A Thousand Splendid Suns
Uploaded by luatagal on Feb 08, 2013
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Written By: Khaled Hosseini
Kelly Luá Franklin
AP Literature, Period 1
The setting of the story is in Afghanistan. The time period is spans is from the 1960’s to early 2000. Even by the opening sentences of the story, the reader knows that the novel takes place in a violence-filled country far away from the American home. This is an appropriate place for the story to take place since Khaled Hosseini is trying to enlighten the minds of his audience and alert them to a part of Afghanistan’s history and culture.
There are two main characters. These are Mariam and Laila. Mariam is substantially older than Laila and has come from a poor childhood as the illegitimate child of a wealthy cinema owner. Laila has had a good childhood growing up in a good house next to her best friend and eventual lover.
Because Mariam is the illegitimate offspring of a wealthy man in town, she and her mother aren’t allowed to live with her father and his nine other children. Despite this, Mariam’s father visits her every Thursday. On her fifteenth birthday, Mariam asks her father to take her to a movie at his theater but he never shows up. She decides to go into town for herself to find him but he is too ashamed to see her. She returns home to find that her mother has hung herself out of anxiety and despair. After it’s decided that Mariam will live with her father he quickly arranges for her to be married to Rasheed, a shoemaker from Kabul who is thirty years her senior. There, Mariam becomes pregnant seven times, but never carries the child to full term and her husband gradually becomes more abusive.
Just down the street is a girl named Laila and a boy named Tariq who maintain a close friendship and short-lived romance. When war arrives and Tariq’s family decides to leave the city the two friends end up making love. Laila's family also wants to leave the violent city, but before they leave a rocket destroys everything she has...