How Is Mariam Portrayed In A Thousand Splendid Suns

Clara Morrow

Jeanna Link

World Literature

07 May 2023

Mariam vs. Laila: The Final Battle of Belonging The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines belonging as a “close or intimate relationship.” Khaled Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns follows the lives of two Afghan women from different backgrounds whose lives eventually converge. The story begins with Mariam, a young woman living secluded from the world with her mother, who later marries an older man, Rasheed. The story also presents Laila, a young woman from a progressive family who also ends up married to Rasheed. The characters of Mariam and Laila share both similarities and differences in their childhoods, relationship with their father and their interactions with Rasheed and the

Though the audience does not learn much about Nana’s ideology, it can be seen that she is less progressive than Laila’s family since she believes Mariam should not go to school: “What’s the sense in schooling a girl like you? It’s like shining a spittoon. And you’ll learn nothing of value in those schools” (Hosseini 18). Nana wears a hijab when Jalil visits and Mariam also wears one when she visits Herat for the first time, something that Laila never does; she is even forbidden to wear one in school. Unlike Mariam’s mother, Laila’s father values education above everything for Laila. He even claims that “Marriage can wait, education cannot... Because a society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated, Laila. No chance” (114). This shows the major difference between the two families' beliefs about both women and the value of education. Though these differences are present in Mariam and Laila’s childhood, they also have similarities. Though these differences are present in Mariam and Laila’s childhood, they also have similarities, the first being they both receive some sort of education, though these educations are different. As mentioned above Mariam’s mother does not want her to

Laila and Mariam each live extremely different lives, filled with different hardships, however they both desire one common thing: to belong. Both of these women suffer immensely throughout the novel, but they endure and find the belonging that they have always craved with one another. In the wise words of Nelson Muntz, “I like to cry at the ocean because only there do my tears seem