Character Analysis Of Mariam In A Thousand Splendid Suns

In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini details the misfortune of an Afghan woman, Mariam. Mariam’s endurance of oppression and injustice leads her to guide others to freedom, hope, and safety. Mariam was born into a broken home and labeled a bastard. Jalil, her father, never truly accepts her into his life and only pretends to care for her. Her childhood is filled with disappointment, but she continues to stay hopeful and cheerful. When her mother commits suicide, Mariam experiences a side to Jalil she never knew when he refuses to see her and marries her off to Rasheed. “They had been disgraced by her birth, and this was their chance to erase, once and for all, the last trace of their husband’s scandalous mistake” (45). Mariam accepts her lowly treatment because she has been conditioned to think of herself solely as a bastard, a mistake. In her marriage, Mariam holds a lesser status as a woman. Yet again, she endures what society and Rasheed tell her to do from wearing burqas, enduring nonconsensual sex, and preforming all housework. Mariam transfers her
“ Had Mariam been certain that he would be satisfied with shooting only her, that there was a chance he would be satisfied with shooting only her, that there was a chance he would spare Laila, she might have dropped the shovel. But in Rasheed’s eyes she saw murder for them both. (311)” Killing Rasheed was just to Mariam because there was no other option besides letting her family die, she felt justice in her death as well because even though she never got to live out her life with Laila, she had experienced love and was happy with what she had done. Killing Rasheed allowed Laila to live with Tariq as a family. The execution was just to Mariam because she could never face Zalmai knowing she had taken away his father. “It is fair…. I’ve killed our husband. I’ve deprived your son of his father. It isn't right that I run.”