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Feminism In A Thousand Splendid Suns

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A Thousand Splendid Suns’ was written by an Afghan American writer, Khaled Hosseini. The novel narrates the strength and resilience of two women who endure physical and psychological cruelty in an anti-feminist society. It also demonstrates how The Taliban uses fear and violence to control the people of Afghanistan, particularly females. Throughout this story the novel exposes the way customs and laws endorse Rasheed’s violent misogyny and it tells the tale of two women who endure a marriage to a ruthless and brutal man, whose behaviour forces them to kill him. The protagonist Mariam is a poor villager who lives in a remote area in Afghanistan, in contrast to Laila who is a smart, educated daughter of a schoolteacher. Khaled Hosseini has an interesting way of portraying the two female protagonists. He discloses the tyranny and hostility that the Taliban enforce on women just because of their sex. A critic viewed the novel as ‘a powerful portrait of female suffering’ making the reader explicitly aware of the harsh environment Mariam and Laila had to tolerate. One review expressed that ‘Hosseini defends the rights of women to decide what to be in life’ , this could show that Hosseini directed the novel to be in favour of feminist views. Hosseini’s first book ‘The Kite …show more content…

This highlights the importance of how these acts of cruelty Mariam and Laila faced; ‘fear of the goat, released in the tiger’s cage’ is what ultimately defines their inner feminist strength, ‘over the years/learned to harden’ which shows that Mariam and Laila’s past indirectly prepares them for The Taliban’s arrival. The Taliban take away the basic rights of Mariam and Laila ‘jewellery is forbidden’, but they fail to do so. Ironically, it is the society itself that gives them the strength and platform to strike back against Rasheed, who is a cruel, male-dominating character who symbolised and reinforced everything the term ‘anti-feminist’ stands

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The book A Thousand Splendid Suns focuses on two young women and their life experiences as women living in Afghanistan. Mariam and Laila, both face intense issues in life. Their stories are unique in showing the many sides of Afghan women's lives. Mariam and Laila, while both have related tragic lives, show the main differences in their lives and how they affected them. At the beginning of both Mariam's and Laila's lives, they both had innocence in themselves.

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In “A Thousand Splendid Suns," Hosseini highlights the strict gender roles and unequal values placed on women in Afghanistan that lead to inequality between women and men. This essay explains multiple ways to explore this theme in the book “A Thousand Splendid Suns” and the real world. This theme of strict gender roles and unequal values placed on women is seen in many ways in the book “A Thousand Splendid Suns” This theme is seen in real-life Afghanistan as well, but not just in Afghanistan; we see this everywhere in the world.

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In the late 20th century, Afghanistan was a war torn, male-dominated nation, where a culture of shame was perpetuated and women’s voices were seldom heard out. Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns focuses on two women’s experience in Soviet-controlled Afghanistan, and their struggles with shame and identity are central to the story. One character who illustrates this struggle is Mariam, whose troubled upbringing has left her with shame that never fully fades for the rest of her life. This shame manifests itself in Mariam’s interactions with others and in her own perception of herself.

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Khaled Hosseini’s, The Kite Runner, is a book that depicts modern Afghanistan and all the violence as well as how “political change” (AmirDabbaghian and Solimany) “influenced” (AmirDabbaghian and Solimany) citizens in Afghanistan. Hosseini talks about a kid’s life and all the problems he went through along the way. One of the main themes in this novel was betrayal. The way Hosseini incorporates the theme in the story is by using various literary devices, tone, and conflict. To begin with, Khaled Hosseini uses a variety of literary devices to portray the theme.

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The truth of her words is reflected not only in Jalil’s mistreatment of Nana, but also in Rasheed’s mistreatment of both Mariam and Laila. In addition, Naghma’s story of the mullah’s son who betrayed her emphasizes how the use of women as scapegoats did not just occur in the lives of Nana, Mariam and Laila, but throughout Afghanistan. Hosseini proves that the mistreatment of women throughout the novel stemmed from the tendency of Afghani men to blame women for events or circumstances that the women could not control or for which they were not solely

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In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, the author Khaled Hosseini emphasizes the importance of education in woman. With the importance of education in women comes the endurance of woman. Hosseini displays the endurance of hardships that women face in Afghanistan through his female characters in the novel. In the beginning of the novel, Mariam wants to go to school and be able to learn like other children,“She pictured herself in a classroom with other girls her age.

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