Where the Sun Never Shone

In the novel "A Thousand Splendid Suns" we meet two main female characters, Mariam and Laila. Mariam starts off the novel living with her mother as an outcast in society. Her father when she tried to go see him rejects seeing her and ignores the fact that she is there, like he is ashamed of her. Then when she finds her mother dead and her father is forced to take her in everyone in her father's family immediately tries to get rid of her. This is how she becomes married to Rasheed an abusive man that only wants a son and is strict on how his wife must look. After Mariam can not have a child they take in Laila who was left behind by her parents when they were killed by a bomb dropped by her house. She once realizing that she is pregnant with her friend's, Tariq's, baby; marries Rasheed telling him it is his baby. When it turns out to be a girl Rasheed hates the baby. He will not buy her anything, but when Laila has a boy Rasheed buys the boy whatever he wants and even at one point in the story leaves Aziza, the baby girl behind because they don't have enough money to keep her. At the end of the novel Mariam kills Rasheed with a shovel while he is attacking Laila. This is Mariam's second time signing her life away but this time it is by choice. Mariam, Tariq, and the two kids live happy lives after all they have been through.

Throughout the novel you see the abuse of women physically and mentally by men who feel that they are more superior. In the society that these characters live in, that is the case. The men make the rules and the men are always right. This results in the harmful treatment of women in the society by men like Rasheed who take advantage of the system and their wives and children. To see Rasheed even unfairly treat his children because one is a girl and the other is a boy shows to the extreme of how men treat the women.

To live when most of this is happening and not know the full extent of what is going on in our own world is crazy. We don't realize how great we have it to be in a society that women have the same rights as men. It's upsetting to read this story of the struggles of these two women that wanted a simple life where they were happy and free.