Of Justice In Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns

Often times a person’s wishes do not match up with what fate has in store for them. In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, one witnesses the trials and tribulations of two women morphed by circumstance and war. Khaled Hosseini expertly illustrates what it means to search for justice that both Mariam and, specifically, Laila try to do as women in Afghanistan during a time of war. Through the deaths of loved ones and an abusive marriage, Laila comes to realize that she does not always have to rely on herself in order to live by the moral standards and justices she swears by. Laila, since birth, was the antithesis of what the antagonist, Rasheed, looked for in a woman. Her father constantly told her that “society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated,” instilling in her the idea that she deserved more than being subservient to a man (Hosseini 103). As she …show more content…
She marries him to protect her child, who isn’t actually his, and steals his money over the course of many months to escape to Pakistan. Laila and Mariam are later caught and sent back to Rasheed’s abusive household, now worse than ever. It is in this moment that she sacrifices her educated, middle-class mindset in exchange for survival in a male dominated environment, realizing what little control she has left has been destroyed. Laila blames herself for their dire circumstances after their failed escape. The abuse is one thing, but when Rasheed loses his business and the threat of starvation settles in, she has no choice but to put her daughter in an orphanage. Zaman, the orphanage director, tells Laila that “no one here blames you,” as the situation the Taliban has created is really to blame (Housseini 283). It is in this moment that Laila releases just a fraction of the burden she carries- it is here that she realizes it is not her causing the unjustice in her child’s life, but the