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Major Themes Thousand Splendid

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7/31/2019 Major Themes Thousand Splendid http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/major-themes-thousand-splendid 1/21 Mariam, one of two female protagonists, is a quiet, thoughtful child at the start of the book. Born out of wedlock to a rich and married businessman (Jalil) and his former housekeeper (Nana), Mariam resents her mother's strict ways and the fact that she only sees her father once a week. Mariam's shame at being illegitimate makes her unable to stand up for herself. Miriam - She is the main character of the story. She was born illegitimately to a wealthy man of Herat and one of his housekeepers. She tries to force her father to acknowledge her as his daughter, but it leads to the heartache of her mother’s suicide and her own arranged marriage to…….. Mariam’s shame is synonomous to the humiliation she feels for being illegitimate. Use Margalit’s theme of humiliation and quote…. When her mother commits suicide after Mariam runs away at age 15, Mariam is plagued by guilt that controls her for much of her life, which contributes to her tolerance at being married to the abusive Rasheed. Victimization n Trauma During her long marriage to Rasheed, Mariam's inability to have children turns her into a resentful, bitter, and fearful woman. Trauma n Humiliaton This helps her understand her own mother better, and Mariam's life changes with the arrival of Laila, Rasheed's second wife. Through her love for Laila and Laila's children, Mariam is able to fulfill her wish to be a mother and to finally give and receive love. Ethical Redemption through Laila Major Themes Ties to Afghanistan Besides the fear that comes with leaving a known place, the characters also believe that the violence will subside and that hope offers a vision of a more peaceful future. Oppression and Hope The people in the novel often work to retain hope while dealing with the realities of political and personal oppression. At significant points throughout the novel, characters express their individual hopes. For instance, when Mariam asks Mullah Faizullah if she may attend school, her journey of hope begins. For Laila, hope lies in Tariq and an attempted escape from Rasheed. Most characters walk into such events with high levels of hope for the future, but once reality sets in, a character's hope is crushed. Not only do these waves of hope provide the reader with suspense and emotional attachment to the characters, but this cycle appears to reflect the cycles of hope and dashed dreams that Afghan women suffer, time and time again. The personal stories of hope, moreover, are mirrored in the political hope of the Afghan citizens. With every new ruler, people express their convictions that finally Afghanistan will be free. Yet, similar to the personal hope of individuals, Afghanistan’s hope often turns to despair after the realities of each new regime leave the nation unfree. Use in the beginning Shame Jalil and Rasheed emphasize the importance of their reputations by doing their best to avoid any shame to their names. Jalil thus takes action by casting Nana out of his house once she becomes pregnant with his illegitimate child. Jalil also does not keep his promise to take Mariam into town with him. He also marries off Mariam to Rasheed after Nana's death. For his part, Rasheed notes that he would need to marry Laila because he could not have her living in his house without some sort of pretense—otherwise, people would gossip about him. He also spends beyond his family's budget in order to make it seem that his family has
Transcript
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Mariam, one of two female protagonists, is a quiet, thoughtful child at the start of thebook. Born out of wedlock to a rich and married businessman (Jalil) and his formerhousekeeper (Nana), Mariam resents her mother's strict ways and the fact that she onlysees her father once a week. Mariam's shame at being illegitimate makes her unable tostand up for herself. Miriam - She is the main character of the story. She was born

illegitimately to a wealthy man of Herat and one of his housekeepers. She tries to forceher father to acknowledge her as his daughter, but it leads to the heartache of hermother’s suicide and her own arranged marriage to…….. Mariam’s shame is synonomousto the humiliation she feels for being illegitimate. Use Margalit’s theme of humiliation andquote….

When her mother commits suicide after Mariam runs away at age 15, Mariam is plaguedby guilt that controls her for much of her life, which contributes to her tolerance at beingmarried to the abusive Rasheed.Victimization n Trauma

During her long marriage to Rasheed, Mariam's inability to have children turns her into aresentful, bitter, and fearful woman. Trauma n Humiliaton

This helps her understand her own mother better, and Mariam's life changes with thearrival of Laila, Rasheed's second wife. Through her love for Laila and Laila's children,Mariam is able to fulfill her wish to be a mother and to finally give and receive love.Ethical Redemption through Laila

Major Themes

Ties to Afghanistan

Besides the fear that comes with leaving a known place, the characters also believe that the

violence will subside and that hope offers a vision of a more peaceful future.

