, A Thousand Splendid Sons. Hosseini’s development of character through female bonding is depicted through three different relationships. These include mother and daughter relationships between Nana and Mariam, Laila and Aziza and a powerful friendship between Laila and Mariam. The theme of female bonding in “A Thousand Splendid Suns” displays that women who forge strong bonds with one another are able to find inner strength and fulfillment.

The beginning of the novel opens with the introduction of Mariam, a young girl growing up in a small village in Afghanistan. She lived with her mother Nana, a bitter woman who verbally abused Mariam with phrases such as “clumsy little Harami" (pg 4) and "stupid girl" (pg 27.) These insults created an unhealthy mother and daughter relationship between Mariam and Nana. With each insult Nana unconsciously destroyed a bit of Mariam’s self esteem. Although their relationship seemed weak and abusive Nana did display her love for Mariam through various compliments, unsupportive ways and through her final suicide. This included Mariam’s act of pleasing...

... middle of paper ...

...n her life.

In conclusion the women who forged female bonds in Hosseini’s novel were able to find inner strength and fulfillment. In addition each female relationship displayed love and companionship in different perspectives. This included Nana and Mariam’s mother and daughter relationship which portrayed an abusive and weak bond, Laila and Aziza’s mother and daughter relationship which consisted of love, support and strength and Lastly, Mariam and Laila’s friendship which was the strongest bond that led to companionship and prosperity in death and life. For each female bond, Hosseini was trying convey a message of prosperity. This was because through each bond he displayed women conquering fears with the help and support from each other. In the end, his female characters display an important message about the importance of female bonding, love and friendship.

Show More
Related

  • An Analysis Of Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns

    281 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by the author Khaled Hosseini presents the tragedy that Mariam went through. Mariam the unwanted child for her father because he was not married to Mariam’s mother when she get pregnant from him. She lived in a village with her only family member, her mother. One day she left her mother and went to the city that her father lived in. Her mother felt abandoned and committed suicide because Mariam is all she had. After the death of her mother, Mariam moved with her father to Kabul. She was a burden to her father so after some weeks she was forced to marry a forty-five year old man when she was only fifteen year old. She moved to another city with her husband where she had to live with a man that she never

    Read More

  • Optimism In A Thousand Splendid Suns

    650 Words  | 2 Pages

    For her 15th birthday, Mariam asked Jalil if he could take her to his cinema to watch Pinocchio. She also asked if Jalil could bring her brothers and sisters so she could meet them. Both Nana and Jalil thought it wasn’t a good idea, but Mariam insisted on going, so Jalil said he would send someone to pick her up. Mariam did not like this idea and said that she wanted to be picked up by Jalil. Jalil reluctantly agreed. Later that day, Mariam gets the backlash and hate from her mother from her decision: “Of all the daughters I could have had, why did God give me an ungrateful one like you? …How dare you abandon me like this, you treacherous little harami!” Mariam wakes up the next day, disappointed and fed up since Jalil did not come to pick her up. She heads out to town to find Jalil herself. She makes it to his house when a chauffeur tells Mariam that Jalil was “away on urgent business.” She slept outside of his house and was awoken by the chauffeur, telling her that he would take her home. Mariam snatches away from the chauffeur’s grip and turns around towards the house, to see Jalil in an upstairs window. It was then that Mariam figured out that all she was to Jalil was a disgrace. Jalil had always been careful with the information he told Mariam. He may have loved her, but only on his own terms. Once Mariam realizes that her father allowed her to sleep on the street rather than bring her into his

    Read More

  • Non-Traditional Relationships in The Storm and A Doll´s House

    1731 Words  | 4 Pages

    Finally, even though, for a long time, the roles of woman in a relationship have been established to be what I already explained, we see that these two protagonists broke that conception and established new ways of behaving in them. One did it by having an affair with another man and expressing freely her sexuality and the other by breaking free from the prison her marriage represented and discovering her true self. The idea that unites the both is that, in their own way, they defied many beliefs and started a new way of thinking and a new perception of life, love and relationships.

    Read More

  • Dreams of Trespass and In the Eye of the Sun

    4917 Words  | 10 Pages

    Fatima Mernissi is a superb writer who introduces the reader into a harem through the mind of a nine-year-old girl. In this autobiographical novel young Mernissi talks uncensored about the contradictions of life in a harem, surrounded by the extraordinary women in her family who are restrained from leaving the family courtyard. These women’s is a struggle of complete lack of freedom. They are not allowed to leave the courtyard except on very few occasions, and escorted by men (Mernissi 39). Their lack of mobility is also accentuated by lack of other freedoms such as education and financial freedom, although they have a voice in the decision making of the crucial changes in the harem life.

