But after Mariam had a miscarriage everything changed. Rasheed became more sensitive and he seems to have a problem with his temper. The spousal abuse started with verbal taunting such as Rasheed mocking Mariam for not knowing simpal things such as knowing meaning of words. Khaled Hosseini uses the theme of domestic abuse to highlight the issue of social justice among women in Afghanistan. The protagonists in the novel are constantly being abused physically and mentally by their cynical husband.
Throughout the generation, women have always been trapped in some way or another. In the short story, ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ and the novel ‘The Awakening’ highlights the struggle of women in the late 1800’s and the early 1900s in society. The Yellow wallpaper is a short story about women giving birth and being imprisoned in a room with a weird view of the yellow wall-paper. This resulted in her hallucination lead to the development of mental illness. By the end of the story, she rips off the yellow wallpaper and kills her husband.
In regards to the historiography of gender politics in the Victorian era, the social position of women and femininity had become a problematic issue. Similarly, the gender apartheid instilled prior to the civil war in Afghanistan. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, initially published in 2007, is set in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. In this, it explores the story of Mariam and Laila as the protagonists, who teach the reader the reality of life as a woman in a backward Islamic country. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny seen from the perspectives of these two women and observes how they become to create a bond, despite having come from previously living in very different backgrounds.
Literary Analysis The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson is the tale of Hayley Kincain, a seventeen year old girl, and her incredibly unstable life with Andy, her father. Andy is a war veteran who suffers from Post-traumatic stress disorder, and is constantly assaulted by horrific memories of the past. Hayley’s mother perished in a car accident soon after Hayley was born, while Andy was still deployed in Iraq. Hayley was raised by her grandmother Barbara until Hayley was seven, at which point Barbara died and Andy returned home to care for Hayley.
1. Abbigale, the protagonist’s love interest, has faced deep emotional trauma in her short sixteen years of living. At a young age, Abbigale’s mother abandoned her and left her with her abusive, alcoholic father. The abuse not only comes from her father but her boyfriend in the beginning of the book, Seth. Abbigale was also raped, which led to a pregnancy and a miscarriage due to Seth pushing her down the stairs.
The documentary, Half the Sky, is an eye-opening film on the injustices women experience in the world; during the film, the reporters travel to Sierra Leone. While there, they met with a young girl who had been raped by her uncle, which brought to light the fact that rape is considered to be disgraceful, not for the rapist but for the victim. The young girl in this situation chose to speak out about the sexual abuse she experienced, and she was the one who suffered for it. Personally, I believe it was outrageous for her to have been kicked out of her own home for something that was forced upon her; to quote the documentary, “it is the victim that has the burden to prove herself innocent”, which although such a statement seems primitive, it
Marguerite Annie Johnson Angelou (April 4, 1928- May 28, 2014), also known as Maya Angelou, was an American author, poet, historian, singer, civil rights activist, and much, much more. She grew up in St. Louis, Missouri before moving to Stamps, Arkansas because of her parent divorcing. At an early age, she was faced to racial discrimination in Arkansas. Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend at a young age, which devastated her and led to stop talking at an early age. Therefore, the boyfriend was killed by Maya Angelou’s uncles because of this horrific act.
In the National Geographic article, A Life Revealed, it describes the interesting story of the woman behind the infamous 1985 cover of one of the issues of a National Geographic magazine. Readers of that issue instantly locked into Sharbat Gula’s majestic eyes and felt sympathy for her. As the article further discusses, Gula’s life was ravished by wars in the Middle East. Some of the more prominent hardships were: her child dying in infancy, the bombings, all the times she was forced to move to a new refugee camp, and her not being able to spend winters with her husband due to asthma. The overall theme of the article is that Gula’s life was bullied by others choices, predominantly mens.
Compare and Contrast 2 Emily Nasrallah and HananAl-Shaykh 's use women as their main characters in their stories. These authors also portray women as oppressed human beings in their own societies which gives a sad tone to these stories. What caught my attention the most was that these authors try to reveal some of the dark secrets harbored by the veiled women of the Arabian Countries. For instance, an old man is unable to recognize his own wife of about thirty to forty years in a hospital from Hanan’s ‘Unseeing Eye’. Emily uses Imagery in most of her novel titles.
In conclusion, in Susan Glaspell ’s play Trifles the constant belittlement that Mrs. Wright faced as a woman in the early nineteen hundreds led her to do the unthinkable, murder her husband. Glaspell shows the type of harassment women of that time period faced through dialogue as well as stage directions. We as a society have advanced over the past one hundred in the way of gender equality, but in order be the best we can be, we must to continue to
Clyde Haberman’s article From Private Ordeal to National Fight: The Case of Terri Schiavo emphasizes social responsibility through a woman’s diagnosis of irreversible brain damage. Terri Schiavo suffered many years because the people around her were still emotionally attached to the memories they had of her. “For 15 years, Terri Schiavo was effectively a slave- slave to an atrophied brain that made her a prisoner in her own body…” (1). Terri Schiavo’s quality of life deteriorated as she spent her last years attached to a feeding tube. Schiavo’s parents and husband had total compelling arguments about what was best for Schiavo because both perspectives saw her differently.
Endurance is cruel, necessary due to preconceived notions of another person’s self worth, and lack of compassion. In Khaled Hosseini’s book “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, Hosseini highlights a greater understanding of what it takes for women in oppressive countries to endure their entire life hardship and isolation. In the case of Mariam and Laila, at very young ages, struggle to find their path in society, only to have their fate foretold for them with many deaths and family members lost along this not-so-glamorous journey. By the time their paths’ cross they experience true hardship, and life-changing migrations. It is this endurance that eventually creates a strong bond of friendship between Mariam and Laila.
Imagine the experience of living under the rule of a violent group of terrorists, with no freedom whatsoever. This is what it is like for Najmah in the book Under the Persimmon Tree, by Suzanne Fisher Staples. In this realistic setting, Najmah, a main character, loses most of her family due to the brutality and imposition of the Taliban. The novel depicted the Taliban as dangerous and strict, which is interchangeable for what the Taliban is like in reality. Staples used the Taliban conflict to deepen the reader 's understanding of the impact of conflict on people 's lives.
There are many rights and wrongs in society today. In a book I have read, Belles, by Jen Calonita it shows many of those things that society judges you on. This novel can influence a change in society in in many ways. In Belles, a girl named Izzie, who is about 15, moves in with her long lost dad who is a very famous person. People start writing stories about how he is a horrible man because he ditched his daughter and girlfriend when Izzie was born.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, tells the history of the last three war filled decades of Afghanistan through the lives of two unsuspecting women. Education is a topic discussed in the novel frequently and effects Mariam's and Laila's lives. The similarities and differences between the two focuses heavily on education. Laila's father, Babi, repeatedly urged the importance of Laila's schooling. While Mariam's mother, Nana, wanted Mariam to stay away from any type of school.