Oppression and Hope

The people in the novel often work to retain hope while dealing with the realities of political

and personal oppression. At significant points throughout the novel, characters express theirindividual hopes. For instance, when Mariam asks Mullah Faizullah if she may attend school,her journey of hope begins. For Laila, hope lies in Tariq and an attempted escape from

Rasheed. Most characters walk into such events with high levels of hope for the future, butonce reality sets in, a character's hope is crushed. Not only do these waves of hope provide

the reader with suspense and emotional attachment to the characters, but this cycleappears to reflect the cycles of hope and dashed dreams that Afghan women suffer, time

and time again. The personal stories of hope, moreover, are mirrored in the political hope of the Afghan citizens. With every new ruler, people express their convictions that finally

Afghanistan will be free. Yet, similar to the personal hope of individuals, Afghanistan’s hopeoften turns to despair after the realities of each new regime leave the nation unfree. Use in

the beginning

ShameJalil and Rasheed emphasize the importance of their reputations by doing their best to avoidany shame to their names. Jalil thus takes action by casting Nana out of his house once she

becomes pregnant with his illegitimate child. Jalil also does not keep his promise to takeMariam into town with him. He also marries off Mariam to Rasheed after Nana's death.

For his part, Rasheed notes that he would need to marry Laila because he could not have

her living in his house without some sort of pretense—otherwise, people would gossip abouthim. He also spends beyond his family's budget in order to make it seem that his family has

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wealth. Ironically, both men behave in ways that are ethically shameful. To protect theirnames in order to meet their own ideas of social expectations, they neglect or even abuse

their offspring and wives, sacrificing the welfare of those around them in order to save face.

Pregnancy and Children>Impt Redemption

Hosseini sets up pregnancy as a symbol of hope throughout the novel. Mariam's

pregnancies each offer her an opportunity to be hopeful for the future despite her bleakliving situation. Laila's pregnancy with Aziza allows her to remain positive after she learnsabout Tariq's death. Aziza and Zalmai thus offer light and joy to a story that is otherwise

bleak and dark. Childbirth is painful, and the pain that mothers feel during the variousbirthing scenes reminds us of the sacrifices that parents make in order to bring new life into

the world. The mother’s pain is worth the joy and attachment that she feels once the child isborn.

Additionally, the contrast between fertility and infertility has a traditional meaning: a

woman's value in Afghan society has often been measured by her ability to bear children,specifically boys.

Education of Women

The women in A Thousand Splendid Suns have very different educational experiences.Mariam is tutored by Mullah Faizullah in the Koran, and she learns how to read and write.

Yet, when she asks her mother about going to school, Nana insists that the only lesson thatMariam needs to learn is to "endure." Laila, in contrast, has a father who emphasizes the

importance of her education. Hakim diligently works with Laila on her homework andprovides her with extra work in order to expand her education. He emphasizes that Laila's

education is as important as that of any boy. After the streets of Kabul become toodangerous, he insists on tutoring Laila himself. He comments about the importance of 

women attending universities.

Aziza is educated by both Laila and Mariam, who contribute what they know in order to

educate her. Mariam teaches the Koran, and Laila eventually volunteers to teach at herschool. The end of the book feels hopeful in terms of the education of women in that Zalmai

(a boy) and Aziza (a girl) head off to school together.

Marriage Versus True Love

A clear distinction is made throughout the book between true love and marriage. Since themarriages in the novel tend to be forced, they are not likely to be influenced by love. For

Nana, the prospect of marriage was ruined by a "jinn." She remembers the lost prospectfondly. Mariam finds hope in her marriage as something that could lead to contentment and

possibly to love, but the marriage actually devolves into abuse and oppression. Only Lailaescapes the abusive bonds placed on her by Rasheed when she finds true love with Tariq.

The contrasts between forced marriage and true love are obvious once Laila and Tariqfinally are able to marry and live as a family. Daily living in a forced marriage, for Laila,

involved disgust and futile hopes for a better future. With Tariq, in contrast, daily routines

leave Laila content and fulfilled. Sexual relations between Laila and Rasheed werecompletely one-sided, with Rasheed forcing himself upon Laila. With Tariq, however, Laila

finds safety in making love. Perhaps most importantly, Laila felt fearful and restrained with

Rasheed, but she can be honest and brave once she finds true love with Tariq.