    Read More

  • From Selfish Desires to Intimate Relationships

    912 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Dante’s Inferno, Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the protagonists’ relationships with their companions becomes an essential subplot within each text. Their relationships are crucial in order to complete their journey and in some cases complete each other. In addition, there are many characteristics in each text that are unrealistic representations of life. For instance, the environment of hell the Inferno, Don Quixote’s fictional world, and the instant marriages in Pride and Prejudice are all things that are not typically seen in real life. These unrealistic characteristics affect how each relationship develops, however, these factors do not take away from the significance of each relationship. In each text, the lucrative ambitions of the characters are initially the motive of many relationships rather than the desire for true companionship. A major part of the relationships development is how the characters’ companionships transition from ones that are based on individual ambitions to ones that are built on the desire for intimate relationships.

    Read More

  • Inner Strength Of Women In A Thousand Splendid Suns By Khaled Hosseini

    1060 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mariam’s strength is immediately tested from birth and throughout her whole childhood. She has been through a lot more than other children of her age, and one of those challenges is the hope for acceptance. She is looked at as an illegitimate child by her parents, and they say there’s no need to attend school. We learn right away what the word “harami” means when Nana uses that to describe her own daughter. She says, “You are a clumsy little harami. This is my reward for everything I’ve endured. An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harami” (Hosseini 4). Nana especially pushed Mariam away from pursuing her goals. She said there was no need for education and men always find a way to blame it on a woman. This pushed Mariam away from her mom and closer to Jalil, but he refuses to acknowledge her and his wives look at her with cold stares of disgust. Mariam only feels loved by Jalil through all of this, mainly because he brings her things and shows her some love. She asks him to do something with her outside of the kolboa and he first agrees, but never brings her because of his fear with his wives and the structures of Afghan culture that frown upon it. He starts to act as if she was a burden to him and Mariam’s hope for acceptance is crushed. She realizes the truth, especially once she reaches adulthood. In Afghanistan, marriage is not all about love for eachother, it is about traditional role...

    Read More

  • A Jury Of Her Peers Rhetorical Analysis

    1411 Words  | 3 Pages

    It solidified the truth unacknowledged to them earlier--their friendships among each other were valued above their less than satisfactory marriages in their minds, something that if uncovered by their husbands would have surely placed them under detrimental suspicion. Throughout the story, after surviving the odds and preserving a dangerously unsteady life, the female characters proved that their devotion to each other could conquer the power struggle against the forced commitments they lived in. Society deemed their marriages to be untouchable and unable to be disputed in any way, but with the sturdy connections among them, wives found a way to tamper with the stereotypes and secure a better future for their fellow struggling

    Read More

  • Theme Of Sacrifice In A Thousand Splendid Sun

    1398 Words  | 3 Pages

    From start to finish, one could see how much Mariam values Laila, Aziza, and their friendship. The first example is when Mariam vows to help Laila while they are in the hospital for Laila’s unborn child: “I’ll get you seen, Laila jo. I promise” (287). This simple promise is a deep portrayal of Mariam’s desire to help Laila find a doctor and deliver her baby. Additionally, one can see Mariam’s love for Laila when she protects her from Rasheed’s grip of death, “‘Rasheed.’ He looked up. Mariam swung. She hit him across the temple. The blow knocked him off Laila” (348). Rasheed was going to kill Laila, but Mariam steps in and knocks him off of her with a shovel to save her life. Mariam forms a tight-knit bond with Laila, and when Hosseini includes their relationship, one can see how Mariam values Laila enough to kill another man. The author also describes their relationship after Mariam and Laila discuss plans for leaving: “When they do, they’ll find you as guilty as me. Tariq too. I won’t have the two of you living on the run like fugitives.” … “Laila crawled to her and again put her head on Mariam’s lap. She remembered all the afternoons they’d spent together, braiding each other’s hair, Mariam listening patiently to her random thoughts and ordinary stories with an air of gratitude, with the expression of a person to whom a unique and coveted privilege had been extended” (358). The love Mariam has for

    Read More

  • The Ideal Mother in A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    The characters of Nana and Mariam show the archetype of a mother by sacrificing to make their children’s life better. Towards the beginning of the book Nana describes Mariam’s birth to Mariam and mentions, “ I cut the chord between us myself. That’s why I had a knife.”(11). As Nana mentioned she sacrificed throughout her pregnancy though the pain and separated the umbilical chord herself because she wanted her child to have the best chance that she could. She also mentions the knife, which could have been use to kill the baby, similar to what Laila almost did with the rusty bicycle spoke. In addition, the knife could have been used to kill herself to end her suffering. Nevertheless, Nana does not carry out this plan and instead she decides to give up her feelings for the child’s. Mariam too goes through moments where sacrifice is necessary. For instance, when the drought hit and Rahseed looses his shoe store she realizes that in order for her family to survive she must ask Jalil, her father, for money. In order to contact her father she travels in the hot sun, calls the mayor, and says, “I know you have important things to tend to, but it is life and death”(310). Mariam swallows her pride and begins to realize her negative reaction towards her father w...

