A Thousand Splendid Suns Post A # 4

Vocab
Retching (195)- to vomit or try to vomit
Mottled (195)- spotted or bleached in coloring


Figurative Language
"Tariq's mother trapped in the lorry, upside down, screaming for Tariq through the smoke, her arms and chest on fire, the wig melting into her scalp..."(185). Hosseni once again paints a mental picture about the horrors of the the Taliban. A visitor comes to Rashid's house shortly before he marries Laila. He is telling (and lying) Laila that Tariq had been killed in a crossfire. She imagines the images of what his parents were doing around the time the crossfire had happened.
Imagery
"And that room smells like a sewer" (212). In the first few weeks after Laila has had her baby, all Rashid does is complain about how she is too loud, and creates unpleasant smells. He hasn't yet called her by her real name, Aziza.
Simile
"She had passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment" (228). Mariam has had a horrible life so far, and she is in her midforties at this point. She compares the past years of her life to a dry, barren field, where no life grows. It is a lonely field where she had nobody to turn to.
Metaphor

Quote

"She [Mariam] is sturdy, for one thing, a good worker, and without pretensions. I'll say it this way, if she was a car, she would be a Volga.[...]You [Laila], on the other hand, would be a Benz. A brand-new, first-class, shiny Benz (199)."
Rashid has just married Laila as his second wife as he is saying this. It is obvious that he doesn't care for Mariam anymore. He makes a reference to Laila's age (14), when he says "brand new," clueing into the reader that he thinks Mariam is just an old hag now, who is only good for doing work.

Theme
When life gives you lemons, it is not always possible to make lemonade.
Mariam is a prime example. She is treated like crap, by her chain-smoking husband. Every day, all she does is chores. If she wants to run away, she will either get put in jail, because of a law forbidding women to run away alone, or she will be gunned down by the Taliban.