Blog 2 A Thousand Splendid Sun Sam Fine

In A Thousand Splendid Suns, a novel about Mariam a girl born out of wedlock in middle twentieth century Afghanistan, author Khaled Hosseini uses repetitive and syllogistic progressive form in building and breaking the generic expectations of a bildungsroman, or coming of age novel.

In the beginning of the novel, Hosseini writes that Miriam is the illegitimate child of Jalil a wealthy entrepreneur and his now-former serving girl Nana (4-5). Out of “penance,” Jalil built a shack in the woods outside the city of Herat for Nana and Mariam to live supported by him (6-7). Hosseini uses repetitive form to describe the shack’s location in terms of temporal relation to Mariam’s life, writing, “Although, she would live the first fifteen years of her life within walking distance of Herat, Mariam would never see this storied tree [in the city] (5),” and, “Jalil and two of his sons […] built the small kolba where Mariam would live the first fifteen years of her life (7).” Here Hosseini is employing repetitive form because he tells the reader that Mariam will stop living at the shack when she is fifteen, but does not yet say why. However, Hosseini provides foreshadowing in between those two mentions of Mariam turning fifteen, writing that Nana was once engaged to be wed at fifteen years old, but she developed epilepsy, a “jinn,”  before the wedding making her unfit for marriage then and forever (7). In the syllogistic level, a reader can infer that a significant plot point will occur when Mariam turns fifteen and it may have something to do with a frustrated engagement.

Hosseini’s repetitive mention of age in the first few pages places A Thousand Splendid Suns in the coming of age genre, which exists through the repeating real life incidents of people growing up and struggling with issues beyond their control as Mariam must overcome her illegitimate status.