    Read More

  • A Mother With Many Worries

    938 Words  | 2 Pages

    The portrayal of gender in this text shows the husband as the prime breadwinner of the household while the wife stays home to clean the house and tend for the children. This is clearly our traditional family lifestyle of a household. Now although this can be considered traditional, we clearly see this lifestyle outdated in our twenty-first century society today. The text is demonstrated to show the young daughter her place in society, and teach the young girl the everyday tasks she will need to know in order to run a household smoothly and successfully. It is also clear that the mother’s life reflects all of these ideals that a husband should be the one working and the wife is to be happy and content by taking great pride and satisfaction in the caring for her home. The mother also has strong view on the behavior for a women in society and throughout the story gives many warning on her daughters behavior such as “on Sundays try and walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming”. (Kincaid 56) This is a clear statement from the mother tha...

    Read More

  • Lusus Naturae Analysis

    942 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Narrator’s family treats her like a monster by resenting and neglecting her, faking her death, and locking her in her room all day. The Narrator’s family resents her, proof of this is found when the Narrator states “[My mother] came and went as quickly as she could.

    Read More

  • The Significance Of Friendship In Sulla And Nel's Friendship

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sula and Nel’s friendship in their childhood was beneficial for both of them. Sula’s meeting of Nel was fortunate, because they find a soul mate within each other. They are both the daughters of “distant mothers and incomprehensible fathers” (Morrison, 50). Both girls lack affection in their relationships with their mothers. They can’t find this affection in their relationships with their fathers either, because Sula’s father is dead while Nel’s father is away at sea. They find the affection they need with each other. Their friendship was a way to mother each other. Since they can’ find the support they need from their families with their families they began to support each other and figure out what each other need in their life. The significance

    Read More

  • A Thousand Splendid Suns

    899 Words  | 2 Pages

    Next let us examine Mariam's plight. She is denied the chance to go to school. "What's the sense schooling a girl like you? It's like shinning a spitspoon." She lives with a cruel mother. "You are a clumsy little harami. This is my reward for everything I've endured. An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harmi"(4). She has a neglectful father. "Mariam kept thinking of his face in the upstairs window. He let her sleep on the street. On the street. Mariam cried lying down"(35). Her mother commits suicide and Mariam blames herself. "You stop that. These thoughts are no good, Mariam jo. You hear me, child? No good. They will destroy you. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault no". Mariam nodded, but as desperately as she wanted to she could not bring herself to believe him"(44). She is forced into marriage to a man she does not love. "I don't want to," Mariam said. She looked at Jalil. "I don't want this. Don't make me"(47). She is sent to live in a strange city were she does not know anyone. She has a physically abusive husband. "Then he was gone, leaving Mariam to spit out pebbles, blood, and the fragments of two broken molars"(104). Her husband is cruel and says hurtful words to her. She can not do anything right in his eyes. When he is not ignoring her he is being verbally or physically abusive towards her.

    Read More

  • Interpersonal Communication In Matilda

    1136 Words  | 3 Pages

    The chapter talks about the different types of relationships you can have and how to keep them healthy. The relationships that the chapter covers are friendship relationships, love relationships, family relationships, workplace relationships, and the dark side of interpersonal relationships. Friendship relationships are relationships with another person that is “interpersonal” (DeVito), “mutually productive and characterized by mutual positive regard” (DeVito). Love relationships are a next level of friendship relationships. Love is known as the most important types of relationship, because it is a natural human desire to be loved. There are six types of love relationships; eros, ludus, storge, pragma, mania, and agape. Family relationships are the relationships between you and the people you are related to by blood and marriage. Family relationships are known as primary relationships, primary relationships are the relationships that are most prominent in your life. Workplace relationships are the relationships that you have in your workplace, with your co-workers and bosses through networking and mentoring. The dark side to interpersonal relationships is that there are negative aspects to having relationships. These aspects are jealousy, bullying and violence among other things. All of these relationships are affected by culture, gender, and

    Read More

  • Vision of Man-Woman Relationship in The Hungry Tide

    2385 Words  | 5 Pages

    Literature is the analytical, critical, emotional and psychological expression of human life which is nothing but a bouquet of multi-coloured relationships like filial relationship, conjugal relationship and sibling relationship. Though all the relationships are important part of life yet man-woman relationship is considered the most pervading human relationship. Emphasizing the importance and value of the man-woman relationship, D.H. Lawrence, a great English novelist, points out in ‘Morality and the Novel’, “The great relationship for humanity will always be the relation between man and woman. The relation between man and man, woman and woman, parent and child will always be subsidiary.” (1972: l30)

    Read More

More about Friendship in "A Thousand Splendid Sons" by Khaled Hosseini

Open Document