Annotated Bibliography
By Stevens Dejesus
Tragic but authentic are words that I would use to summarize the book A Thousand Splendid Suns. A text that my group and I enjoyed reading through out the last weeks of our course. The book stand as a narrative of two young women whose life are interwoven by their fates. In a culture that oppresses the women both Mariam and laila find their paths converging to pay respects to what life and their and their environment has handed them. My group found the tale of a women that in the end submits entirely to her fate and another who escapes to grasp the breathe of freedom . A Thousand Splendid Suns encouraged members of my group to submerge themselves in the book, Meriam and laila were our guides.
Section 1
Two stories are brought together in A thousand Splendid Suns. One part of the story is one told through the eyes of Mariam who fights against the culture of the middle east to know more than what she is allowed to learn and be more than what she is allowed to be. As Samuel summarizes the text in his blog Mariam’s mother, Nana, had her out of wedlock with Mariam’s father, Jalil a wealthy entrepreneur. When Nana became pregnant Jalil housed her in a hut on the outskirts of Herat so that When Mariam was born she would be taken care of. Meriam finds herself overprotected by her mother and sheltered from everything and anything out of the confines of the hut. Her mother ,bitter and cold as a result of her treatment by Jalil, desires to turn her daughter against her father but never succeeds. Mariam only become more and more interested with the world that her father comes to tell her of in each of his visits. Yet her fate is held in the hands of those around her who oppress her through control and force.
Laila Begins her story in a different light with opportunity and encouragement. she sees promise and a future as a result of her environment but soon all that is taken away. Her family falls to ruin and all of her dreams are take from her and her control. As a young girl she attends school and experiences good relationship with those around her.
The difficult part about reading the text is that as the reader I find my self reading for the breakthrough. I enjoy the text but as I am encountered with oppression and horrible consequences for following your heart I become resistant. I telling myself ” why doesn’t any good come from seeking out happiness in this book”, I find myself turning away from the text. As my group mates found themselves horrified by the text they still managed to surrender to the text. As they posted their second third and fourth blog i could see how much they were pulling back the layer of the text with ease. I myself found myself resistant to things such as arranged marriages at fifteen and various wives to one man. I was reading for something to counter the culture and it was hard to submit to the text.
Section 2
In Samuel’s 2nd Blog for A Thousand Splendid Suns he employs The syllogistic form to describe what he sees what is to come in the future. Syllogistic progressive form is the unfolding of the steps of an argument through which the genre is introduced and the reader acquires an idea of what is to come. He sees this form manifested in the repeated inference to Mariam staying exiled with her mother until she is fifteen. This is a good analysis of the text and understanding of instances in which the text reveal the outcome of the next chapters in the book. Yet I think that this form also reveals moments in which Mariam is prompted to escape her fate.
Although Samuel Did a good job of employing this form I began to see more of a qualitative form seep through the seams of the text. As the story broke open i saw the mood show from the beginning.
Then he let go, and he was talking about how Herat’s famous one hundred and twenty days’ winds would start blowing soon, from mid morning to dusk, and how the sand flies would go on a feeding frenzy, and then suddenly he was standing in front of her, trying to cover her eyes, pushing her back the way they had come and saying, “Go back! No. Don’t look now. Turn around! Go back!” But he wasn’t fast enough. Mariam saw. A gust of wind blew and parted the drooping branches of the weeping willow like a curtain, and Mariam caught a glimpse of what was beneath the tree: the straight-backed chair, overturned. The rope dropping from a high branch. Nana dangling at the end of it.”
After Mariam leaves to Herat by herself behind her mother back she return to find her mother hanging from a tree. The text say that her father’s driver tried to stop her from seeing the horrendous scene but she caught a glimpse of her mother. The book specifically mentions her mothers hair flowing from the tree. The mood of this event is a foreshadowing of the death of Mariam. Not only does the act from Jalil’s driver represents the cover and protection of Mariam but also the attempt to stop Mariam from seeking her own death. Mariam is told what to do and forced to do it. When ever she desire to do what she feel will bring her joy her relatives tell her it isn’t the right or rational thing to do. The mood of oppression deeply saturates A thousand splendid Suns with death and regret and strong negative consequences for what she believes in. The strong contrast between the heart and what other think is best is a genre we see in our western movie classic. Teens rebel against the culture and go against the grain in the western genre but in the genre that capture A thousand Splendid Suns is stuck in a box formed by a culture that employs death/ exile to control deviants.
Section 3
One Moment comes to mind in the text that I see as vital for both the symbolic and cultural code’s presence in this text. I believe that my group mates will agree that the season through which Mariam goes through where she cannot have children is heavily important for the main theme of the text. I believe that through this depiction of Mariam’s inability to become pregnant the author tells us about his disagreement with the books culture. Khaled Husseini tells us what he believe the culture is actually promoting and producing.
Mariam Finds herself in an arranged marriage with Rashid who is wanting of a child. Despite their efforts Mariam cannot have a child and Rashid becomes fatigued and frustrated with Mariam. The Symbolic and cultural code opens to play the strings of a culture that is unable to reproduce anything successful but people who are oppressed. Mariam failure to reproduce over and over again is a symbols for the attempts the culture make to positive result, to produce hope but fail over and over again.
When you take out the “r” out of Herat you find that it spells Heart. Although the author may not have intended this to be interpreted as so I believe Herat Symbolizes Mariam’s Heart. Mariam goes to Herat to find her heart but end up getting it taken from her and left with out a pulse. Mariam loses all of her dreams goal and reason to live. As she is hand first to her father then to a man she does not know she loses who she is with each transition.
section 4
The idea that the relationship between the narrator and the addressee is almost and always never one that can be trusted is not true. The book A Thousand Splendid is written by Khaled in order to represent his stand on a culture which he was born out of. If in any way he want to bring to his control the reader of this book and the narrator was not reliable it would ruin the book. The book is meant to create a relationship with the addressee so that the reader can pull back on the layers of the onion.
The inauthentic narratee may only see the hairy lobe on Noor as a significant detail added for the sake of giving Noor an easy to remember character trait. However, the authorial audience will recognize instantly that a notably hairy earlobes are a trait that might be passed from father to son, creating an enigma within he hermeneutic code.
My group mate,Samuel, bring an interesting point to the table when discussing the relationship between the authorial reader that the narrator has a goal to develop. The story of Mariam carries small details that cannot be overlooked as just good writing. These small details such as the ear lobes and many others throughout the text are part of a repetitive form that molds the authorial reader.It seem that The narrator chooses to bring great detail intense and significant moments such as when Mariam finds her mom hanging from a tree and also, as was just mentioned, The rape of Mariam by Rashid.
reading4awesome 