Faces Behind Burqa,Rays Beyond Darkness

Because of his novel The Kite Runner(2003),Khaled Hosseini,one American-Afghan writer,has gained increasing popularity and reputation.His following novels,A Thousand Splendid Suns(2007),And The Mountains Echoed(2013)together with The Kite Runner,compose a trilogy about multi-dimensional life panorama of Afghan people.Set in Afghanistan which is overwhelmed by political instability and social turmoil,A Thousand Splendid Suns narrates one touching story about family,affection between family members,trust and mutual-support through the description of the miserable life of Afghan women in burqa.Despite the difference in ages and living environments,the heroines of the novel,Mariam and Laila whose lives are like two parallel lines,are combined together because of the wars and oppression from patriarchal society.Fearlessly shouldering ethical responsibility,they build sisterhood and compose the melody of love.In the thesis,the author aims to make an interpretation of multi-dimensional ethical thoughts:feminist ethics,family ethics and social ethics in A Thousand Splendid Suns.As the heroines of the novel and the representatives of female characters,Mariam and Laila have undergone the transformation from repulsion to knowing each other well and interweaving,which highlights the greatness of feminist ethics.Their ethical thoughts and ethical identities mutually affect.There exist different family ethical thoughts in Mariam's and Laila's families.Influenced by traditional thoughts and animal factor,Rasheed is dominating in the appearance,behavior,discourse right and sex of his wives and domestic violence is the only weapon he will resort to protect his dignity.However,guided by human factor,Hakim endows his wife with more freedom and equality.The parental ethical thoughts are the core part of family ethical thoughts.There are two kinds of parental relationship represented by Mariam's family and Laila's family.The chaos of social ethics in Afghanistan leads to the tragedy of Mariam and Laila.The previous ethical order has been torn into pieces by endless wars.Afghanistan has been plunged into ethical disorder which is characterized by political extremism and gender inequality.The unique experience of Afghan women is presented in A Thousand Splendid Suns,at the same time it also reveals the urgency of reconstructing Afghan social ethics.