Forgetting and a Goal for the Year

For my first blog post, I decided not to start directly with discussing A Thousand Splendid Suns. I though about what to write in this first post for quite a long time, and I came to the conclusion that just jumping right into the novel was not the way to go. Although the novel is set in the present, it is not set in our country. Because of this setting, some of the customs, words, themes, etc. in the book are not what we are used to. This being said, I have decided to start my blog by discussing an interpretation flaw that I have noticed within my class. We forget.

Everyone in my class lives in the United States. Living in this country gives us privileges. We have material possessions, equality between men and women, and equal opportunities for everyone. Many countries do not have all of these qualities. My class, myself included, often forgets this. Forgetting that the characters in A Thousand Splendid Suns do not have these privileges is a major flaw in our interpretive skills for the novel. For example, if a character in the novel needed some medical attention, most likely my class would say something like “then why didn’t they go to the doctor?” The answer to the class’ question would be that they couldn’t go to the doctor because they can’t afford it, or they don’t have one close enough to them. This answer could lead into more questions from the class, but all of them would be answered in the same way: whatever it is that they need, it is not available to them. The class forgets this unavailability, and it makes discussion and interpretation of the novel futile until we remember that we have privileges.

This forgetfulness also affects our interpretation in another way. It sort of puts us on the outside of the novel. We observe things from out own point of view, which is not necessarily effective for interpreting A Thousand Splendid Suns. The book is not set in the United States. The characters are not living the same lives we are. They are suffering. They cannot even go outside without fear that they will be killed. We are not accustomed to these feelings because of our lifestyle, so trying to interpret the novel from our own lifestyle does not put us in a place in the action of the novel.

Forgetfulness is a common trait within our class, and I am sure that it is also present within the other senior English classes. In order to interpret a novel such as A Thousand Splendid Suns, however, we must completely rid our minds of our own lifestyles and privileges. We must become the characters that we read about, and look through their point of view so that we can completely understand what their lives and the choices they make. I have decided to make this a goal for myself throughout the rest of the year. I am going to try to be aware of the differences between my world and the world of the characters I read about, and through this awareness I am going to try to see the stories through their eyes.