In the book A Thousand Splendid Suns Nana tells Mariam that a man always finds a way to blame a woman. Women in Mariam’s culture are treated with no respect because in their culture men are more superior. Due to the men being more superior, woman are expected to care for the men in their family. Sometimes they can't do the tasks that are given to them. The woman get blamed because they are unable to do the task. Some examples of this is when Rasheed blames Mariam for the hard rice and makes her eat it. Another example of this is when when Rasheed blames Mariam for not being able to have a child. The last example of this is when Naghma gets blamed for seducing a man and this ends her up in prison. Men are always finding ways to blame things on woman in the book through marriage, household responsibilities, and the social statuses of women.
In the story the reader finds out that men blame women for not doing there so called marriage responsibilities. In the book Rasheed blames mariam for not being able to have a child. They have multiple conversations about her being unable to have a child in the book. Shortly after the baby died Mariam said, “ A change had come over Rasheed ever since the day at the bathhouse. Most nights when he came home, he
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She tells the police what happened, they do not believe her. It was just then Naghma said, “ Her being here In prison. Her father had sworn that the day she was released he would take a knife to her throat.” (Hosseini, 363) This shows that men can find ways to blame woman because in this part she goes to prison on false charges of seducing a man just because she Is a female. The way that her father tells her what he will do when she comes out of prison shows how men can find ways of blaming woman even if it's not there fault. He Is putting the blame on her because he does not want to take responsibilities for his
In Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, many characters are forced to overcome obstacles in their personal lives. Laila and Mariam, the two main characters, find themselves married to the same man, Rasheed. Both had a good relationship with Rasheed at the beginning of their marriages. Soon they found that they were both being abused by Rasheed. Mariam and Laila overcome the abuse by taking matters into their own hands. Khaled Hosseini introduces the reader to the ways many Muslim men and women believe that marriages should be private and that how the man treats his wife or wives is his business. Many relationships find themselves trying to overcome an abusive marriage.
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.
The inability of Rasheed to understand the political situation in 1978 made him mad. That along with the fact the Mariam could not produce a child, led to Rasheed becoming violent. Frustrated, Rasheed vent all of his anger out on Mariam by forcing her to eat pebbles.
The inequality between men and women is highly elevated and marriage to Rasheed clarified the difference between genders. Mariam was expected to obey and do what he wished of her. Mariam dressed modesty and wore a hijab following the expectations of Muslim women. Rasheed expected her to wear the burqa and to stay in her room when he had guests. It was clear within the novel, that one of the most important tasks of women is the ability to conceive a child and when Mariam failed, he treated her as if she was not worthy at all. It also portrayed the value of a son over a daughter when he expected nothing less than a son from Mariam – in which she could not have
The next main factor in the story is society's attitude towards illegitimacy. Any woman who bore a child out of wedlock was treated with disgust and held an air of shame and disgrace. This caused those who did happen to have their children out of wedlock to give them up and send them off to orphanages in hope their child would be alright. A lot of these single mothers tried to send their children to one such orphanage called "The Coram Hospital". An example is when Melissa, a young girl just found out she was pregnant and says "'And Mama? What about Mama? The disgrace. We'll both be thrown out. Destitute." This is a good example of the consequences of illegitimacy. If anybody found out about such circumstances the mother and her acquaintances would be thrown out and homeless. The writer includes this factual information in the story and it entwines
When Laila and Mariam first start living together the two have a difficult time beginning their friendship, they fight, argue, and are beyond bitter to each other. However, when Mariam is seconds away from getting beat by Rasheed, Liala stands up for her, she insists that he does not abuse Mariam. While the two are sitting at the diner table a few nights after the incident, Mariam says, “The other night, when he… Nobody’s ever stood up for me before” (Hosseini, 242). Without Liala looking out for Mariam, Mariam would have been ferociously beaten and raped by Rasheed, however, Liala standing up for Mariam shows care and support for her, which ultimately is what friendship is all about. Not only does Mariam often times struggle with constantly being mistreated by Rasheed, but she also struggles with getting pregnant. Mariam’s pregnancies don't last long. She miscarries every child she expects to give birth to. The days when Mariam is pregnant and expecting a child, she makes dozens of articles of clothing by hand; she ends up never having a use for the petite clothes for her own child, however, she does give the cloths to Laila to use for her daughter, Azizia: “‘The cloths are lovely.’ ‘I had no use for them, Mariam muttered’” (Hosseini 248). When Mariam gives Liala the baby clothes, the two’s friendship truly falls into place. After Mariam gives Liala the cloths for Aziza, Mariam starts playing the second mother roll in Aziza’s life. This supports Laila in an abundance of ways. The two bond together through Aziza which makes them connect and have an unstoppable friendship. Having the friendship they do helps them endure the brutal life they face by taking their focus off the hardships in their life and supporting each other when the time is
