Does the point of view of the story enhance how the novel unfolds? How does the point of view add interest to the novel?
While reading this section of A Thousand Splendid Sons, I was both upset and nervous for Laila. She found out Tariq was leaving for Peshawar the next day, and this sudden news allowed for the plot to thicken and foreshadowed what was to come.
After the two of them have sex, Tariq says "'Let me marry you, Laila. Today. We could get married today'" (Hosseini 184). Laila does the right thing and says no, knowing she has to stay with her mother and father who need her right now. However, Laila has just brought shame to herself and her family if anyone finds out she and Tariq had sex out of wedlock.
Though it may have been impulse and the last time the two would see each other, this doesn't change the way people will look at Laila if anyone knows what she has done. Sex before marriage is more common in our culture, but from Laila's point of view it is dishonorable and terrible. "Laila saw three drops of blood on the rug, her blood, and pictured her parents sitting on this couch later, oblivious to the sin that she had committed. And now the shame set in, and the guilt" (183). Not only is having sex and a baby out of wedlock bad for the mother, but the child grows up being persecuted against. After this incident and Laila accepting Rasheed's marriage proposal so quickly, it showed that something more may have come of the scene with Tariq. Laila is smart to make the child seem like Rasheed's, and as the lie grows, the plot deepens.
If this novel was written about an American girl who had sex and a child before being married, not as big of a deal would be made of it. Nonetheless, circumstances for Afghan women and American women are very different. The outcomes are completely separate and, though having a child out of marriage can be bad anywhere, it is not nearly as dishonorable and shameful in America as it is in Afghanistan.
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