1 , 2 , 3 ,4 OTSS

1. The key characters

The first part of the novel starts with Mariam. She is a harami, basically her mum had sex with a married man and Mariam has the unfortunate reality of being a victim of circumstance and the ill-fated start to her life is determined from the first chapter of the novel.

Mariam starts being a timid girl and does what she is told out of fear and she remains in this way for the majority of the novel but not the entirety because she "mans up" at the end. She marries Rasheed, he beats her and she takes it without complaint but Laila stands up for her. Mariam ends up killing Rasheed which is AMAZING, with a spade and everything. She develops from being a bit of a control victim but she seizes her own life and becomes the master of her fate.

Another main character is Laila. She starts off being childish and we see her finalise as a grown woman. She becomes what her father always wanted her to be, a success. Although success is subjective she is a teacher which she perceives and so does her society perceive her to be a success. She changes a lot from how she was as a child to when she finishes as a woman. Her relationship with Tariq, her childhood bf, changes when they meet each other again. She develops by standing up to Rasheed more.

2 – Character motivation

Mariam

Love. Albeit rather cheesy but nonetheless just as important. The love that Laila has for Aziza means that she will go see her as much as she possibly can regardless of the countless beatings that she receives. This love is what keeps Mariam and Laila sane. They manage to cope with Rasheed by their love that unifies them both in some random but perfect way.

Change. They all want change whether it be for the city of Kabul or the fear factor of living with Rasheed and wanting to escape his tyrannical ways. The key motivation that is intrinsic with love is hope. They all hope for a better future to come.

3 – The plot

The story, and I am thankful for this, has a happy ending. From all the crap that happened Laila becomes re-united with Tariq and they live happily ever after. She becomes a teacher. Mariam’s sacrifice is an amazing one, she went to prison and was executed so that Laila and the children could be free. For me a perfect ending because its so selfless and Mariam feels like she is doing the best thing and for ocne she is deciding something and having more control than she had before, ironic that the only thing she got to decide in her own life was the end of her life. Is it ironic or is it perfect? At the end of her life Mariam has more control and she is not being told what to do by men. The duration of the novel are both girls being controlled by men, Laila less so much than Mariam but still rasheed does control her by making her wear a burqa etc.

4 – key themes

Basically I have already covered this but the majority of the novels theme has been taken up purely by what Mariam’s mother terms "endurance". This is the power of the body to withstand any crap that life throws at you. Afghanistan as a whole, each woman and the problem that he or she faces and the problems of violence. Patriarchal society makes women more objectified and bordering on meaningless but this novel makes the women see more meaningful and opens the reader’s eyes to a world that we know next to nothing about.

Another theme that is also key is loss, grief, self-loathing and love. All of these themes can be explored in a variety of ways but the most important one is what the body can take and the endurance that Afghani women have. Look at Laila, she gets beaten up every time she goes to see her daughter but she endures it and takes it because of the love that she has for her and this therefore shows not only the love that she has but the overall endurance that she can face for that which she loves the most.

. Regret. Now this is an underlying thing that drives each character to become so much better than what they are. Regret for Mariam and what happened earlier in her life motivates her to go to prison and then get executed because she wants to atone and for her to control some sort of decision in her life. She is in her own way, powerless for the entirety of the novel until the end. At the end of the novel she says how her life has been cruel to her but the fact that such love was shown by Laila and her children makes her life more meaningful than it was before. This love and lack of love that she experienced before motivates her. She is, in a non-benign way a heroine.

more on a Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns, a book with a lot of suffering and the revelations of what women in Afghanistan have to "endure" but an underlying and almost sentimental but irrevocable theme is that of hope that comes towards about ¾ of the novel.

The second protagonist that we meet is called Laila and she is in love with a boy two years older than her called Tariq. He is a cripple and defends her against the bullies in her neighbourhood, he picked up his leg and "brandished it like a weapon." Although almost comical in my opinion it is obviously an incredible generous and loving gesture. They are best friends and she frequently goes to his house for dinner etc. he goes away for a while and an "emptiness" descended upon Laila. She becomes lonely incredibly quickly.

The novel goes on, character development and the time changes but they remain just as close as in childhood. He has started smoking and "hanging out" with other boys that Laila does not like very much. Has jealousy crept into the novel? Maybe.

Tariq and Laila declare their love for each other and then Tariq drops a bomb. He is leaving Kabul. He attempts to convince Laila to come with her but she does not because she says that she cannot leave her father, commitment to family. Similar to Mariam because Mariam would have done anything for Jalid, her dad. However, Laila’s father would reciprocate the gesture but Mariam’s father would not.

They realise that they don’t have a whole lot of time so they have sex and stuff. He goes away. Bomb hits her house, parents die, Rasheed finds her, at Rasheed’s someone tells Laila that Tariq is dead. It’s a pretty mental turn of events to be honest. Absolute loss. A big theme, Rasheed and the loss of his previous wife and son, Mariam and the loss of her whole life pretty much – mother etc and now Laila has joined them on the bench of destitution and loss.

