The Three Suns: A Short Story

For many years, women have been oppressed and treated as property. The opinion of a woman did not matter, being obedient to her husband was all that is required. Even if they were obedient to their husbands, women were property and only for the pleaser and likening to the husband. Mariam did all the her husband required of her, however there was one thing should could not. Which was give her husband, Rasheed, a son or any child. In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Hosseini reveals the social issue of physical abuse and mental abuse by his use of imagery, diction, and dialogue.

The Five suns is creation story of the Aztec based on the mythological account of space, time, universe, people, animals and the world they lived in, as they understood it. The myth explains life’s unknowable obscurities to the Mesoamerica Mexica and Azteca people and it deeply rooted in their culture. Per the Archaeologist Nicoletta Maestri, “they believed their world had been created and destroyed four times before, and the current age, the fifth sun, would also end in violence at the end of the calendric cycle.” The mythologies claims that human have the responsibility of making sense of their surrounding as well as live by the god’s rule who have made human existence possible by sacrificing their blood and bones. The story begins with the primary maternities couples named Tonacacihuatl and Tonacateuctli known as Ometeotl or the gods of duality. They created the nine level of the universe and instructed their four

The religion detailed and examined throughout Don Talayesva’s “Sun Chief” can be difficult to understand and near impossible to appreciate. At first glance to the casual reader it can appear shallow and ridiculous; a religion created around the wants and needs of the Hopi but not based on any empirical or even supposed sacred evidence. When coupled with The Sacred Canopy however, the reader begins to understand the simplistic beauty of their religion providing necessary guidance and support to the Hopi tribe. The reader also is able to relate to Don’s religion in terms of the love one has for his or her own dogma and the importance it plays in an individual’s life.

Isabel Wilkerson’s work, The Warmth of Other Suns, explores the search of Great Migration migrants for during the Great Migration of the 1900s. The 2007 documentary, Made in LA documents the demand for higher wages and better working conditions by Forever 21 sweatshop workers. In doing so, both works focus on individual people to tell their story about a larger issue.

Khaled Hosseini’s critically acclaimed novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, follows two women whose lives intertwine and their fates become connected. Laila is a young girl who falls in love with a man who she cannot be with and is carrying his baby when she marries Rasheed. Rasheed’s first wife, Mariam, is a lovely woman who becomes Laila’s companion in their mutual hatred for the abusive Rasheed. With alternating perspectives, Hosseini gives insight into both women's lives and relays the cruelties they are forced to endure, and how the brutality they face affects their lives, specifically Laila’s, whose motherly instincts allow her to endure much more than otherwise.

From the book The Warmth of Other Suns, author Isabel Wilkerson …“For all its upheaval, the Civil War had left most blacks in the South no better off economically than they had been before. Sharecropping, slavery’s replacement, kept them in debt and still bound to whatever plantation they worked. But one thing had changed. The federal government had taken over the affairs of the South, during a period known as Reconstruction, and the newly freed men were able to exercise rights previously denied them. They could vote, marry, or go to school…even college set-up by northern philanthropists, open businesses, and run for office under the protection of northern troops.”

In The Sun Also Rises, during the transition of society from World War I to post-war, values transformed from the “old-fashioned” system of what was morally acceptable to a system that held the basic belief that anything of value, whether tangible or intangible, could be exchanged for something of equal value. This novel specifically pinpoints the transformation of the values of money, alcohol, sex and passion (aficion), friendships and relationships, and even one’s pain.

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.

“That Evening Sun” by William Faulkner is a good example of a great emotional turmoil transferred directly to the readers through the words of a narrator who does not seem to grasp the severity of the turmoil. It is a story of an African American laundress who lives in the fear of her common-law husband Jesus who suspects her of carrying a white man's child in her womb and seems hell bent on killing her.

