A Thousand Splendid Suns Character Analysis

“An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harami” (Hosseini 4), sets the tone for the beginning of Mariam’s life throughout the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. Many women are mistreated throughout the novel, but Mariam’s childhood is much tougher because she is a harami, or “bastard child”. Mariam tries to find emotional and physical shelter in her lifetime, but struggles to find it. In the beginning of her life she can’t find emotional shelter from her mother, Nana, so she tries to find shelter from her father, Jalil, but can’t find a connection. She then was forced to marry Rasheed, but can only find physical shelter in him. Later in the novel, she becomes friends with Laila,

A Thousand Splendid Suns was written by Khaled Hosseini. It is a fictional novel about Afghanistan. It explores the hardships that two Afghan women endured. The first character we meet, Mariam, was disgraced before she was ever born. She was the result of scandalous activity and was oblivious to the lies that her father fed her. After her mother’s suicide, Mariam’s father, Jalil, arranged for her to be married in an attempt to erase his mistake. Laila is the second main character. She has almost everything a young girl could want, except for a loving mother. Laila considers herself to be fortunate, until tragedy strikes. With wars heating up in Afghanistan, Laila loses her friend

By beating Rasheed with a shovel and killing him with it, Mariam reveals that she has finally decided to stand up to Rasheed for Laila and herself. Because Mariam stood up to Rasheed and killed him, now Mariam and Laila have lifted a huge burden off their shoulders and Laila can live with Tariq and her children. Mariam learns that if she wants to be happier in life she has to make her own decisions, like killing Rasheed. If she had not defended Laila, Rasheed could have killed Laila, and Mariam would have continued to live a stressful life. Throughout the book, Miriam endures on-going violence and abuse and she begins to make poor choices; she also begins to act out violently as means of learning to cope with her surroundings. Her actions drastically changed the course of her life for herself as well as others for worse and for better.

Even deeper, her understanding is that these injustices were “her lot in life,” that “women like her, they endure” (19). So, she does just that and suffers each inequity gracefully and quietly. This is portrayed through Mariam’s marriage to Rasheed. Rasheed’s caring demeanor melts away as soon as he realizes that Mariam had “in the most essential way, had failed him” (99). She was unable to have children. It is this realization that causes Rasheed to turn on her. Racheed begins to beat her, but it is not only physical blows that he delivers to her but emotional and mental ones as well. Yet Mariam endures each hit because she believes it is her penance.

Much like the country of Afghanistan, characters in A Thousand Splendid Suns carry on through tough times and loss. Mariam and Laila persevere through unhealthy relationships with their mothers, as well as their abusive relationship with Rasheed. Through their character growth throughout the book, they grow into strong individuals. The war that has greatly damaged their country leads them to be able to overcome anything in their lives. Through this character growth, strength and perseverance through tough times proves to be the most prominent and important theme in the

A Thousand Splendid Suns, is a story about Mariam and Laila, who share their experiences from their perspective. The story begins with the life of Mariam, who is a daughter of a wealthy businessman, but is kept living in the outskirts of Herat, Afghanistan. She is known as a harami or bastard child and is the result of a forbidden sex. As the story progresses, she is forced to marry a man named Rasheed at the age of 15. Rasheed progressively abuses Mariam as she fails multiple times to provide him with a child. After eighteen years of marriage, Rasheed gets another wife, Laila a 14-year-old girl. She is a very educated and determined girl, but marries Rasheed after the death of both her parents during the war. Mariam and Laila being both wives

Note from the Author: This story is based on the novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. Set in Kabul, Afghanistan, both stories revolve around the country’s political struggles. In The Kite Runner, Sohrab, the child of Hassan and Farzana, is placed in an orphanage, run by Zaman, after his parents are killed. In the same orphanage that Aziza, daughter of Laila, one of the protagonists of A Thousand Splendid Suns, is left at. Aziza was placed in the orphanage because her family could only support one child and her “father” favored her brother because he was a boy. Laila lives with Mariam, the first wife of her husband Rasheed, and a second mother to her children.

After her death, Mariam is forced to marry Rasheed, and soon sees the pain and struggles that her mother was once telling her about.

Mariam and her mother ‘Nana’, reside in a kolba (hut) outside of Herat. Her father was a successful businessman named Jalil who was a polygamist and had nine children. Mariam disobeyed her mother’s wishes and hiked into town to see her Father. Mariam returned to her kolba to her mother’s suicide – forcing her to live with Jalil until he insisted an arranged marriage with Rasheed who was thirty years elder. Once in Kabul, Mariam discovered her infertility complications. Rasheed became angry towards his wife’s inability to carry a child – in particular a son, so he became extremely abusive. Laila grew up in Kabul with Tariq who eventually became romantic despite the boundaries between unwed men and women. War took over Afghanistan and Tariq’s

On the other hand, Mariam and Laila also care for the children. Mariam in A Thousand Splendid Suns, in time learns to love Aziza. The quote: “Mariam had never before been wanted like this. Love had never been declared to her so guilelessly, so unreservedly. Aziza made Mariam Want to weep.

“Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not, Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not. If a flood should arrive, to drown all that’s alive, Noah is your guide in the typhoon’s eye, grieve not (Hosseini 365).” A Thousand Splendid Suns, written by Khaled Hosseini, is a story that is set place in modern-day Afghanistan. It is one depicting the lives of two particular women who live under the control of a persecuting husband and the infamous rule of the Taliban. And through these two women (Laila and Mariam), Hosseini creates a mind-blowing, awe-inspiring adventure of regret, despair, tragedy, and more importantly, redemption. The book begins with separate perspectives of each woman, and how they consequently come together in the same

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini takes a solid focus on the lives of two young women, Mariam and Laila, who grow up in a struggling and turbulent Afghanistan. This book emulates the lives of those who have actually been affected by the extreme changes of power within their culture. From the Soviets to the Taliban, these people are caught in a war they cannot win but must deal with the consequences of. The lives of Mariam and Laila are consumed and silenced by those with power over them, namely males with traditional values. The book conveys the idea that even with an immense amount of destruction and terror wrought throughout Afghanistan, underneath lies a beauty that has been muted but it still provides hope for the future.

The women of Kabul suffering under the rule of the Taliban, as represented by Mariam and Laila, are like the “thousand splendid suns” of

You can be anything you want Laila. I know this about you. And I also know that when this war is over, Afghanistan is going to need you as much as its men, maybe even more. Because society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated...” (p.114) he emphasized the importance of education altering her personality and point of view on a woman’s role in society. Her father gave her the foundation of support that prepared her for the oppression of her voice.

Mariam is the first main protagonist the readers meet in the novel. Her first apparition is at the age of fifteen, she lives with her mother commonly known as Nana, in a small shack just out of Herat. Jalil is a wealthy man, also Mariam’s father who lives in Herat with his three wives and his kids. The main character has