Female Bonds

The women forge strong bonds despite the efforts of their husbands and their governmentto reduce women’s power. The bonds differ in nature. For instance, Giti, Hasina, and Laila

form a bond of girlish friendship, but Mariam and Laila form a much more powerful familialbond later in the novel. Nana finds strength from her daughter Mariam, and Mariam finds an

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admirer when she arrives in a Taliban-controlled prison. The novel thus suggests thatwomen have a strong ability to find strength and support in one another. Mariam never

would have gained the strength to fight Rasheed if she had not gained confidence and lovefrom Laila.

 Amidst the escalating conflicts of  the Middle East, the fates of  two Afghani women intertwine as they

are forced into a loveless marriage and must endure the hardships with only hope to live for  in ahopeless society. In Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, the tragic theme of oppressedhope is explored as the lives of  Miriam and Laila pan out from childhood to death. Through the manyobstacles that are thrown at these women, the hopes that they hold onto are constantly shattered.Hope for acceptance, love, and a better life are among many things that the women of Afghanistanhope in the backdrop of  war and danger.

The main character , Miriam, has been through much more than children her age and one of thoseexperiences is the anticipation for acceptance. At a young age, Miriam is recognized as an illegitimatechild of  Nana and Jalil. Her mother referrers to her as a harami, and Jalil's wives look upon her withcold stares of  disdain. Jalil, with his idealistic world, was the only person that Miriam feels loved her and could accept her. Therefore, when she asks Jalil to bring her to the cinema and watch Pinoccichio,and to develop relationship outside the kolboa, Jalil reluctantly accepts. Alas, he doesn't take her to

the cinema in fear of  his wives and the social structures that frown upon it. Ultimately, Miriam's hopesto be accepted by her father are dashed, forcing her to realize the truth of the situation. Not only didher father not accept her, but Miriam felt that her husband, Rasheed, had not truly accepted her as hiswife later on in the novel. After the 'honeymoon stage' of Miriam and Rasheed's marriage, Miriam hasa miscarriage during pregnancy. Thus, Miriam feels that the earlier hope for acceptance is beingcrushed once again.

Despite the marriage arrangements of Afghani culture, many women aniticpate for a nuptial filled withlove. Nana is like many women, and hope that Jalil convinces his wives to marry her and supportMiriam. Nonetheless, Nana did not receive the marriage she wanted with Jalil. Nana was not the onlyone to suffer through the hardship of a shattered hope of  love, but Laila also experiences it. Beforeleaving Kabul for Pakistan, Tariq, yells to Laila that he will come back for her, filling her with hope of amarriage of love. However, she is forced to sacrifice that hope when she marries Rasheed, thehusband of  Mariam, in order to sustain a proper upbringing for her child that she had with Tariq.However, her hope is completely shattered when an unknown man comes to the house and to tellLaila that Tariq has been killed by a bomb, leaving Laila distraught and hopeless.

The hope for a better life is always regarded throughout the novel. Earlier in the novel, Hakim, Laila'sfather, urges the family to leave the terrible and dangerous streets of  Afghanistan. The hope to leaveand start a new life is crushed by the bomb that kills Laila's mother and father, leaving her alone. In another instance, after the two women form a kinship, Laila tells Miriam of her plan to escapeinto Pakistan. In which, they go to the bus station and pay a man to play the role of the women'scousin. However, the man betrays the women and tells the guards of  the women's escape. In turn, thewomen and children are cart to the police station where they are to be questioned. Ironically, thewomen try to escape a life of  hardship only to return to that very same life with more abuse and

contempt.

The book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, is riddled with oppressed hope of  the women and children tothe people of Afghanistan and the unstable politics that is occurring at that time. This tragic novel is agreat depiction of expectations and rejections.

For conclusion

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“Maybe you should write about Afghanistan again.… Tell the rest of the world what the Taliban are doing to our 

country.” In his best-selling first novel, The Kite Runner (2003), Khaled Hosseini’s protagonist, Amir,

responded awkwardly to this suggestion. “I’m not quite that kind of writer”, he objected, uneasily.

In his new book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini has become “that kind of writer”. But although Hosseini

is unmistakably driven to tell the rest of the world what has been happening back home, his exploration of 

Afghanistan’s relentlessly gut-wrenching recent past is not confined to the notoriously repressive regimeinstituted by the Islamist Taliban on their arrival in Kabul in 1996.  A Thousand Splendid Suns spans decades of 

Afghan hardship and strife. It opens in 1964, in Herat, Afghanistan’s third largest city, and closes in Kabul, in

2003. It catalogues the successive eras of the reign of King Zahir Shah, Mohammed Daoud Khan’s Republic,

communist governance, internecine strife between various mujahideenfactions after the withdrawal of Soviet

troops, and the arrival of the Taliban. The narrative stays with its protagonists as they wait for the end of the war 

 between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, and as they follow the bombing of Afghanistan by the United

States in the aftermath of 9/11. It also features the arrival of a UN peacekeeping force and the installation of 

Hamid Karzai as interim president in 2002. The consequences of these ceaseless upheavals are registered in

Hosseini’s tale of lives devastated by wave after wave of brutal misrule, ravaged again and again by

incommensurable extremities of pain and grief.

