Examples Of Sacrifice In A Thousand Splendid Suns

Would you ever sacrifice yourself for a person you barely know or for someone you love? In the book A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseni various characters sacrifice themselves for the people they love. One of the main characters in his book is a girl called Mariam who lived in a Kolba with her mother for 15 years until her mother took her own life and after a series of unfortunate events she ended up marrying a man named Rasheed. The other main character of the book is a girl called Laila who lived an ordinary life until war took away her parents and the love of her life. Then she found out she was pregnant and to survive she married the person who saved her from dying, Rasheed. United they made numerous sacrifices so that they could

When Mariam was pushing through a multitude of women so that she could get a doctor to help Laila give birth she thought about Nana, and she realized that Nana had sacrificed her reputation so that Mariam could live. As the author states “She thought ruefully of Nana, of the sacrifices that she too had made. Nana, who could have given her away, or tossed her in a ditch somewhere and run. But she hadn't. Instead, Nana had endured the shame of bearing a harami, had shaped her life around the thankless task of raising Mariam and, in her own way, of loving her.” (287) The author uses the words “endured”, “harami”, and “thankless task” to emphasize how much misfortune Mariam must have been for Nana. The word “endured” shows that giving birth and raising Mariam was an experience that changed Nana’s life and helped her learn from her past foolishness. “Thankless task” and “harami” shows the difficulty that Nana experienced while raising Mariam, the harami, on her own. Nana’s sacrifice to Mariam went unrecognized by Mariam until it was too late. All of this is significant because Mariam realizing this probably led to her making the big decision of sacrificing herself at the end of book. Clearly experiencing her own hardships made Mariam recognize how much trouble she put Nana through and how much Nana really loved

When Rasheed was beating Mariam because he thought that she corrupted Lailas mind, Laila did something courageous. In the text it states, "Then an astonishing thing happened: The girl lunged at him. She grabbed his arm with both hands and tried to drag him down, but she could do no more than dangle from it. She did succeed in slowing Rasheed's progress toward Mariam.”(241) Laila went to protect Mariam although she knew what kind of man Rasheed was and even though Mariam was nothing but mean to Laila in the past. In this scene Laila was bold because she was a small woman going up against a strong man. Laila sacrificed her relationship with Rasheed just to save Mariam which in the future would strengthen her relationship with Mariam. It is obvious that Laila throwing herself in the middle of Rasheed and Mariam was the best reaction because it helped Laila and Mariam’s future connection. Another example of Laila’s sacrifice is when she had to take Aziza to an orphanage because they were running low on money. The Taliban didn't let women go out on their own so if Laila wanted to visit Aziza she had to take Rasheed with her. After a while Rasheed stopped taking Laila to the orphanage to see Aziza so Laila had to figure a way to see Aziza. Some of her experiences were terrible and some were