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Honor In Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns

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Throughout Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, many characters make decisions that can seem brutal or unkind on the surface. While it is easy to say that such characters are evil at a glance, it is most often a much more complicated issue. Rarely is wrongdoing simple, and we must look deeper into the issue to fully understand why it occurs. The importance of reputation and honor is seen time and again in the novel as a deeply ingrained part of Afghan society. It is this virtue, along with outside circumstances, that push these characters to such acts. It is an unfair generalization to condemn characters for trying to make the best of a very radical situation. From the outset of the novel, we see unkindness in the actions of Jalil Khan. A wealthy businessman, he is the talk of the town. When he fathers a child with his housekeeper, she is forced into hiding. Faced with the shame of a “harami” (bastard) Jalil chooses to estrange himself from his daughter Mariam and her mother. Not only is this painful for Mariam, but it must be hard for Jalil as well. To choose between one’s honor and one’s family is a choice no one should have to make. …show more content…

Very little of their interactions are filled with love, including their physical relations. The first time that they are intimate Rasheed pushes himself onto Mariam, yet neither seems to draw any pleasure from the experience. Rasheed tries to redeem it by saying, “There is no shame in this Mariam. It’s what married people do.” (Hosseini 77) These are not the words of a man proud of his actions, but the words of a defeated man trying to fill his perceived role as a husband. Rasheed can see that his marriage is not happy, and he is doing what he believes he must to keep it

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