Abrie Berkowitz
Honors English 3-4
Summer reading project 2014
A Thousand Splendid Suns
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a novel containing three parts, 367 pages, and 51 chapters. Khaled Hosseini broke the story up into parts, by character: the first one dealing with Mariam, the way she grew up, and her life, the second part with Laila, her upbringing, and “modern day” life, and the third with Mariam, Laila, Rasheed, and their lives together. Each section of the book contains its own chronological order, dealing with the lives of the characters only included in that section. Khaled Hosseini also utilized foreshadowing from the start of the novel. From the time Nana told Mariam how awful Jalil was, and the rich lies he told, along with how he had never invited him into his life-foreshadowing how Jalil would reject Mariam when she showed up at his door-to the time when Rasheed loses two jobs, followed by abusing Laila and claiming that he would kill her, foreshadowing Rasheed’s own death. Using a multiple plot and combining the story line at the end utilized the story line and was effective in covering detail and the span of about 40 years (from the early 1960s-early 2000s). In the beginning of A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam as well as Laila are happy with their
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The story discusses how Afghanistan as well as Pakistan (where Tariq and Laila live after the killing of Rasheed) look. Hosseini also uses imagery to convey the mood of characters. Hosseini included: “The orphanage director was a stooping, narrow-chested man with a pleasantly lined face. He was balding, had a shaggy beard, eyes like peas” to describe Zaman, the director of the orphanage where Laila takes her daughter (281). Not only does the author use imagery to tell the reader about the setting and characters, he also uses it to include other literary devices. “They watched the clouds slide over the moon” uses imagery to also include personification