While The Kite Runner was almost entirely devoted to the depiction of the world of boys and men,  A Thousand Splendid Suns is a book about the lives of women in Afghanistan’s deeply patriarchal society. From its opening

 page, the novel relentlessly exposes the injustices to which women are subjected. The story has two

 protagonists: Mariam and Laila. This double focus imparts breadth and balance to Hosseini’s representation of 

the problems faced by women across the country. Mariam is a harami, the illegitimate daughter of an already

thrice-married rich man, forced to live in shame and secrecy on the outskirts of Herat. When her mother 

commits suicide, Mariam, aged 15, is promptly married off to Rasheed, an ageing and brutal shoe-maker based in

Kabul. With Mariam’s arrival in the Afghan capital, the narrative shifts its focus to Laila, whose beginnings in

life, in a house just down the street from Mariam’s, have been comparatively fortunate. Born into a loving and

educated family, Laila benefits from the unprecedented opportunities provided for women under the Soviet

occupation. As her father remarks, “Women have always had it hard in this country, Laila, but they’re probably

more free now, under the communists, and have more rights than they’ve ever had before.” Laila is sustained by

her close friendship with her neighbour and classmate Tariq, who lost a leg to a landmine at the age of five: when

Laila is bullied by local boys, he defends her with “his unstrapped leg raised high over his shoulder like asword.” But no life in this novel is left unmarked by the scars of war, and Laila’s precarious happiness begins to

unravel as news arrives of the deaths of both her mujahideen  brothers at the hands of the Soviets. Kabul soon

explodes into civil war. Friends leave or die, blown apart by rockets on streets nearby. When a rocket kills both

her parents, Laila, who only just survives, is taken in and nursed back to health by Mariam and her husband. But

Rasheed, it soon emerges, has ulterior motives, and exploits Laila’s physical and emotional vulnerability to

 pressure her into becoming his second wife. From this point on Mariam and Laila’s lives become inextricably

linked. The form of the novel responds to these new circumstances: Hosseini’s narrative alternates between the

two women’s perspectives. The relationship is a rocky one at first, but Rasheed’s domestic violence, and the

 birth of Laila’s daughter, Aziza, forge a bond which eventually leads to an act of absolute self-sacrifice on the

 part of one friend for the sake of the other.

In the opening pages of the book, Mariam’s mother had warned: “There is only one, only one skill a woman like

you and me needs in life… It’s this: tahamul . Endure.” Her cynical admonition turns out to be a tragicallyaccurate forecast of the trials that await Mariam and Laila as wives to Rasheed. The wearing of the burqa is the

first of the changes required by Rasheed: “For your own protection, naturally. It is best.” Both women experience

the strangeness of seeing the world through a mesh screen. Hosseini’s representation of these episodes is

impressively even-handed given the book’s mission to raise awareness about the injustice of such male

 prerogatives. He does not, as might have been expected, blankly dismiss the burqa as an unacceptable patriarchal

imposition. Indeed, within a page of Mariam’s first burqa-clad outing, Mariam discovers, to her surprise, that the

anonymity the garment provides, and the privacy it affords from prying eyes, are also comforting. Mariam and

Laila are subjected to frequent domestic abuse. After one dreadful beating, Laila reflects that before life with

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Rasheed, she “would never have believed that a human body could withstand this much beating….” Horrific

scenes punctuate the narrative with unremitting regularity. When pregnant, Laila is so terrified that she might

not be able to summon love for Rasheed’s child that she comes close to using a bicycle spoke to abort the baby.

In another appalling passage, the child is delivered by caesarean section in a women-only hospital in which

doctors are required to operate in burqas, using rudimentary, unsterile equipment, and where there is no

anaesthetic to numb the pain of the operation.

Lighter episodes relieve the narrative tension. Hosseini depicts Laila’s childhood in the same controlled and

touching vein as marked the early chapters of The Kite Runner . An exalting trip to see the Bamiyan Buddhas,

for instance, affects the reader both emotionally and symbolically. There are other reminders of Afghanistan’s

threatened cultural treasure-trove. Laila’s father is moved to tears by a seventeenth-century poem about Kabul.

