Symbolism In A Thousand Splendid Suns

In classic literature, sexual influences depict a valuable and symbolic significance to the plot and theme of specific novels. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini uses sex as a controlling act that dehumanizes and condemns his characters into the stereotypical role portrayed by women. Mariam and Laila--Hosseini’s main protagonists--both experienced frequent sexual trauma, among other methods of abuse, that molded them into victims of their environment and culture. Their culture--including the setting of the novel and the circumstances in which their culture functioned traditionally--provided this trauma to them through men, or a particular man, who felt that violence and sexual distress towards Mariam and Laila would help control

Mariam’s sexual suffering began forcefully through Rasheed--a man who Jalil had arranged for Mariam to marry in order to ship her away from his actual family. Mariam’s deflowering showed the readers that sex played a huge part in the novel and that the symbolic act would continue as one of the most controlling methods used by the men in the text. Mariam became pregnant with Rasheed’s child--or son, as Rasheed hoped--after enduring the pain of this controlling act. She began to have hope once more because she felt that a child could bring her happiness during her suffering, so she “asked God not to let all this good fortune slip away from her” (89). Hosseini’s symbolism of flowers soon found another purpose within his novel as Mariam began to criticize Rasheed’s spoiling of the child before it had even grew in her belly, cursing it before its life had begun. She asked herself why he would spoil something, “to catch the fleeting grace of a new season, a lovely beginning, before it was trampled and corrupted” (87)? Mariam saw this unborn child as a flower of a new season that would bring happiness and light to her life, but the subject of suffering within her marriage taught the readers that Mariam’s optimism paralleled with her innocent but naive personality. Hosseini symbolized

Laila--an originally young girl pregnant with her best friend’s child--became obliged to marry Rasheed once hm and Mariam nurse her back to health after a bomb injuries her and kills the rest of her family. Originally, Mariam and Laila did not understand each other, but after awhile Laila and Zalmai became the reason that Mariam found hope in the world. Through Rasheed’s wrath and lust, they helped each other through their abusive situations and found support in one another. The end of Mariam’s life resulted from Mariam’s love for Laila. She searched all her life for something that gave her life purpose, and she found it in Laila and her children. She described Laila and her children as flowers that bloomed in her life and brought back hope for a better ending. When she began to see the end for Laila, she took matters into her own hands for the first time in her life, stating that she “it occurred to her that this was the first time that she was deciding the course of her own life” (349). After murdering Rasheed, and saving Laila and her children, Mariam faces the inevitable consequences of death. She reminiscents her life, feeling very content with herself and what she has accomplished. She thought “of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable