The barrier between her and the neighbours after her husband’s death forced her to become reserved and quiet. Her and her son only went into town if they had to. They preferred to stay close to the garden where they felt safe. The death of the husband is the cause of the mothers’ complete change in character. The death let the audience connect with her on a deeper level to understand her pain and suffering.
The parents, John and Reve Walsh suffered and continue to suffer the loss of their precious child. They had to experience intense questioning by the police as they had to be ruled out as suspects. They also spent many sleepless nights worrying about their son until the horror of his death was revealed. After their son’s death they experienced depression, grief and their marriage was shaken. The children John and Reve had following Adam’s death were also secondary victims.
Hope motivates many characters in the book A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini but it motivates Mariam the most. For example, when Bibi jo had brought news of Jalil daughters going to a real school, Mariam got caught up in the idea of going to school as the author states “Since then, thoughts of classrooms and teachers had rattled around Mariam 's head, images of notebooks with lined pages, columns of numbers, and pens that made dark, heavy marks.” ( Hosseini 17). This demonstrates how Mariam motivates herself in hope for going to a real school. Instead of getting frustrated and down that Jalil’s other daughters were going to school, Mariam takes the idea that girls her age are going to school and turns it into hope.
The injustice Mariam endures in the novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, leads Mariam on a struggling journey impacting her future path in life. The injustice that Mariam endures leaves a permanent mark on her life and impacts her from the beginning. Life wasted no time throwing the cruel injustices of life at Mariam. Mariam was marked a harami, otherwise known as a child without a father, even though her father Jalil was alive, near, and well. “She understood then what Nana meant, that a harami was an unwanted thing: that she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person that would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance.”
By the middle of the story, Mattie has endured heartbreak after heartbreak, though not once did she blame others for her misfortune. As Mattie approached her near deceased mother, her mother “Shouted in a ragged voice. ‘Leave me, go!’... I ran sobbing to the window. Breathing in the fresh air helped calm my stomach.
Nelson Mandela bests clarified that courage “is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear” (Brainy Quotes). Humans have the attribute of courage within them; what defines someone is if they allow the characteristic to shine or to hide within them. Courage is a very powerful and impactful word that allows people to complete the daily tasks contained within their typical lives and allows them to complete the hard times when they obtain fear. There are numerous ways to define courage to get a better grasp on the understanding of what this powerful and impacting term truly represents.
Luis is experiencing one of the “overwhelming waves” of grief at this time. Luis’s mother died three years ago from cancer. As a way of coping with his own grief he becomes a part of a group
Power and Corruption When in the wrong hands, power can be used as a weapon to exploit and belittle others. If power is misused, it usually leads to dire consequents, like in A Thousand Splendid Suns, where two women fall victim to those who control them. In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini proves that once a person is promoted to a place of authority, he or she will inevitably become corrupted by the power that he or she holds. For power to hold any value, one must be able to generate fear and submission from his victims.
Every individual has experienced an environment where they have had to make tough decisions and navigate challenges. Khalid Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns takes place in Afghanistan, where two main characters Mariam and Laila, grow up and learn to navigate challenges and survive. In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khalid Hosseini uses motifs and imagery to suggest the environment in which people live influences the choices they make and the unmeasurable lengths they resort to for survival. Throughout the novel, Hosseini uses imagery to show how Afghanistan's culture influences the choices women make to fit in. This can be seen when Nana lives in a hut away from everyone, and Jalil makes weekly visits to the hut to see Mariam:
Hakim Laila’s feminist identity was influenced by her father, Hakim. Hakim is mostly referred to as Babi in the novel. Babi was a high school teacher, in other word, an intellectual. Intelligence is devalued by the majority in their society, therefore being a teacher makes Babi an extraordinary person in the novel. Since Fariba, Laila’s mother, was distanced from her, Laila had a special bond with her father.
Finding Freedom In a society with discrimination, violence, and fear, many people become broken and emotionless; however, the strength that lies within people will make them rebel and overcome the sin that surrounds them. Many authors chose to explore this aspect because of the great impact that suffering has on humanity. The Book of Negroes, written by Lawrence Hill, explores the life of an young African villager, Aminata Diallo, who is abducted as a child and forced to become a slave in South Carolina. She undergoes many physical and emotional changes in her surroundings including her village, her peers, and her identity that lead her to her ultimate freedom.
Being a parent is something that most people experience, whether they’ve biologically had a child or not. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini, the author, suggests that a parent should be caring, encouraging, loving, and protective. One example that supports Hosseini’s suggestion is the father and daughter relationship between Babi and Laila. I would classify the type of parenting Babi has with Laila as authoritative. As an authoritative parent, Babi encourages Laila to be independent, he supports her, he protects her, he guides her, however, he sets boundaries to help her understand that he is still the parent.
Disappointed, Mariam starts walking one could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls” - Saib-e-Tabrizi (‘Kabul’. Translated by Josephine Davis) The title of the epic and simultaneously devastating as well as inspiring novel,A Thousand Splendid Suns comes into existence from the above lines. Khaled Hosseini has openly dedicated his book to the woman of Afghanistan. Cover of the book shows a young woman, whose head and face is covered with a veil.
In the novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, there are many important symbols throughout the story to develop important themes. The first symbol used in ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ is the symbol of the burqua. A burqua is “a long, loose garment covering the whole body from head to feet, worn in public by Muslim women”.
In regards to the historiography of gender politics in the Victorian era, the social position of women and femininity had become a problematic issue. Similarly, the gender apartheid instilled prior to the civil war in Afghanistan. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, initially published in 2007, is set in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. In this, it explores the story of Mariam and Laila as the protagonists, who teach the reader the reality of life as a woman in a backward Islamic country. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny seen from the perspectives of these two women and observes how they become to create a bond, despite having come from previously living in very different backgrounds.