It is from this ode to the city’s ancient beauty that Hosseini draws his novel’s title: “One could not count the

moons that shimmer on her roofs/ Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.” Later on, in the

midst of the carnage of war and the ravages of drought, it is a relief to read of even little (and imported) joys,

such as the “Titanic fever” that “gripped Kabul” during the summer of 2000. In spite of the ban imposed by the

Taliban, the film finds its way onto the city’s (also illegal) TV screens, and “there was Titanic deodorant, Titanic

toothpaste, Titanic perfume,Titanic  pakora, even Titanic burqas.”

Like The Kite Runner , A Thousand Splendid Suns ultimately grants its characters and its readers a measure of 

hope. As the novel draws to a close, we are treated to an exhilarating wealth of good omens: a baby gives its first

kick in Laila’s womb as dawn breaks on a newly rebuilt orphanage filled with children settling down to morning

lessons. The dream of a peaceful Afghanistan, Hosseini insists, ought not to be relinquished.

 

This is not a book that works its magic by the strength of its style. Its sentences are clipped, transparent. There

are few rhetorical flourishes, and those often come across as melodramatic self-indulgences, which ill befit the

integrity and intensity of the characters’ suffering. There is something awkwardly sentimental about the way in

which Hosseini constantly hints at later developments, or labours inherently moving moments. Hosseini’s great

strength is plot, and his finely crafted storyline overrides the novel’s stylistic weaknesses. Where The Kite

 Runner strained to straddle two worlds (Afghanistan and America), a strong unity of place adds to this novel’s

emotive force by reinforcing the sense of entrapment and claustrophobia that pertains to Mariam and Laila’s

lives. A Thousand Splendid Suns involves the reader deeply in the lives of its characters, by sketching a detailed

 picture of their individual pasts and daily routines. The frequent use of Afghan words and phrases ( shaheed for martyr, for instance, or nikka for wedding) adds crispness and poignancy to the depiction of Mariam and Laila’s

world. By the time the plot tightens, the effect of Hosseini’s gradual weaving and meshing of storylines and

 personalities is breathtaking, the suspense almost unbearable.

 

Part of the book’s affective power derives from the immediacy of the reality to which it refers. It is, inevitably,

in dialogue with the myriad news stories and documentaries which provide daily reminders that many of the

fictional events described in A Thousand Splendid Suns are true – and true on a grand scale. Mariam and Laila’s

lives are charted against the backdrop of recognisable political events, including some of the most shocking and

emblematic journalistic images that have come out of Afghanistan in recent years, such as the destruction of the

Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban in 2001 and the public executions held by the Taliban in Kabul’s Ghazi

Stadium. Hosseini’s disclaimer that “The village of Gul Daman is a fictional place –as far as I know” draws

attention to the novel’s close correlation of fiction and reality. Similarly, the novel’s Afterword explicitly evokes

the real and ongoing Afghan refugee crisis: it tells of the author’s activities as US envoy to the UNHCR andinvites the reader to find out more by visiting the organization’s website.

 A Thousand Splendid Suns is a good and important book. It is good because it is a gripping, touching novel; it is

important because it speaks for women who have long been (and many of whom continue to be) condemned to

silence. It is a work committed to helping living people in whatever ways fiction can: it is, in fact, a

humanitarian novel.

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Scarlett Baron is a DPhil student in English literature at Christ Church, Oxford. She is writing about the

influence of Flaubert on James Joyce.

 When a first novel sells more than four million copies in the United States and remains on

the New York Timesbestseller list for over two years, it's understandable that expectations

for the author's second work will be high. Four years after the explosive success of THE

KITE RUNNER, Khaled Hosseini returns with another novel set in his native Afghanistan,

with even its cover art reminiscent of the earlier book. A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

contains many of the riveting elements that made its predecessor a volume that passed

from person to person with the urging, "You've got to read this book." To that extent, it no

doubt will please admirers of THE KITE RUNNER, but its intense focus on the plight of 

Afghanistan's women makes it a strikingly different work.

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS tells the story of two Afghan women --- Mariam and Laila ---

depicting their lives in the final quarter of the last century and the first few years of this

one, as their country experiences two foreign invasions, civil strife, drought and famine. The

two serve as proxies for the women of this troubled land, who have been victimized by most

of those in power over that period, most notably the Taliban, whose religious fanaticism

placed women in a status little better than that of slaves.

