In the novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Mariam fulfills the hero journey. She goes through many tests and hardships to accomplish the journey throughout her life. The obstacles she overcomes helps her to grow and become a much stronger person. Mariam undergoes a hero’s journey in A Thousand Splendid Suns because she is born and raised in a rural setting away from cities, the hero meets monsters or monstrous men, and suffers an unhealable wound, sometimes an emotional or spiritual wound from which the hero never completely recovers.
The first element Mariam goes through on her hero journey is being born and raised in a rural setting away from the city. The Kolba Mariam was raised in was isolated from the village as stated
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In chapter 18, Mariam is introduced to the monstrous man, Rasheed. Rasheed is an aggressive abusive man that is married to Mariam. His monstrous qualities are expressed in the novel when it states “Mariam chewed. Something in the back of her mouth ‘Good,’ Rasheed said. His cheeks were quivering. ‘Now you know what your rice tastes like. Now you know what you’re giving me in this marriage. Bad food, and Nothing else.’ Then he was gone, leaving Mariam to spit out pebbles, blood, and fragments of two broken molars”(Hosseini 104). In Chapter 15, Rasheed feeds his wife pebbles to eat and breaks two of her molars. He abuses Mariam, and she can not do anything to stop him. Taking this abuse made Mariam a stronger person. Another example of the monstrous quality in Rasheed is when he says “There is another option… she can leave. I won't stand in her way. But i suspect she won’t get far. No food, no water, not a rupiah in her pocket, bullets, and rockets flying everywhere. How many days do you suppose she’ll last before she’s abducted, raped or tossed into some roadside ditch with her throat slit? Or all three?” (Hosseini 215). When Rasheed speaks about Laila, he is willing to throw Laila onto the streets if Mariam will not let him marry her. He is willing to leave her with nothing to survive, and he would not think twice about the situation. The abuse Rasheed puts on others particularly Mariam hurts them …show more content…
A wound in which Mariam never recovers from is the death of her mother. Mariam discovers her mother hanged herself when the novel states “Mariam caught a glimpse of what was beneath the tree: the straight-backed chair, overturned. The rope dropping from a high branch. Nana dangled at the end of it” (Hosseini 36). Mariam left her mother to see her father, and she never did forgive herself for that. She always felt that her mother’s death was her fault because she left her, and Mariam will never recover from that wound she suffers. When Mariam leaves her mother she realized every thing her mother did for her. This wound she suffers helps her to realize and appreciate the stuff and people in her life. Another unhealable wound Mariam suffers is her 7 miscarriages. In chapter 15 it states “In the four years since the day at the boathouse. there had been six more cycles of hope raised then dashed, each loss, each collapse, each trip to the doctor more crushing for Mariam than the last”(Hosseini 97). Each baby Mariam loses hurts her more and more. The first miscarriage hurt Mariam so much and each baby after the agony increased. Mariam wants to be a mother and she gets excited when she is pregnant, but every time she gets excited all hope is lost when she loses the baby. Although Mariam has all these miscarriages, it
One well-known example of “The Hero’s Journey” from popular culture is the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling. In the novel, Harry Potter, the main character, is the chosen one and “The Hero’s Journey” applies to his life from the moment he is attacked by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as a baby. Joseph Campbell calls the initial phase of a hero’s development the “Call to Adventure.” The call is the in... ...