One of the major themes of Osamu Dazai’s The Setting Sun is the socioeconomic fall of aristocracy in Japan following World War II. The title itself reflects these core themes: when the Japanese write down the name of their home country in Kanji (one of its three alphabets), it  roughly means “land of the rising sun”. The Setting Sun is an allegory that the glory days of Japan have come to an end, specifically their ancient aristocracy and their old families, as well as Japanese culture. The comfortable bourgeoisie becomes the hard-working proletariat and the historical situation changes as the material circumstances changes. This social and economic change is both subtly and unsubtly shown through the main characters’ flashbacks and stories; Kazuko and her family come from a long line of aristocrats but now face the reality of living without power or status. Following three major events -- the death of Kazuko’s father, Kazuko’s divorce to her wealthy husband, and the nation-wide economic crisis caused by the war -- the family finds themselves out of money and out of luck, challenging the way they formerly viewed the world, themselves, and their class. Through their mother’s incompetence, Kazuko’s difficulty in working, and Naoji’s existential crises, Dazai deconstructs the classist ideals that claim the wealthy gained their status and capital because of hard work, strength, intelligence, and personal superiority while remaining sympathetic toward the upper classes.

In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, main character Mariam is forced into exile after a horrific set of experiences. After her mother’s suicide, she is removed from her home and is later arranged to marry a random man she never met before. Before her departure, Mariam lived in a “kolba,” a small hut on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. With no other place to go, she disapprovingly lives with her father for a short period of time before being shipped off to her new husband. Her encounter with exile is almost unbearable, yet she endures and grows into a hardworking and respectable woman. For Mariam, exile is both alienating and enriching; it illuminates how withstanding life’s challenges and learning to overcome them with love will ultimately be beneficial in the end, no matter what happens.

In That Evening Sun, William Faulkner approaches the story through an anecdotal style that gives meaning to the story. The narrator uses the anecdote that happened to him to convey the story’s underlying meaning that people are restricted by social class and race, not realizing this meaning himself at the time. The era of racism pertains to the meaning of the story, discussing the aversion of southern white people to help those different from them, focusing on the restrictions that society has placed on social class and race separation and the desire to maintain the division.

     The sun is the largest object in the solar system. It is a middle-sized star and there are many other stars out in the universe just like it. Even though it is only a middle-sized star it is large enough to hold over 1 million Earth’s inside if it were hollow. The temperature on the sun is far too much for any living thing to bear. On the surface it is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit and the core is a stunning 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But don’t worry we are over 90,000 million miles away, the sun could never reach us, at least not yet. The sun is a still a middle aged star and later in its life it will become a Red Giant. In this stage it will get bigger, and closer to us causing a temperature increase and most likely the

The plot of A Thousand Splendid Suns revolves around two protagonists: Laila and Mariam. Most of the story’s characters are round, but Mariam and Laila are exceptionally complex. Mariam is a harami, a bastard, that leaves her mother, Nana, in order to live with Jalil, her father. Jalil rejects her, and Jalil and Mariam later regret the decisions that they made at that point in their lives. Mariam is a quiet, thoughtful, and kind woman who was born in Herat, and her face has been described as long, triangular, and houndlike. She is forced into marriage at the age of fifteen with a much older suitor named Rasheed who abuses her brutally once he learns that she cannot provide him with children. She is also revealed as a very dynamic character early in the story. Mariam quickly develops a mistrust toward men, and she realizes that her mother had been right all along. Another example of a significant change Mariam goes through is the animosity she feels toward Laila that quickly transforms into their friendship when “a look passed between Laila and Mariam. An unguarded, knowing look. And in this fleeting, wordless exchange with Mariam, Laila knew they were not enemies any longer.” (page 250). Later in the story, Mariam, who was a forty-two-year-old woman at that time, is executed by the Taliban for murder.

The authors Khaled Hosseini and Kurt Vonnegut write novels of critical acclaim. Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns explores the life of Mariam and her struggles with her husband and society, however, she finds reason to fight through a religious tutor. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five examines the life of Billy Pilgrim who goes through the bombing of Dresden and is kidnapped by an alien species, the Tralfamadorians, who have him apply a new philosophy. Using traditional techniques, Hosseini constructs Mullah Faizullah, the religious tutor, as a wise mentor. The persona of a hermit guru was used by Vonnegut as a non-traditional guide in the form of the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five. Hosseini uses foreshadowing and a comforting