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. Both of them had their families or so they thought at the time. Mariam's innocence is revealed in the beginning when Hosseini states ¨She might have said. You're afraid that I might find the happiness you never had. And you don't want me to be happy. You don't want a good life for me. …show more content…
Mariam is introduced to Rasheed shortly after Mariam had moved in with her father. Mariam had no interest in marrying Rasheed and was deeply disturbed. Mariam reveals this when she says to her father, “I don't want this. Don't make me” (Mariam 47). After expressing to her father that she didn't want to have to marry Rasheed he still continued to force Mariam into the marriage. After years of being married to Rasheed is when he met Laila. Laila had just been a young girl that had lived down the street with her family. But when Laila was injured and alone is when Rasheed started to find interest in her. Rasheed had not been genuine like Laila thought and asked for her hand. Laila starts to share the same discomfort Mariam had felt, she reflects on her feeling when she states, “She pictured herself in a refugee camp, a stark field with thousands of sheets of plastic to makeshift pokes flapping in the cold, stinging wind” (Hosseini 219). Laila was forced by the fear of being punished for having a child out of wedlock. Mariam and Laila both had very different reasons for ending up with Rasheed. Mariam had been completely forced and torturing her but Laila was out of the need to not be punished for having a child without