Laila marries Rasheed and I was like "wth, why?" but then all is revealed because it turns out that she is pregnant with Tariq’s baby. Marries Rasheed to pretend it’s his etc. Quite simple really. She has a girl which is incredibly disappointing for Rasheed, wanted a boy to replace the one who died. We find out that a lot of people blame Rasheed for his son’s death because Rasheed was steaming drunk. Mariam and Rasheed both blame themselves in a very harsh way for the deaths that have come about, Laila does as well but not to the same extent. The theme therefore is not only loss but the self reproach and self blaming that comes about from loss. Regret. That is the word.

Mariam, earlier in the novel had found a photo of Rasheed with his wife and son and he looked genuinely happy, those days are gone and will never come again. The environment of Afghastan reflects this motif, things gone and non returnable.

Anyway. Lalia and Mariam do not get on; Laila attempts to become friends although saying friends is a slight exaggeration. They shout at each other and Laila thinks they have more in common. It shows that people have a "dark side" and the reason that some people get angry and stuff is because they are hiding demons.

Laila and Mariam become friends when Laila stands up to Rasheed and stops her from beating Mariam. They decide to try and run away but their attempts are thwarted and they are sent back to Rasheed. He punishes them by locking them in the shed, it is boiling hot and they have a little girl – Aziza with them. Laila thinks that the little one is going to die. It’s not very fun in all honesty.

NOW, back to where I started with the idea of hope. I was once told by one of my fun loving friends that hope is pointless because it only leads to more pain in the future. Although this is incredibly pessimistic it is not without justification. Friedrich Nietzsche said that "Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man."

For example, Mariam and Laila try to run away and the audience gets their hope up only to be disappointed when they are found out and returned back to Rasheed.

However, never was there a more powerful emotion than hope in my opinion. It unites the weakest of souls and this is exactly what happens with Laila and Mariam. In each other they find safety and solace and they are proud personifications of the belief that hope can conquer evils. Maybe so far it is the strongest theme. A lot of rubbish can happen but somewhere there is somewhere who understands and it doesn’t necessarily have to be someone close to you. Look at Mariam and Laila, they were bordering on enemies and now they are each others confidant.

The Origins of Gothic

Basically something that is not inherently beautiful like the paintings, stories etc from the Renaissance period was made out to be "gothic" and came to be known as gothic because by comparison they didn’t have much on the paintings from the Renaissance. From at least the last decade of the seventeenth century, gothic meant the medieval. Medieval is often associated with bad things happening, like depressing scenes and scenarios etc. In comparison with the art of the Greeks and Romans, medieval art, architecture and society was thought to be barbaric or, in other words, gothic.

In The Castle of Otranto it is known as "A Gothic Story", he used the word "Gothic" to stand for "medieval". His book was an attempt to bring to mind "the manners of ancient days", of the medieval world. As offered by The Castle of Otranto, these were "the darkest ages of Christianity", in which society was plagued by superstitions, supernatural apparitions and violent passion. Yet medieval is also presented as a necessary counter-balance to the more enlightened world of modernity.

The Castle of Otranto includes many of the motifs that were to become corner stones of the genre. In the book there are many motifs and symbols such as: the castle, subterranean vaults, the supernatural, the persecuted heroine, the villainous father, and so on. It touched on many of the themes that became Gothic standard: incest and forbidden passion etc.

One Thousand Splendid Suns and tings.

Im guna be honest. I have only read half of this novel but what I have read has pushed me to the edge of my emotional threshold haha. It is easily one of the saddest books I have ever read. It makes the ending of Romeo and Juliet look like a bed time story. It is that bad. My mum warned me when reading it and I replied with the ever courteous remark of: “shut up mum I am a man.”

How wrong I was. Many words are spoken in jest of men who cry when they read books but I can testify that it is true. I very nearly cried in my English lesson yesterday and I tell you now, it’s not fun.

The part of the story that I have read so far sees the protagonist go from one bad situation to the next. A turbulent turn of events that Mariam has to deal with. For example: mother committing suicide, being raped by her husband and losing 7 children. Pretty harrowing to be fair. As far as I am concerned her life is pretty crap.

 Foreshadowing, as in the kite runner is ever prominent. “If I had gone home I would ask myself what would have happened for many years” or something alone those lines.

The book talks of misogynists and the role that Afghani women play in society. It is not a very pleasant role, although this is subjective but definitely Mariam is unhappy as a Chinese man without any noodles. Lol wayne.

It is an interesting story and one that can easily be compared to other books because of the themes that are consistent in every chapter, page and word. These themes are:

·         Women and the harshness of their treatment

·         Bitterness

·         Loss

·         Betrayal

·         Honour

·         Endurance

·         Faith

·         God

·         Politics

reading a thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini
its good but ohhh my goodness is it sad. I want to compare it to another text but my problem is that I am limited as to what I can compare it to. Far from the madding crowd is an option but they are different time periods etc and like to be fair
it is very boring. oh what to do.