Every hero goes through a journey of their own according to Joseph Campbell in which he calls “The Hero’s Journey” . In the book The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Jing Mei Woo or June embarks on a journey into finding herself beginning with her mother’s past ,which reflects how she transforms into a better person as a daughter. Along the way, June encounters many allies that guides her with the memories that her mother, Suyuan Woo, had left behind. She deals with inner conflicts and struggled to overcome them because she doubted her abilities which were results of her previous failures. After conquering her doubts through memories of her mother’s lessons, June sees her life in a different point of view. As she fought her way through the hindrances
As the story comes to its conclusion, the hero has endured his hardships; he went from the one that started fights to the one that thought of what could make everything work. An ordinary person in an ordinary world faced his share of trials and tribulations to come out as a new person. Defining the hero myth—he struggled and still was able to triumph to his prize at the end ; individuals relish these type of stories, they can
Mariam and Laila face a lot of social injustice yet they do not attempt to challenge the issues because they are told to endure all forms of pain and social injustice. From a very young age, Mariam was told by her mother that all she needed to do was to withstand any pain and suffering, it’s the one skill she needed.” Endure . . . Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have”(17). In addition, Laila also suffered the injustice of society since she was a single mother it was not safe for her to live on her own so she had no choice but to marry Rasheed. The society gave women no choice but to endure and that’s the main reason why Laila and Mariam were unable to take a stand. However, close to the end of the novel Mariam decides to take initiative and fights back. She finally takes action because she is driven by the love she has for Laila and her child since they are the only family she’s had that loved her. So when Rasheed her husband attempts to choke Laila to death, Mariam reflects on how much injustice she has faced and how unjust both her husband and the society have been towards her and other women. At this point, Mariam realizes that she must end her and Laila’s suffering once and for all. So she takes Rasheed’s life. Although Mariam is executed as a form of punishment, she is very successful at taking a stand to end the oppression and injustice. Mariam knew her actions were fatal yet she still did what she knew was right. Furthermore, she sacrificed herself and didn’t regret her action instead she was pleased that “she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother” ( 329). Her actions freed Laila and her child from Rasheed’s abuse and helped them build a better life. Thus Mariam was successful and did not want to endure the injustice or see Laila suffer, she did it by
The human need to be relatable is unquenchable. We love to be able to see parts of ourselves in others, and to be able to feel like our idols are not untouchable. The Hero’s Journey format is one that can be found in almost any story, even in real life. Overall, it is the perfect recipe for keeping readers engrossed. Another place the journey has shown up is in Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and Odyssey by Homer. These two stories—one a biography, the other, an epic poem—are so effective in their storytelling, it is easy to see how authors today continue to use the same method to make stories that grab the readers’ attention. What makes them most alike, however, is the emotions and thoughts they have the power to provoke.
The 2012 movie, Maria Full of Grace, produced by Joshua Marston, is about drug trafficking in Colombia where marijuana crops are grown and are extremely valuable to cartels and businessmen. It is related to the Reaction and Neoliberalism chapters of Chasteen’s Born In Blood and Fire where great power comes from increased wealth. Maria is the main character who flies to New York with illegal drugs, serving as an example of the danger and risk that people are willing to take to make money to make a living through the drug trafficking ring.
Some of the areas that Maria would like to address are marital concerns (the romance, hanging out with people other than her husband’s coworkers, communication, spend more time doing outdoor activities), concerns regarding pleasing her parents even during adulthood (the guilt she feels about her parents making sacrifices to send her to the United States to obtain her college degree), and the pressure of her religious background (being Catholic and feeling that she could not divorce her husband, even if she wanted).
Moreover, Maria’s courageous behavior is shown when she met the drug traffickers and asked for her money as well as Lucy’s. Maria and Blanca were kicked out after Lucy’s sister found out that Lucy was already dead while she was working as a drug mule. Blanca and Maria who lost their place to stay eventually made an agreement to return the drugs to the drug traffickers and receive their money. It was very dangerous for them to meet them again because they threatened two girls frightfully. The scene where they meet again shows how much dangerous it was. The drug traffickers offensively attacked two girls. One guy pushed Maria to the wall and yelled and the other guy grabbed Blanca’s hair and threatened to take the drugs back. The traffickers
Rasheed was the man in the relationship and Mariam was the typical wife that did her wifely duties and stayed home while he goes and works and provides money. He treats her as if she’s worthless and means nothing to the world. When he eats he doesn’t look at her or speak to her, he is demanding, and tells her how worthless and uneducated she is. This then leads to him becoming abusive punching her, slapping her, kicking her, speaking rudely to her, he did this to damage her. A lot of this occurs because Mariam can get have his son and she is also considered a harami. Everything she does infuriates him and blames all the issues on her. She constantly tried to avoid making mistakes and did everything to his liking, but he always found a way to abuse her and blame it on her. Rasheed did not care about anything but himself he abided by the patriarchal stereotype ,which is being the dominant one throughout society and making women inferior. Mariam felt powerless and fearful. She was a victim of abuse and oppression. She married a man that said everything he did was normal in a relationship. Even though Mariam was in a violent marriage she became a strong women and soon she overcomed these
We all are heroes of our own story, and it is a quality seen in many movies and books. The hero's journey is about progress and passage. This journey involves a separation from the unknown, known world, and a series of phases the hero must go through . Each stage of the journey must be passed successfully if the person is to become a hero. In “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, the main character Amir faces a series of trials and goes through obstacles where the concept of his childhood dies.
