Cruelty in A Thousand Splendid Suns Essay Example

📌Category: Books
📌Words: 830
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 23 February 2022

It was Robert Burns who first said, “Man's inhumanity to man

makes countless thousands mourn!” (Burns). Man’s inhumanity to man is defined as the cruel actions and behavior the mankind inflicts on itself. Mankind has been cruel to itself since the dawn of time. Most wars and battles were started for selfish reasons. For example take the Holocost, an event that had a death toll of over 11 million people was caused by a group who wanted to prove their superiority. There are more common examples however, like theft and murder, which happen everyday throught the world. There are many examples of this in A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Man will be cruel and inhuman to each other in order to gain power, assert dominance, or expand their control. 

Wars and violent altercations provide many instances of man’s inhumanity to man. For instance, in the novel,  when Tariq is providing his reason for owning a gun, he describes an atrocious crime that was committed by saying, ”Sisters. All three raped. Their throats slashed. Someone had bitten the rings off their fingers'' (Hosseini 175). This description outlines the horrid crimes that humans are capable of inflicting on others. These innocent women were forced to endure inhuman torture due to fighting from other factions. They were casualties in a war that they wanted nothing to do with. Another case of man's inhumanity to man during the war is shown in the exchanges between the Pashtun and Hazara forces. Specifically, it is shown how the two groups brutally murdered each other's forces as well as innocent civilians when Laila informes that, “Everyday, bodies were found tied to trees...they’d been shot, had their eyes gouged out, their tongues cut out” (Hosseini 176-177). Hundreds of people are killed in Kabul due to two groups fighting over power. The factions have no regard for human life and are fine with killing as many people as needed to achieve their goals. The battles in Kabul reveal the cruel and inhuman actions that humans inflict on one and other in order to accomplish their objective.

In the world, man’s inhumanity to man does not just happen out on the battlefield, it happens in homes as well. Namely, when Laila begins questions Rasheesd on why he can not get a job, Marium is forced to watch as, “Rasheed shoved the children aside, pushed Laila to the ground, and began kicking her” (Hosseini 305). Rasheed is incredibly abusive and has no issue beating Laila and Mariam over the smallest things. Rahsees believes that he is superior to both women and as the right to beat and torture them when ever he pleases. Another example is after Marium and Laila's escape attempt fails, Rasheed beats Laila and locks her in a room where she sees, “blood on Marium’s face, her hair, down to her neck and back. Her shirt had been sipped down the front'' (Hosseini 269). Laila and Marium try to run away because they feel unsafe with Rasheed. In response, Rasheed tortures both of them by violently beating them, then trapping them in the extreme heat without food or water for multiple days to the point that Laila’s young daughter Aziza almost dies. Rashed does not care about the women’s health or wellbeing; he only seeks to increase his power over both women. As shown, humans are willing to commit acts of extreme violence in order to assert their dominance over others.

In most violent coups, the invading group use inhuman and cruel tactics to force order from subjects. This is prominent during the Taliban takeover in the novel.  For instance, when the Taliban first arrived, they set an example to show what happens if anybody opposes them when they take an enemy and “torture him for hours, then tied his legs to a truck and drag his lifeless body through the streets” (Hosseini 276). The Taliban publicly torture and kill the leader of the Secret Police in an inhuman way. They also made it serve as a message to anybody that crossed them; That the Taliban would inflict the most cruel and harsh punishments on anybody that went against their ideals.  The Taliban are also shown to be inhuman and cruel in their treatment of women. In particular, The Taliban turn away many women in need of medical attention from most hospitals, demanding them to go to a hospital that has, “no clean water...no oxygen, no medication, no electricity” (Hosseini 286). The Taliban treat the women of Kabul in a very inhuman way, forcing them all to go to a small hospital with few resources, reserving the competent ones for men. Many of these women are forced to go through painful experiences like giving birth without medications and proper care. The Taliban have shown to use cruel and inhuman tactics in order to enforce their control and ideals.

In summary, humans are naturally inhuman and cruel to each other. Mankind does this to itself for power, dominance, and control. The examples in the novel help show the horrible actions that humans are willing to do in order to achieve their goal. This topic has massive real world implications as well. There are many examples of mankind being cruel and inhuman in society today. It is a worldwide epidemic that needs to be controlled as it could very well be the downfall of mankind.

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