Gender Roles In A Thousand Splendid Suns

The culture of the Middle East ultimately shaped Mariam into the strong and selfless woman she was when she died. Unfair and unjust event occurred through out her life that would not have happened if she was raised around a different culture. Mariam’s character and morals were built in part of the culture around her. She was a women where her culture shaped her but did not define her. She was not just and Afghan wife. She was a friend, mother and savior to Laila and her

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

The three characters (Mariam and Laila from Suns, and Osama from Osama) were oppressed and shaped by the Taliban’s rule over women. Taliban rules about women working most significantly changed Osama’s life, since her mother was supporting her family by working as a doctor before the Taliban forbade Osama’s mother, and all women, to do so. This shaped Osama by putting her life on another course, where she was forced to work, pray, and learn as a boy, when she could otherwise have continued to stay at

Great authors use literary elements to develop novels. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam, born out of wedlock, lives in Afghanistan. Afghan society refers to children born out of wedlock as a “harami”, Nana, her mom, emphasizes this to Mariam constantly. Later on in the novel, Laila, Mariam’s sister-wife has a harami herself. Khaled Hosseini uses characterization and tone to compare and contrast the ways Nana and Laila cope with having a harami, showing that Laila overcomes the stereotype.

n the book A Thousand Splendid Suns , which was written and published by Khaled Hosseini in 2007, is an engrossing historical fiction novel that goes in depth about the mistreatment of women in Afghanistan in the mid twentieth century until now. The author pinpoints and focuses on the ill-treatment of women and how they are treated like property instead of human beings. Also he focuses on the harsh laws that are made in Afghanistan for everybody. As you read the book , you will feel like you’re in the middle of the chaos in Afghanistan.

Khaled Hosseini’sA Thousand Splendid Suns is a powerful novel which brings to the fore the most harrowing experiences of women in Afghanistan. In order to focus upon the precarious existence of Afghan women, the author has introduced two female protagonists. The novelist depicts how women are ill-treated, abused and tortured in the Afghan society. The paper seeks to analyseHosseini’s presentation of the subjugation of women in Afghanistan.

In the beginning of the novel, Mariam’s mother, Nana, was introduced to show the fate of a woman in Afghanistan. Jalil and Nana conceived a baby out of wedlock when Nana was only a maid at the time. The new born child were named Mariam. He left Nana afterward so he could live with his many wives in an extravagant house while Nana suffered her miserable fate with Mariam alone in the Kolba.

Mariam is the perfect example of a life of suffering for women in Afghanistan. Dishonored as a child, she was forced to live in a clay kolba with her mother. Married off at the young age of 14, her story begins with the life style of an abusive husband. Laila, on the other hand, was raised in a family were female education was pursued and girls were aloud to attend school. Laila’s Father is a very loving man and a determined mother. These two lives help represent the different generations and situations that have happened and are happening right now in Afghanistan.

One could describe "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini as a literary work that explores multiple themes and issues present in the lives of Afghan residents. Themes such as love, motherhood and legitimacy are especially prevalent in the novel and will be explored and analysed through the remainder of this essay. Love, and additionally, artificial love, are made apparent throughout the novel. An example of the aforementioned 'artificial love' is the love Rasheed had for his wives Mariam and Laila. Arranged marriages, such as between Rasheed and Mariam, are often perceived as false or forced.

The story starts out with the focus on Mariam, a child who was born in the year 1959 in Herat, a city in Afghanistan. Her father chose to not marry her mother and this leads to Mariam’s mother referring to Mariam as a harami—bastard--as early as the first page, when Mariam was only five years old. The second section spends time focusing on Laila, who is twenty years younger than Mariam. Laila is born in Kabul to two parents, avoiding the abusive comments from her parents. As a matter of fact, although she is a woman in Afghan society, her father has extremely high hopes or her.

This novel insists the value of afghan cultural identity from the female perspective. He has published his third novel And Mountain Echoed in 2013. This novel is an example of true relationship among the family and it says about the people’s opinion on Afghanistan after the atrocities that changed the real nature of the country. Unlike other novelist, who writes about the darker side of Afghanistan, Hosseini presents the joyful and optimistic

The book A thousand splendid suns is about two women (Mariam and laila) who is forced to be married to an older man in their teenage years because of their Afghanistani culture and their government. The government’s belief of how women is treated is very wrong.They are taking away women's human rights, their freedom of being educated. They can’t even choose when to be married or whom to be married to. These women are being treated like a dog, putting them to starvation, beating them up. The main issue the women in afghanistan and all around the world is fighting for is gender equality. This issue have been happening throughout the years in traditional and modern societies. In this novel the main topic , issue the author have been stressing

The storyline of A Thousand Splendid Suns explains three decades of a civil war in Afghanistan along with the Taliban, taking over government which is all seen in the perspective of two Afghan women. Mariam, the daughter of a rich Afghan businessman, is forced to marry a man (Rasheed) at the age of fifteen. Rasheed becomes a very aggressive man when Mariam fails to produce a child. Almost twenty years later, Rasheed marries another woman fourteen-year-old Laila after her parents have been killed by a rocket fire in Kabul. At the end of the storyline, each woman is forced to accept paths that they will never truly be happy with. Mariam sacrifices her life to the Taliban to save Laila after they both murder Rasheed. Laila then marries her childhood love becomes a school teacher and continues to live her life happily.

In part two of A Thousand Splendid Suns ,Khaled Hosseini writes: “One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.” A Thousand Splendid Suns is set in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000’s. The women could be referred to as the thousand splendid suns hiding from the corruptness in a beautiful city, at least that’s what it appears to be. Mariam, a young girl in the 1960s, takes the words of her mother about “ enduring” lightly but she will soon become familiar with the concept. The theme of endurance permeates through the book and keeps readers turning the pages of this dramatic tale.

Laila is considered to be different from Mariam in many ways. Laila is offered an education unlike Mariam, who wasn’t allowed to receive one. Hosseini shows the conflict that Laila goes through with her mother. Laila feel useless to her mother and in return becomes connected to another family. The author states, “She would never leave her mark on Mammy’s heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy’s heart was like a pallid beach were Laila’s footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed” (Hosseini 144). This quote shows how worthless Laila felt to her mother. Unlike Mariam, Laila’s father supported her in life. He made it known for her to be self-reliant and to not depend on a man. One theme the author focuses on is how gender is played throughout this section. In Afghanistan culture, women are supposed to be pure and not have sex until marriage. However, Laila and her love interest engage in sex. This plays a huge part in Laila’s life. Laila’s shelter is that of the war. Her household shields her from the war. It keeps her protected from the dangers that is going on around