Theme Of Love In A Thousand Splendid Suns

When the word love is heard, what comes to mind? Is it that special connection once shared with a long lost lover? Or maybe it wasn’t a lover at all but a friend, who not only loved you for you, but showed you how to love yourself. In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns,author Khaled Hosseini portrays love in many different ways. Three vital themes concerning love outshines many of the themes throughout this novel. Love can cause the happiness of the people who receive it, it strengthens and brings out sides of us that we were too scared to embrace, and it causes people to make sacrifices for the benefit of others. Love in this novel was the very core of optimism for many characters. A character who gained the most out of the love of others

Laila had to make physical and emotional sacrifices when it came to Aziza. An emotional sacrifice would be when she had to give her away to an orphanage. It broke her heart, but it was the only way to ensure Aziza would be fed and well taken care of during Taliban rule and the drought. Her physical sacrifices made was each time she tried to sneak away to see Aziza without Rasheed and was caught by the Taliban. Even though she was caught many times, she didn’t care, the love she had for her daughter was so strong she would die before she didn’t go see her,she even told Aziza “I’ll come and see you, all the time, I’m your mother; if it kills me I’ll come see you”(315). Tariq made some sacrifices when it came to his mother 's health at the refugee camp. He went to jail for years as a result of trying to smuggle drugs out of Pakistan. He felt the need to even take this risk because his mother had fallen ill during their times in the refugee camps. Considering the harsh times that they had to go through, especially during the winter, he even stooped down to threatening a little boy with a shard of glass in order to obtain his blanket. Readers learn this as he is speaking with Laila, “Tariq had cornered a kid. Twelve maybe thirteen years old, I held a piece of glass to his throat and took his blanket from him. I gave it to my mother””. The ultimate love filled sacrifice would be Mariam. Mariam’s sacrifice was made for the protection of Laila, Aziza, Zalmai, and Tariq. She knew what the punishment would be if she killed Rasheed, but she had to in order to keep him from killing Laila. The day after this incident Mariam says to Laila “ They will find us, sooner or later they are bloodhounds. When they do, they’ll find you as guilty as me. Tariq too. I won’t have the two of you living on the run like fugitives.” (337-338). She loved them so much, and didn’t want anything