Originally, Mairma would acquiesce to Rasheed’s demands: if he said “shut up,” she would (98). If she was beaten, she would take it. She felt no hope of freedom from his brutish acts so she endured through them. Wallowing in despair would only make her marital-situation worse. Later, out of routine, Rasheed’s abuse is prevented because of Laila. She pleads “please Rasheed, no beating!” over and over until he forfeits his attack against Mariam; feeling loved, it is a kindness that Mariam cannot forget (241). In Mariam’s final resistance to the churlish man, she shows her love for others. Aiming to kill, Rasheed acts violently upon Laila, and Mariam fights back. As he once beat her, she beat him back. The scene juxtaposes how she once accepted the abuse, and now she fights back because she does not want to lose the one who makes her feels that she “had been loved back”: Laila (224). After being controlled by Rasheed for the majority of Mariam’s marriage, she takes control of her own life for once by making he decision to kill him in order to protect Laila. Mariam’s fight back shows her willingness to sacrifice to prevent Rasheed’s cruelties further. Risking worse abuse, Mariam chooses to save Laila’s life in exchange for her own. Laila brought Mariam an unmistakable happiness: “[Mariam] was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. ... It was not so bad ... that she should die this way ... This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings” (224). Mariam gives Laila the opportunity to live a life sans of Rasheed’s barbarities to plague them after learning herself how inhumane he was. Moreover, the cruelties Mariam faced against Rasheed revealed her endurance as a woman. Mariam remained strong throughout her marriage and fought back against her husband, an act
Mariam begs him not not, but Rasheed threatens to turn Laila out onto the streets. Rather than being ashamed himself of his actions, Rasheed knows that as a man whose wife does not have family or other supporter, he can do whatever he’d like. His threats to Mariam take advantage of her kindness and goodness - the fact that Mariam would do whatever she could not to condemn Laila to a life on the streets or in a refugee camp, even if that means accepting Laila as Rasheed’s second wife. It now makes even more sense why Mariam refuses to call Laila by her name. Surprisingly, Laila agrees to wed Rasheed
“A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with [their] freedom” (Dylan). However, though heroes face complications throughout their quest, in the end they often accomplish an important rask. In the book, Like Water for Chocolate, the main character, Tita shows a perfect example of a hero. Tita is in a continuous emotional quest throughout the entire story, but proves along the way she is indeed one who will not fail. Many characteristics of a hero certainly fit Tita’s character, however, there are some very important ones, she: suffers an unusual childbirth, yields a special weapon, goes through a traumatic event that leads to an adventure, has supernatural help, experiences atonement with mother, and when she dies she is rewarded spiritually.
Myths have been a great example of the hero’s journey. Many heroes have journeys and trials to face throughout their life. Most of their journeys start out with their origin and end with the return. However, the hero’s role remains identical to every other hero. Most heroes like Gilgamesh has heroic traits because of the stages in the hero's journey. Gilgamesh is a man who can turn into a hero by changing himself, even when he has unusual circumstances surrounding his birth. Gilgamesh is viewed as a hero due to the stages of the hero's journey.
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.