Mariam, the elder of the two, is a harami , the illegitimate daughter of Jalil, a prosperous

businessman from the city of Herat and one of his housekeepers. At the age of 15, her

father arranges a marriage to Rasheed, a Kabul shoemaker. Although Rasheed quickly

establishes his control over the young woman, their union is relatively placid until it

becomes apparent after several miscarriages that she'll never bear Rasheed the son he

covets. Rasheed's dominating behavior quickly escalates into constant verbal and physical

abuse that brutalizes Mariam and ages her far beyond her years.

Laila is a Kabul native whose life intersects with Mariam's and Rasheed's after her parents

are killed in a rocket attack as the family prepares to flee the country to join the growing

body of Afghan refugees in Pakistan in the early 1990s. When the couple comes to her aid,she's approximately the same age as Mariam at the time of her marriage to Rasheed, and it

appears their efforts are motivated by genuine concern for the young woman. Soon,

however, it becomes clear that Rasheed sees in her the opportunity to create the family he

was unable to have with Mariam, and he weds Laila and brings her into the household.

Laila bears Rasheed two children, while she and Mariam live at first in a wary relationship

under the increasingly tyrannical domination of their husband. In some of the book's most

lyrical passages, Hosseini portrays Laila's effort to break through the wall of resentment

that distances Mariam from her. When she does, the women unite in a profoundly moving

way to face their common enemy.

Khaled Hosseini is a classical storyteller who has clearly demonstrated his talent for craftingtales whose effective, if occasionally melodramatic, plotting and compulsive readability

seduce readers --- especially those with scant knowledge of their exotic setting --- from the

first page. In this case, he brings those talents to bear to expose the persistent subjugation

of women that has marred much of modern Afghan history. At the same time, his

determination to make that case contributes to what may be the novel's only notable flaw:

the relative lack of complexity in the portrayal of its main characters. Mariam and Laila

consistently display saint-like fortitude and courage in enduring almost lifelong persecution.

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Rasheed is so irredeemably evil it's hard to endure him for the length of time he serves as

the novel's dominant male character. A greater degree of subtlety in sketching these

characters would have made A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS an even more impressive work.

Near the end of the novel, Laila reflects that "every Afghan story is marked by death and

loss and unimaginable grief." With ongoing combat, a flourishing drug trade and even fears

of a resurgent Taliban, if Khaled Hosseini chooses to maintain his focus on the tragic story

of the Afghan people, one senses he won't run out of compelling material anytime soon. A

THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS is an absorbing novel that is not afraid to tackle challenging

subject matter in an intelligent and thoughtful way. For that reason alone it deserves the

wide audience it undoubtedly will secure.

 

unsand Daughters:

The Role of Marxism and

Women inKhaledHosseini’s

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A Thousand 

Splendid Suns

As revolution

 began and ended inthe dictatorships of 

Iran, PakistanandAfghanistan in

the 1970s and ‘80s,the freedom of 

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equality intended

for women of 

thenewly-formed

Marxist states didnot last. Muslim

women who wereonce free to walk 

thestreets arm-in-arm with other 

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women were

 banished to their 

homes under the

watchfuleye of themen who once

again began todominate them

 behind closeddoors as well

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aswithin political

forums.1

Even with equalityripped from their 

lives, someMuslim womenin

these Middle

Eastern countries

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found it difficult to

go back to a world

of subservience,de-

feminization, andobjectification.

While a majoritysuccumbed to the

authorityof fundamentalist

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Islamic rule, some

women, in the true

essence of Marxist

resistancedecidedto push back.

2Although previous

analyses of 

Marxism and

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women focus

moreon how the

theories of 

Marxism andfeminism clash,

3I advocate that the

two belief systems

are instead highly

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comparable and

that Marxism’s

embittered battle

for workingclassequality connects

with the feministsurge against

the dominatingmale faction.The

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relevance of this

analysis is

reflected in the

significance of materialism in

onediasporicwriter’s work that

relates tointerpretations of 

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social literary

theory. In Afghan-

American author 

Khaled Hosseini’s book 

 A Thousand Splendid Suns

, thefemalecharacters’

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subdued and

 blatant Marxist

actions support my

hypothesis. Thisstudy willconnect

Marxism andfeminism by

accentuating the parallels between

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the class

andgender struggle

facing the book’s

two main femalecharacters

,Mariam and Laila

.

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For Mariam, the

illegitimate child

of a lower class

woman and a prominent Afghan

 patriarch,freedomis the ability to

read, write, and play, even though

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her illicitness has

 banished her 


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