Assignment #2 | Topic A

In the novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Hosseini tells a story about two women, Mariam and Laila who take on lives filled with struggle and pain. He uses many literary devices such as imagery and diction to help the reader understand the point in the book that women in this book are inferior and almost don't matter. Imagery falls into play all throughout the novel and also at the end of part one. Mariam prepares food for Rasheed and he ends up unhappy with it, "His powerful hands clasped her jaw. He shoved two fingers into her mouth and pried it open, then forced the cold, hard pebbles into it. Mariam struggled against him, mumbling, but he kept pushing the pebbles in, his upper lip in a sneer. . . Then he was gone, leaving Mariam to spit out pebbles, blood, and the fragments of two broken molars." The phrases, "powerful hands clasped her jaw" and "pried it open" helps the reader better understand what's going on, it lets the reader know how intense of a struggle Mariam was undergoing. In chapter 47, Hosseini uses diction to reveal the severity of the beatings Rasheed would do to the two women characters. "Laila ducked and managed to land a punch across his ear, which made him spit a curse and pursue her even more relentlessly. He caught her, threw her up against the wall, and struck her with the belt again and again, the buckle slamming against her chest, her shoulder, her raised arms, drawing blood wherever it struck."When the author uses the phrase, "relentlessly" it implies that Rasheed had no intent on giving in and if anything he was more forceful than ever in that moment. Words like "struck", "ducked" and "slamming" gives the reader the idea that this was no calm fight, there was fighting back; there was a frenzy; almost hysteria.

Using these devices, Hosseini projects the reality within Afghanistan, that things like this really happen, that women are objects and not human beings. It alarms the readers about the outstanding domestic abuse that is so normal to many of the women in Afghanistan.

Assignment #2 | Topic C

TEAR

Title

Evidence

Analysis

Reflection

In the heart-wrenching novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini; Hosseini presents how past conflict and events can determine the present actions, attitudes, and values of character. In the beginning of the book, Hosseini begins to dive in on the the early stages of Mariam, as a child. It was when Mariam was five years old and broke a cherished family heirloom (a china tea set that belonged to her mother as well as her grandmother) when her mother calls her a harami, a bastard. Mariam did not know what a harami was until she was older when she came to the conclusion that harami was, "an unwanted thing; that she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person who would never gave legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance." Mariam had it already set in her mind because of her mother that she wasn't much, that there was nothing to her, no substance, as if she didn't matter. For a while this mentality sticks with her, the mentality of everyone around her thinking that she didn't meet their standards, the mentality of knowing that dirt as her equal. As she grew older she quickly realized that her mother was a miserable and unhappy woman, she realized that her mother was bitter. She was bitter at the way her life turned out, bitter at the fact that Mariam lit up with happiness whenever she saw her father Jalil and one day when Mariam when to go and see Jalil she used series of awful tactics to get her to stay; first it was insults, from the insults it shifted to guilts and pleas. "What a stupid girl you are! You think you matter to him, that you're wanted in his house? You think you're a daughter to him?. . . I'll die if you go. The jinn will come, and I'll have one of my fits. You'll see, I'll swallow my tongue and die. Don't leave me, Mariam jo. Please stay. I'll die if you go." Mariam told her mother she loved her; but proceeded on the visit to see her father. As we learn a couple pages further into the book, when Mariam returns she learns that her mother has committed suicide. Overtaken with guilt Mariam weeps. Years later, a much more older and wiser Mariam; she knows that her mother's suicide was not her fault; that her mother was a treacherous and wicked woman. As her life goes on throughout the book Mariam struggles with feeling unworthy with other people in her life, first Rasheed, and soon Laila and Aziza. All the events that lead up to this help the reader better understand why Mariam acts the way she acts towards the other characters in the novel. It helps the readers gain perspective and understanding on her actions and why she chose the actions she did. After a short while Mariam grew a great bond between Laila and her daughter Aziza. In conclusion the author shows that a person may have gone through tough circumstances in their life that make them act the way they act; but it is the inner war with themselves that determine if they can overcome these things.

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