2.2 Lovers: Tariq and Rasheed 10

2.3 Companion: Mariam 11

Chapter Three Epiphany of Bildungsroman Leading to Maturity 14

3.1 Epiphany of Importance as a Daughter in the Kinship 14

3.2 Epiphany of Status as a Wife in the Family 15

3.3 Epiphany of Role as a Helper in the Hometown 16

Conclusion 19

Works Cited 21 

From Deficiency to Epiphany：An Analysis of A Thousand Splendid Suns from the Perspective of Female Bildungsroman

 Introduction

Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan American novelist. The Kite Runner (2003), A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007), and And the Mountain Echoed (2013) came out and bounded into fame, leading to a great leap forward in the understanding of Afghan.

A Thousand Splendid Suns focuses on female characters and their roles in Afghan society. In the first week following its release, A Thousand Splendid Suns sold over one-million copies, becoming a number one New York Times bestseller for fifteen weeks. Time magazine’s Lev Grossman placed it at number three in the Top 10 Fiction Books of 2007, and praised it as a “dense, rich, pressure-packed guide to enduring the unendurable” (44-45). USA Today describes the prose as “achingly beautiful” (Memmott 2). The success of the novel catches many critics at home and abroad.

From the literary criticism abroad, there are many critical researches on A Thousand Splendid Suns. Some critics focus on the gender study. The women are suffering from the oppression of patriarchy. So many critics try to explore women plight, such as Dr. Vincent B. Netto, Ana Sentov and C. G. Shyamala. Dr. Vincent B. Netto points out that traditional patriarchy imposes restrictions on women freedom, and women should have equal rights. Some are interested in the study of narration mode. Selvi Bunce thinks it takes a lot of skill to make a reader “feel” the emotion in a piece of writing, and Khaled Hosseini does a great job of that by using very detailed sense of place in this book (832). While some critics have the opposite opinion, Lisa See points out that he doesn’t integrate Afghan history background into plots. 

Since Li Jihong translated A Thousand Splendid Suns in 2008, more and more Chinese critics are attracted by the novel. They attach emphasis to various perspective, such as the gender study, ethical literary criticism, cultural identity and the aspect of psychology, like Jung Carl Gustav, Freud Sigmund. Wang Pei analyzed it from the perspective of post-modern feminism. He points out that Khaled Hosseini doesn’t simply discuss about the conflict between men and women, instead he attempts to weaken the difference of both sexes and pursue equality and harmony (1). From the perspective of Carl Gustav Jung’s archetype, Lin Xiaoping focuses on the analysis of the growth of Mariam. Through showing her tragedy, he stressed the value and fragile of life and Afghanistan complex social condition.

This thesis would analyze A Thousand Splendid Suns from the perspective of Bildungsroman. “The Bildungsroman examines a regular course of development in the life of the inpidual; each of its stages has its own value and each is at the same time the basis of a higher stage” (Tennyson 136). Khaled Hosseini focuses on the growth of Afghanistan women who goes through the war. Wars destroy the ordinary life of the young, making them suffer more, and giving them a chance of growth in a special way. In the war, women are the weak. The first thing they must obtain is safety. They should fight harder and harder, which accelerates the growing speed. During the war, their life has been totally changed. War and sufferings it brings push them to grow, to fight and to find their identities. At the same time they witness the best and the worst sides of human, making them stronger and clearly aware of what they want and what they need to face the world.  女性成长的角度分析《灿烂千阳》(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_43630.html