An example of how Hosseini feels disgusted and sympathetic is when one of the main characters, Mariam Jo, is forced to go live with her father after her mother’s untimely death on page 36, “suddenly he was standing in front of her, trying to cover her eyes, pushing her back the way they had come 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 curtain, and Mariam caught a glimpse of what was beneath the tree: the straight backed chair, overturned. The rope drooping from a high branch. Nana dangling at the end of it.” This quote’s symbolism is in the drooping curtain like branches of the weeping willow to show the pain and despair soon to come to young Mariam. The belief that Hosseini is disgusted is on page 43 when Mariam’s tutor Mullah Faizullah is helping her through her difficult time, “your mother, may Allah forgive her, was a troubled and unhappy woman, Mariam Jo. She did a terrible thing to herself.” By having a positive guiding person say this it shows that Hosseini believes that the RIGHT thing to do is live this life and never take it away.
A second example of how Hosseini puts his tone into the book is on page 53 after her mother’s death Mariam, it was decided, was to get married. The next quote is from her ‘wedding’ to a man named Rasheed. “They exchanged thin gold bands that Rasheed fished from his coat pocket. His nails were yellow-brown, like the inside of a rotting apple, and some of the tips were