A Thousand Splendid Suns – Blog 3

The semic code is very apparent throughout the beginning of the book A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. As the protagonist, Miriam, speaks of her father and mother (who she calls Nana) there are many semes which connote strong feelings that she has toward each. There is a positive connotation surrounding her father and the words she uses to describe him and their time together. He sat her on his lap and told her lovely stories of the places he has been; she was his “little flower” (4). Immediately following every meeting with her father, her mother chimes in and spews her hateful words into her daughter’s brain. She would tell Miriam not to believe his stories and that he cast them out.

 “Mariam would listen dutifully to this. She never dared say to Nana how much she disliked her talking this way about [her father] Jalil” (5).

Miriam feels she has a duty to be respectful of her mother’s feelings but she doesn’t agree with what her mother says. She doesn’t want to believe her father is a liar because he is the only person who makes her feel worthy of any of the wonderful things life has to offer. This juxtaposition of the feelings Miriam has toward her mother and father are how the proairetic code comes into play. You can instantly feel the negative connotation surrounding her mother and the positive around her father. The reader can make a prediction using these opposing values that there will be an internal struggle for Miriam to figure out her place in this world that she was born into.

This juxtaposition of feelings toward her parents can also be used to figure out the symbolic codes within the text. There is a constant struggle between Miriam wanting to be dutiful to the woman who is raising her and Miriam needing her father to make her feel loved, special and part of something bigger than the little kolba in the middle of a remote clearing of weeping willows deep in the woods in which her and her mother reside. There is a battle between right and wrong. It is wrong that she and her Nana were cast aside but her father does do right by making the effort to spend time with her. The difference between the rich and the poor is also apparent. The father doesn’t think of the consequences that might become for Nana when he sleeps with her. He just wants what he wants and will take it, just as the rich and powerful have the right to do BUT Nana is left with the burden of an illegitimate child in a culture that doesn’t permit such business. Her own father disowns her and she is shunned to a remote location. She is surviving without the lavish adventures and lifestyle like Jalil has AND she is left alone, allowing her bitterness to swell more and more with each visit from Jalil, and each story he tells. Miriam is caught in a world of mixed feelings as well. She wants to feel special and loved but doesn’t want to disrespect her mother.

The cultural code is also present in her mother’s fate. She became an disgraced outcast by making a decision to sleep with a married man. Miriami is also getting the repercussions of her mother’s choices – her own mother thinks of her as a harami. The fact that there is a word to describe a child born into such a situation is indicative of the culture that these people are living in.

The author sets evokes the resistant reader when he uses the hermeneutic code to give a foreshadowing of Miriam’s fate, at least for the first fifteen years of her life. He says on page 5, “though she would live the first fifteen years of her life within walking distance of Herat, Mariam would never see this storied tree. She would never see the famous minarets up close, and she would never pick fruit from Herat’s orchards or stroll in its fields of wheat.” The reader can infer that Miriam’s fate will not be much different from her mother’s unfortunate engagement at the age of fifteen. Sam Fine took a deeper inferential walk in his blog when he talked about how Miriam might have the same misfortune in marriage such as her mother had at the age of fifteen. Another enigma set up by the narrator revolves around the father’s intentions. It is significant that he chooses to send his sons to drop off supplies to Nana and Miriam when he could just as easily sent a servant.