"And Mariam was afraid she lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies and sometimes not." (Hosseini 97) The fifth phase of the life of Mariam is Laila's Entry and Marriage with Rasheed. Laila, a neighborhood friend's daughter of Rasheed is nearly killed in a bomb blast which takes away the live of both her parents. Rasheed saves her and Mariam helps him to nurse her back to normalcy. They give food and pills and take care of her. After a point of time, Rasheed uses this opportunity to marry Laila so that he could get into the saintly cover of giving life to an orphan by granting a life, family, house and food. Laila is not like Mariam to marry Rasheed with no prior thoughts. She agrees to marry him because she finds herself pregnant because of her intimate relationship with her lover Tariq who has left Kabul a few weeks ago. This leaves her with no option. So she quickly agrees to the offer of Rasheed and marries him. She gives birth to two children. The first is …show more content…
The war affects the life of both men and women of the nation but it highly curbs the freedom of women more than men. The ban on every form of entertainment by the Talibans can be endured while the basic freedom of going out on the street was even restricted for the female counterpart of the society. The people begin to starve for there is no proper work for the men to do and earn the living. Rasheed being a shoemaker suffers a lot along with his family. Rasheed later goes out to work as a doorkeeper in a hotel from where they try to reach Jalil and ask for help. Mariam half heartedly agrees to call Jalil and ask for help but they come back with broken hearts for they find out that Jalil had passed away and all his wealth is gone because of the
The injustice Mariam endures in the novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, leads Mariam on a struggling journey impacting her future path in life. The injustice that Mariam endures leaves a permanent mark on her life and impacts her from the beginning. Life wasted no time throwing the cruel injustices of life at Mariam. Mariam was marked a harami, otherwise known as a child without a father, even though her father Jalil was alive, near, and well. “She understood then what Nana meant, that a harami was an unwanted thing: that she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person that would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance.”
“But in Rasheed’s eyes she saw murder for them both. And so Mariam raised the shovel high, raised it as high as she could, arching it so it touched the small of her back.” (349). This quote was the moment before Mariam’s life would end, she killed Rasheed to save the people she loved which was Laila, Aziza, and Zalmai. But, Mariam’s action would have conscious she knew that she would have to admit to the police.
Rasheed treats her lovingly and assures her that she will get whatever she needs. He says, “anything you need done just ask Mariam and she will do it for you.” “And if you fancy anything, I will get it for you” (Hosseini, 2007, p.
Her husband happens to become Rasheed. He finds Laila unconscious after a bomb went off, dissipating her entire family. Rasheed then takes her in and nurses her back to health. He feels that because he saved her, he should be rewarded, “The way I see it I deserve a medal”. Rasheed later practically forces her to have sex with him.
She knew how much of an abomination killing her husband would be to society, but she loved Laila enough to risk the punishment. Instead of running away from Kabul with Laila, Mariam stayed behind so that Laila would never get in trouble for killing Rasheed. She was then arrested and later shot for murder (371). Mariam sacrificed her own life so that Laila could marry Tariq and live happily and freely with her family. She gave up everything, even her life for those whom she loved, even though they biologically were not her children.
Rasheed disagreed with her and said he would not have a burial so “One sunny morning that week,” Mariam, “ picked a spot in the yard and dug a hole” (96). The sunny morning describes the happiness that Mariam feels because she will be able to give a proper goodbye to her baby. When the novel describes Laila’s life, her father takes her to the Bamiyan Valley. Laila says the “sky above all of this was an immaculate, spotless blue.” (148).
Hosseini gives Mariam many Christ-like qualities in the novel like forgiveness. Like Jesus, Mariam shows forgiveness in the novel towards Jalil when she reflects “he’d not been a good father, it was true, but how ordinary his faults seemed now, how forgivable, when compared to Rasheed’s malice” (309). Mariam reveals that she knows Jalil has faults and that they seem easily forgivable compared to the
Laila had to make physical and emotional sacrifices when it came to Aziza. An emotional sacrifice would be when she had to give her away to an orphanage. It broke her heart, but it was the only way to ensure Aziza would be fed and well taken care of during Taliban rule and the drought. Her physical sacrifices made was each time she tried to sneak away to see Aziza without Rasheed and was caught by the Taliban. Even though she was caught many times, she didn’t care, the love she had for her daughter was so strong she would die before she didn’t go see her,she even told Aziza “I’ll come and see you, all the time, I’m your mother; if it kills me I’ll come see you”(315).
The novel starts by introducing Mariam, in the beginning, she’s a self-conscious young lady with a mother who is despicable and suffers from depression. Her father has entirely different family and shuns her when she tries to be indulged in his life. Mariam is the banished child, due to Nana and Jalil having intercourse while unmarried, resulting in Mariam being illegitimate. At a young age, she was forced to marry a severely abusive man named
Mariam longed to place a ruler on a page and draw important-looking lines”(Hosseini ). Mariam is an example of how women are banned from an education and whose life could have been changed by education. Instead of being educated, she is sheltered by her mother and lives the rest of her life without high expectations of herself. Nana teaches her that an Afghan woman has to endure the life that is chosen for her because she does not have a say. Nana even says "There is only one, only one skill a woman like you and me needs in life, and they don't teach it in school.
Maria is trying to grow up too fast and she put her family to the side instead of being grateful. In this story, conflict, characterization, and symbolism all have an effect on the overall theme.
However, after a long time of struggling against the society and the loss of her two sons in addition to that, her role as an ideal feminist challenger is no longer dominant. Much like Mariam, Laila is a victor. The difference between Mariam and Laila is Laila has been defying the norms of the culture throughout her life, unlike Mariam, who was submissive for the early years of her lifetime. Laila represents a hope for woman in the male dominated culture, as she goes on to escape from her abusive husband, finds happiness, pursues education, and contributes back to the society postwar. The male characters are also notable to observe from the novel because the patriarchal society, as well as for the comparison purpose.
Mariam’s character as being playful to Aziza and Zalmai shows that she is like a mother to them on the grounds that she played with them to bring about
For centuries, women have been exploited by the society. Events of women being prohibited from doing things like voting or working and being forced to behave the way it is considered to be socially acceptable have been jotted down in history. Until today women are still viewed as the weaker sex. In some countries, women are regarded less than human and are treated like slaves. Khaled Hosseini goes into the oppression of women in his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Rasheed however asks her to wear a burqa before going out. He makes it very clear to Mariam and later on to Laila, that a “woman 's face is her husband 's business only”. However when Mariam fails to bear a child, after several miscarriages, Rasheed begins to torture her both physically and mentally. Rasheed also becomes cross on Laila when she gives birth to a girl child. Later on Laila gives birth to a boy, but this does not improve her status in front of Rasheed.