Inequality In A Thousand Splendid Suns

If you are brought into a world where, before you are even born, you are told that you won’t succeed life is a struggle. Society tells you you can’t do it, you aren’t good enough, or you are worthless. This is how women are viewed. In America we are very lucky that this is a much smaller issue than in some countries such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan, but it is still an issue in our home too. Women are still not paid as much as men, they are expected to stay at home with the children, and they are constantly being sexualized. The two books show a perfect extreme of how women are being put down and the other side of how it is done without knowing. Also this book shows how even if you aren’t a woman you may have other factors that make …show more content…
First off women are definitely not treated as awful as the women in A Thousand Splendid Suns are, but you can still see the inconsistencies between men and women in the book. One example of this is “Yet to this day she regretted not having completed the course and received her diploma—"just to prove"—as she had told a friend, "that I once succeeded at something." Instead, she had met and married Herb, a college classmate of her oldest brother, Glenn...” (Capote 26). This quote is extremely relatable to American women especially because they are treated as humans, unlike other countries, but still not valuable as much as men in society. Women have to fight to succeed where men are given more of a path to. Here at Indian Hill, people assume college is the step after high school. Indian Hill is a bubble where a lot of the members don’t realize that not everyone goes to college. In Kansas where the story takes place it is common for women to not go to college because it was unnecessary. They would stay home with the children and do house work where an education is not needed. This is a frequent way women are treated lesser than men. Another example of the inequality in our society is the negativity we put on mental illness or special needs. In the story it is known that Perry has issues, but no one knows exactly what. Perry was given up by his parents and thrown into orphanages and homes where he was beaten and tortured. “There was this one nurse, she used to call me "nigger" and say there wasn 't any difference between niggers and Indians. Oh Jesus, was she an Evil Bastard! Incarnate. What she used to do, she 'd fill a tub with ice cold water, put me in it, and hold me under until I was blue.” (Capote 132). He had a mental illness and the rough life that he lived did not help. He had a hard childhood and ever since then we set for