I remember how it was painful to hear that some people lost someone close because of a bomb. In Khaled Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, the narrator shows how Mariam and Laila endure living with their violent husband, Rasheed. They get used to the struggles and hardships that they go through. Mariam struggles in her life after her mother’s suicide that causes a big turning point in her life. Her father forces her to marry Rasheed, a man almost double her age.
He takes her out to show around the City of Kabul and also buys a beautiful shawl for her. 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.
This quote shows that Rasheed is slowly taking in everything he has just heard. He is beginning to figure out the what he has to do to punish Laila for her actions against him as husband of the family. As Mariam sits at the table with Rasheed, she notices how it appears he is fighting with himself in his head. “He sat up straight, and, for a few brief moments, he appeared merely thoughtful” (Hosseini 344). This shows Rasheed is now in deep
Mariam is married off to a disgusting man named Rasheed and he mistreated her just like her mother treated her. Rasheed then gets another wife and things for Mariam and Rasheeds new wife, Laila , don't get off to a great start. Mariam is told to take Lailas orders, but upon one of Laila and Mariam's first conversations with each other Mariam gave a crude tone and let it readers know that “I was here first and I won't be thrown out” (225). Mariam believes that Laila will get rid of Mariam and this causes disagreement and tension between the two. Mariam later opens her eyes and realizes that Laila isn't an enemy and forgives Laila for trying to get her thrown out.
At just the age fifteen, she was forced into a arranged marriage. One night Mariam experiences a traumatic event, she is raped by Rasheed. “Her hands clenched the sheets in fistfuls. He rolled on top of her, wriggled and shifted, and she let out a whimper. Mariam closed her eyes, gritted her teeth”(pg.
Rasheed treated Mariam as property instead of an actual spouse. Mariam had no voice of her own, Rasheed controlled every aspect of her life, from what she wore to where she went. Mariam could not carry out a pregnancy causing Rasheed to build anger against Mariam, this led Rasheed to lash out and abuse her. Mariam dealt with endless beatings from Rasheed, over the simplest mistakes, because she was too afraid to stand up for herself or leave Rasheed. “It wasn’t easy tolerating him talking this way to her, to bear his scorn, his ridicule, his insults, his walking past her like she was nothing but a house cat.
Rasheed blames Mariam many times such as her inability to become pregnant and for her bad cooking. It’s not her fault that she can’t have a baby and she tries to make good food for her husband but it could an excuse to hit or abuse her. When Rasheed is angry about this, he takes his anger on Mariam by beating her or such as forcing her to try to chew on rocks. “Now you know what your rice tastes like. Now you know what you 've given me in this marriage.
Laila and Mariam find their identity through loving others and feeling love back through horrid situations. Firstly, Mariam finds love in Laila and her children. Mariam states to Laila,“‘Kiss Aziza for me. Tell her she is the noor of my eyes and the sultan of my heart.’” (Hosseini 359). All of Mariam’s life she’s been labelled a harami, a illegitimate being but finds herself a new life full of warmth and satisfaction through loving Aziza and Mariam.
Even though she wasn’t the legitimate heir as her nine siblings, Jalil was a true hero in her eyes as she was always happy with him. Mariam was a simple girl who loved both her parents. In spite of her mother warnings she trusted her father and gets shocked when he gets her married to an aged man and sends her to Kabul with him. One can imagine how her heart ached when she says, “Don’t come. I won’t see you.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a story about a girl named Mariam, the story takes place in the 1960s she lives in Herat ,Afghanistan she is a troubled girl because she has a very difficult relationship with her mother Nana who is not doing so well economically. Miriam also has a father, Jalil and he is doing very well economically he has a job as a business mas and has other 3 wives and many other brothers and sisters , but he takes time to see Miriam once a week because she is and illegitimate child.One day she tells her father that she wants to live with him and his family and he agrees but then never shows up , so Miriam decides to go look for him and finds his house but he does not let her in and so she stays there and spends the night sleeping there and Jalil tells his driver to taker her home , but something bad happens and when she arrives at her house she finds her mother Nana dead , she had committed suicide. After the funeral Miriam is taken to her fathers house but as it was expected his other wives do not want anything to do with her because she is not heir child or their responsibility,so they tell Jalil to let her