Sexism In A Thousand Splendid Suns

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

“A man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing, Mariam. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed, it won’t stretch to make room for you.”

In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, gender roles play a major role in how characters think about themselves and others. Men are raised to believe that they are responsible to suppress women’s independence and autonomy, and women often internalize a sense of inferiority and/or subservience. The results of these conditions often include men’s violence against women, and a general mistrust between the two genders. In this novel, Rasheed demonstrates this type of behavior to be true. Rasheed is a single shoemaker whose first wife and son died many years ago. He becomes the suitor for the young 15-year-old mariam. He is a very traditional and strict older gentleman, which some difficult situations for Mariam to deal with in her life. Rasheed tries to exhibit excessive dominance in their marriage and instructs Mariam to be obedient, subordinate, and compliant with every single one of his demands.

The 1950s and 1906s both have social issues that can be seen throughout and are shown in the books A Raisin in the Sun and The Help. The Help takes place in the 1960s. Skeeter Phelan is a recent graduate from college with a degree in writing. Elaine Stein is a publisher in New York who Skeeter tries to launch her book idea to. Skeeter Phelan interviews the maids in Jackson, Mississippi to show the discrimination shown towards them by the families that hire them. Both the characters in The Help and A Raisin in the Sun have similar experiences in housing and gender roles due to the eras the books take place in, although education plays a different role because of opportunity for the characters in A Raisin in the Sun than The Help.

The writing style of Khaled Hosseini in A Thousand Splendid Suns is both sympathetic and disgusted. He feels pity on those that bear the burden of the war. He shows this mostly through the use of two major literary devices: Symbolism and Imagery. These two literary devices impact the reader because it gives a deeper insight and understanding of the pain and fear these characters were forced into dealing with every day.

Sexism has always been a major issue for women. It seems that today, everyone has to be careful of what they say and do so as to avoid offending someone. While everyone is busy worrying about extinguishing sexism towards women - which still is an issue that needs to be taken care of, who is concerned with sexism towards men? Sexism is just as much of an issue to men as it is to women.

A world of peace and love is all anyone ever hopes for. Imagine having to say goodbye to your country because of war. Feeling safe is one of the most important things in life. You need to feel safe for a place to be home. “One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls”(Hosseini 347). In A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, the characters are threated in the country they call home, because of war. The cultural aspects, character storylines, and themes of the book is what make this book a cultural lesson.

“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

Explosions, Death, Loss, Fear- all are great symbols for war in A Thousand Splendid Suns. In this novel, Khaled Hosseini uses tumultuous environments to bring up some of the most interesting characters in the 21st century. The three strongest examples are Laila, Tariq, and Aziza. From losing your parents, to losing your leg, Hosseini uses these types of characters to almost make a connection with them. Because we see weakness in them it truly makes their triumph that much greater. War is a raging bull charging through the lives of many, but for some, it makes them stronger.

A Thousand Splendid Suns shows the downsides of patriarchy though the use of the word harami, through the irony of Jalil betraying Mariam, and through the irony of Rasheed’s treatment of Mariam. Firstly, at the very beginning of the novel, Mariam recalls being called a harami. After Mariam broke Nana’s prized tea set, Nana said, ”… This is my reward for everything I’ve endured. An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harami.”

Readers are able to understand the love between one another as they view the affectionate friendships within the book and the love one has for their child. They can also recognize the experiences of poverty as they see it’s effects on characters’ lives and how it breaks down personal relationships. Finally, readers are also able to understand the experience of domestic abuse as they read about physical abuse driven by superiority and verbal abuse used dishearten one. In the end, people cannot experience everything, but only the events that they undertake. As people can learn from other experiences however, with the book A Thousand Splendid Suns, people are able to experience different events from the perspective of the characters that may not be familiar to

The book, The Thousand and One Nights, is an intriguing story. It has one overarching story with several other stories being told by the various characters of the main storyline. However, behind this main story arc and the several other minor story arcs, lies a common theme, sexism. Several of the male characters in The Thousand and One Nights display their sexism in the way they act and think, and even the main female character of the story, Shahrazad, on the surface level, encourages this way of thinking through her storytelling to King Shahrayar. One would think that given Shahrazad’s relations with the king, she would try in someway to dissuade the misogynistic king from his line of thinking. However, while appealing to the king’s

A Thousand Splendid Suns is the story of two girls. Mariam is who the first half of the book is about. She is the daughter of a rich man and one of his past servants. Since her parents were not married,

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a fifty-one chapter fictional writing by Khaled Hosseini. It tells the story of two women who live in Afghanistan, and their lives with an abusive husband. The author uses a diversity of techniques such as foreshadowing and multiple plots. A great example of the use of such techniques is when, in chapter 5, Nana says to Mariam “Don’t leave me, Mariam jo. Please stay. I’ll die if you go.”, foreshadowing her own suicide. The novel starts with the story of two completely unrelated women, Mariam and Laila, whose connection to each other will only come up later in the book. This is means the book has multiple plots. The author wrote the novel in the third person omniscient point of view. In part three, the narrator shifts

In Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam and Laila were brought together due to circumstances they could not control. Although they were both oppressed wives of a cruel and violent husband, Rasheed, they were eventually able to regain power over their own lives. The two women supported and learned from each other, finding strength in their relationship. Their relationship was an alliance of sorts and was essential to their ability to regain power over their lives. Once Mariam and Laila befriended each other, they each started to gain courage and hope and began to take more control over their lives in separate, small acts of courage and rebellion that eventually led to significant events which cemented their newly regained power. The developing of power did not come without obstacles, but Mariam and Laila were able to persevere and continue to stand up for themselves against both Rasheed and their societal constraints. Finding strength and motivation from each other and from other loved ones essential to their efforts, Mariam and Laila were able to take power over their own lives by standing up to and retaliating against oppressors in a series of events which led to the pivotal moment when Mariam kills Rasheed, finally setting both women free and giving them both complete power over