On Ethical Predicament And Ethical Choice In A Thousand Splendid Suns

As a promising Afghan American writer,Khaled Hosseini has published three novels up to now.His debut novel,The Kite Runner,makes him gain success overnight.It can be deemed as a miracle in American literary world.A Thousand Splendid Suns ensures him a mature writer.The successive success of his works brought him numerous accolades,one of which is The United Nations Humanitarian Award.In 2006,he was appointed as an envoy for UNHCR,the UN refugee agency.Rich in Islamic culture,Hosseini's works are consistently concerned with Afghan people living under unstable circumstance.Characters in his novel are ordinary but uncommon and the language is plain but carefully crafted.A Thousand Splendid Suns was released in 2007,which is his second novel.This book is set in the turbulent Afghanistan during the second half of the 20 th century.It illustrates the story of two heroines—Mariam and Laila who struggle in the patriarchal society.Their spirit glitters the splendor of humanity,shining above Afghanistan like “a thousand splendid suns”.The thesis is an attempt to approach the novel with Professor Nie Zhenzhao's ethical literary criticism.Based on the former researches,the thesis is innovative to relate heroines' sufferings to the then ethical environment and analyze Afghan people's ethical life comprehensively from two inseparable aspects—family and society.Being a humanist,Hosseini expresses some of his ethical ideas in A Thousand Splendid Suns in an indirect way.This thesis studies the fiction from ethical environment,ethical predicament,and ethical choice in that heroines' sufferings and awakening to resistance correspond to ethical predicament and ethical choice which are based on ethical environment.All of them are interlocked to display the ethical life of Afghan people in family and society during the second half of the 20 th century.The thesis is made up by five chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces Khaled Hosseini,his works and research status at home and abroad,and explains the basic points of Professor Nie Zhenzhao's ethical literary criticism.The next chapter traces back to ethical environment of that time through focusing on religion and patriarchy.It centers on illustrating the influence of Islam on Afghans and the long existence of patriarchy in Afghanistan.The third chapter deals with characters' ethical predicament in family and society under such ethical environment.At the familial level,the chapter analyses ethical predicament in three families which has close relationships with the fate of Mariam and Laila.At the social level,maginalization of female and ethnic minorities is highlighted in this chapter.Chapter Four represents the corresponding ethical choices made by characters in family and society.In family,main characters make such ethical choices as rejecting the ethical identity,shutting oneself off or tyrannizing the family members.Different ethical choices generate different kinds of ethical value.In society,Mariam cooperates with Laila to resist patriarchy.After the war,Laila joins hands with other Afghan people to rebuild Afghanistan.The last chapter makes the conclusion and points out the significance of equality and national stability for family happiness and social progress.It finally denotes the novel's future research.