Character Analysis Paper

Wilson 1

Comp & Lit
19 February 2013 Character Analysis Essay The actions a person makes demonstrates the characteristics that develop and change during their life. A person's characteristics defines a person and it shapes that person. Mariam began her life as a young, hardworking, independent, quiet, thoughtful child from Afghanistan that was brought up in a small shack outside of the city of Herat with her mother Nana. She is also a strong girl that is unable to do bigger things for herself because of the constant reminder of her just being nothing but a harami or a bastard child. She is as well a very inquiring and an ambitious girl, she gets no support from her mother, only her tutor Mullah Faizullah and her father. Mariam was raised to support herself because Nana was often attacked with a jinn (a dark spirit that enters the body of a person) making her unable to complete her household chores having Mariam do instead. Mariam loved her rich father Jalil, not really understanding that he left her and her mother in a small shack because her mother Nana got pregnant with her. Being that Mariam started to be with her father more, her mother Nana decided to take her life thinking that Mariam left her. She struggles with trying to have a normal prosperous life because of this incident. She had always strived for a better life, an education and happiness but it seemed that life would not grant her those luxuries. Moving into a house with her father Jalil and his many Wilson 2 wives Mariam was not welcomes and had to leave. Jalil decided to give Mariam away and she was forced to marry a guy named Rasheed. Mariam was young and unsure of herself. She did not know how to be a good wife and never met Rasheed before which made her even more timid about moving so far and living with Rasheed. Rasheed was an old and abusive husband. Mariam struggled with carrying a child so because of that she became a resentful, bitter, and fearful woman and Rasheed hated her for that. Later on in the marriage they take in Laila who ends up marrying Rasheed and had a child. Mariam had difficulties and jealously for Laila because of her ability to have children. Eventually Laila and Mariam end up becoming the best of friend because Laila defended Mariam when she is getting beat by Rasheed and Mariam gains love for Laila child and raises it as her own. She became the selfless, loving, protective mother she never had or had the chance to be and Laila was grateful for this. Both Laila and Mariam plans to run away from Rasheed multiple times but gets caught and gets beat. Rasheed was beating Laila one-night, shoved a gun into Laila’s mouth and threatened to kill her with the children watching and Mariam trying to fight back. Mariam got struck with a desire that she had been trying to achieve for her entire life and doing nothing was not an option. She was very courageous when she ran to the back shed took a shovel that she used to kill Rasheed, her husband she had been with for thirty years. In the area that they lived in was a time where they had no rights and a man’s word was always believed. The men were the women’s Gods, because of this life style Mariam got killed by the Taliban. For Mariam, It did not matter that she was going to die because she was proud of Wilson 3 who she had become, she came in as a “harami”, an illegitimate child but “she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last."(A Thousand Splendid Suns. Page 329).