Mariam struggled often with the constant rigor of her daily housewife work. As a child, Mariam encountered many horrific adversities and obstacles that she had to fight through. She lived with her mother, who she refers to as Nana. Nana was a very strict, bitter, and nasty woman. Mariam was the only thing she had in her life and she constantly treated her as dirt. She referred to Mariam as a harami, which translates to a sinner and/or a bad person in our culture. Her mother’s source of bitterness derived from the fact that Mariam’s successful father Jalil
Anila “committed the ultimate sin:(she)... met a boy, who, like (her), was becoming increasingly skeptical of repression in the name of race, class and religion”(Batool, 2010, p. 1). She then fell in love. If this boy was as well off as her it would not have been an obstacle but he was a poor non-Syed boy. Anila’s parents were furious with her but Anila could not help herself. She married the boy in secret. When her mother and brother discovered this they set up a trap to bring her back home and kill her. She got away. Unlike Aqsa Parvez who will be remembered for courageously standing up for herself. Elizabeth was considered to be like a tool to the boys of her house. After she finished reading a book called “The Feminine Mystique” she “found she weren’t alone”(Wilson, 1990, p. 3). She discovered that there were other women out there that did not like the way they were treated. She thought the best way to make her husband Lester understand was to leave to show how much she really did and how much he needed her. After leaving for approximately a week she came back and stood up for herself when Lester started yelling at her. Elizabeth's life was then turned upside down. Lester started calling her Elizabeth instead of women after she stood up to him and said “My name...is Elizabeth”(Wilson, 1990, p. 3). Since he was actually scared that she would leave again he listened and
These laws that limit the freedom of women within the country give men more freedom, which leads to abuse in Mariam and Laila’s family. Rasheed is physically and mentally abusive towards both of his wives, and because of this, the women attempt to run away, only to be sent back home by police. The reaction from Rasheed shows that he knows he holds the power: “‘You try this again and I will find you. I swear on the Prophet’s name that I will find you. And, when I do, there isn’t a court in this godforsaken country that will hold me accountable for what I will do.’” (Hosseini 272). Rasheed’s threats are serious; many times, the verbal abuse escalates into physical harm towards his family. Moreover, without any support from the Taliban, the women are forced to obey their husband and sustain his
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
In The Thousand and One Nights translated by Husain Haddawy, there is an emphasis on the role women play in and how their characters affect the male view on the rights and freedom women are entitled to. The value of women in the tale vanished after King Shahzaman’s wife had committed adultery with one of his palace workers. In the East during the time of this tale, there was little to no value for women, which gave men the power to use them as sex slaves and be able to throw them away after they have been sexually fulfilled. One day, when the vizier’s daughter Shahrazad volunteers to calm the raging king by telling him many tales and distracting him from his sexual acts and killing spree. The tale of The Thousand and One Nights was believed to be misogynistic, and presented women to be adulteresses who caused the downfall of men (Blythe). This tale was written in ancient Middle-Eastern civilization where women did not have rights or freedom within their societies and were victimized to be seen as the root of all evil and that “women are not to be trusted” (609. Haddawy). This tale will be evaluated based on the traditions placed in the ancient Middle-East, the modern-day observations of how women are treated in westernized countries, and the changes perceived.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is a high-quality novel that should be continually read for years to come in English II classes at Cannon School. This book is not only an enjoyable read for students, but it also teaches students lessons and helps them improve their abilities with literary devices.
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.
For many years, men have always held and desired power, especially when pitted against the fairer sex. The struggle for men to assert power is prevalent in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as the mentally-ill patients, led by Randle McMurphy, strive to remove Nurse Ratched’s subordination. Furthermore, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises explores the role reversal of power in the sexes, through the adventures of expatriates in post-WWI Europe. Despite being written decades apart, Kesey and Hemingway both explore the concept of sexual empowerment and degradation in both sexes. This is seen through the dominating role women partake in both novels, the notion of male insecurity, and the symbolic representation of the main
From a plethora of many authors and compilations over many centuries comes the fourteenth century The Thousand and One Nights, a Middle Eastern frame story during which there are as many as four implanted stories. In the outermost frame of this tale, a king who is betray by his wife vows to take a new wife each night and kill her the next morning in order to prevent further unfaithfulness. The main inner frame are stories from one of his wives which she continues each night to keep the king interested and thus postpone her death. Through these stories, the reader can examine the role of men and women in this time, specifically how women function in conjunction to men in the text. The reader may assume the men are superior while the woman are inferior, but through close reading of the text, the reader will discover that women in the text are only treated subordinately by men in the story but are revealed to the reader as the more powerful of the sexes. Authors reveal the power of women by their prowess at trickery or “women’s cunning” (The Thousand 1181), and their ability to force the actions of male counterparts. The reader can examine men’s attempt to stifle this power, which further acknowledges the women’s merit, through the excessively frequent occurring instances of men treating the women as insignificant, as well as instances when women are turned to ungulate animals, such