An Analysis Of The Growth Of The Protagonist Mariam In A Thousand Splendid Suns From The Perspective Of Lacan’s Three Orders

Khaled Hosseini,an Afghan-American writer who achieves fame for the“Afghanistan trilogy”,is an influential writer in modern times.His works focus on the Afghan people and reveal people’s hard life and true feelings.A Thousand Splendid Suns is the second novel of Hosseini,which tells a story about two Afghan women Mariam and Laila,who suffer from the pain of war,poverty and oppression from family,and bear injustice but establish friendship to save each other at last.Since published,the novel has received tremendous popularity and praise from readers and has attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad.The study of the novel includes studies of theme,characters,writing skills,and interpretations from various theoretical perspectives,of which research of psychoanalysis is few.This thesis is an attempt to analyze the protagonist Mariam’s spiritual growth,based on psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s Three Orders,discussing Mariam’s life state and spiritual changes in childhood,youth,and middle age from the aspects of the Imaginary,the Symbolic and the Real,analyzing her miscognition of the self,the pain of oppression,and the process of pursuing happiness,revealing the causes of her pain and her ultimate salvation.This thesis studies the growth of Mariam in A Thousand Splendid Suns from three aspects: the Imaginary,the Symbolic and the Real.First of all,this thesis discusses Mariam’s miscognition of her “self” in the childhood.In the Imaginary,under the influence of the others,Mariam forms the ideal ego and recognizes it as her real self.Then,Narcissism caused by miscognition leads to Mariam’s mistaken understanding of her identity and rights,which throws her into confusion.Secondly,this thesis analyzes Mariam’s pain in her youth.When Mariam realizes the illusion of the Imaginary,she steps into the stage of the Symbolic,which is controlled by the Other.In this stage,she goes through and suffers from the oppression of patriarchy and extreme religionism,endures the plunder of war,and almost loses hope for her life as well as her future.Lastly,this thesis explores Mariam’s salvation in the middle age.After suffering from pain and perplexity,Mariam tries to redeem herself,which leads her to enter the stage of the Real.She reconciles with trauma and reconstructs her“self” in order to achieve salvation.To sum up,by using Lacan’s Three Orders to analyze Mariam’s growth and explore Mariam’s sufferings and salvation,this thesis finds out Mariam misunderstands the self and compromises with the Other,which is the important reason for her sufferings.Ultimately,she achieves salvation by reconciling with trauma,showing the function and meaning of the spirit for the subject.In addition,this thesis also brings some enlightenment to people: attach importance to the spirit,which helps people be free and develop themselves to realize their own values.