An Interpretation Of A Thousand Splendid Suns From The Persective Of Ecofeminism

A Thousand Splendid Suns, the second novel contributed in2007by KhaledHosseini, an Afghan-American writer, won unanimous good comments from literarycritics, catapulting Hosseini from the status of a fresh writer into the list of widelyaccepted mature writers. In the impressive work about family, friendship, faith andself-salvation, Hosseini, again with the past and present wars in Afghanistan as thebackdrop, crossing time and space of thirty years, and with an exquisite and appealingstroke, describes the life experiences of two women struggling in agony under theoppression of the old Afghan family system, their hopes, loves, dreams and losses, andthe past and present situations full of sufferings and disasters of the Afghan nation anddisplays the writer’s deep concern for Afghanistan suffering in wars seeming to beendless.As an offspring of the combination of feminism and ecology protectionism, acultural ideological trend in the contemporary West arising from the confluence of theecological movement and feminism and actively meeting the needs of social reforms anda crystallization of the green revolution in the field of literary criticism, ecofeminism, as arising theory, has been developed swiftly across the world into a distinguished school anda significant component in the field of literary criticism. In the history of literary criticism,ecofeminism unifies and associates nature and female in a pioneering way. It unearthsand reproduces the fate and position of nature and women from the double perspectivesof environment and sex, leading women and nature marginalized and diminished sinceancient times and in the traditional literary works into the center of humanistic care in thehuman society and away from the position of marginalization and discrimination. Theecofeminist literary criticism queries, deconstructs and overturns the ideological root ofecological crisis—the world view of anthropocentrism and the social root of oppressionon women—the traditional culture of patriarchy as the world center. And it further callsupon reconstructing the world view of harmony between man and nature, advocates theequal and harmonious gender relationship and takes it as the ultimate goal to build up theecological moral ethics based on the reciprocal and responsible principle and the new social order of sustainable development.This thesis interprets A Thousand Splendid Suns from the perspective ofecofeminism on the basis of text analysis. And the main part consists of three chapters:The first chapter dwells on the close relationship between women and nature,analyzes the patriarchal oppression, havoc and even destruction of nature and thenexcavates its sources in combination with the contents of the novel and ecofeministtheories.The second chapter exposes the domination and oppression of the patriarchal systemimposed on women and reveals the oppressed Afghan women’s existence state in thenatural and social ecological environment during the thirty years of wars and thenproceeds to explore the origins on the basis of the life experiences of the two heroinesand other female characters.The third chapter probes into the revolt progress of women against patriarchy andthe ideal situation in which women, as the symbol of nature, live harmoniously with men,which will be integrated with the social reality and the theme of the novel. And theultimate purpose consists in the search for the necessary approaches for women toacquire liberation and liberty in nature and society.To sum up, in A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini made a heart-shaking andthought-provoking description and consideration of the relationships between women andthe natural and humanistic ecologies, women and men, women and women, women andnation and so forth. The ecofeminist thought implied in the novel coincides with theconcepts advocated by the ecofeminist theoretical system, which is increasinglyflourishing as a brand-new and original perspective to carry out researches on literaryworks, and has certain enlightenment and realistic significance for establishing anewly-fashioned relationship between nations, social organizations, human beings andthe ecological environment, human beings, especially between the sexes, which is trulyequal, harmonious, helpful and beneficial to each other.