Synthesis Paragraph

       In the book, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Hosseini shows many literary devices to describe social issues throughout each chapter. One literary device that Hosseini often shows is figurative language. Hosseini uses figurative language to give the reader a connection or comparison, which allows for a better description of the occurrence or action taking place. Hosseini can be seen using figurative language by describing war when he writes, “the mountains fired on Kabul, and Kabul fired back at the mountains” (174). The mountains are not actually shooting at Kabul, however, Hosseini personifies the mountains to describe the opposing soldiers. This literary device can exemplify the social issue of life during war because the people of Kabul may not feel as if they are fighting other soldiers, but only the landscape around them instead. Another example of a literary device the Hosseini shows in his literature is imagery. Khaled Hosseini uses imagery to let readers vividly see what he is describing in his book. A text containing imagery is often rich with words that convey a sensory experience of the five senses. In this passage, Hosseini uses this literary technique to describe life during war. Hosseini writes that “At night, Laila lay in bed and watched the sudden white flashes reflected in her window. She listened to the rattling of automatic gunfire and counted the rockets whining overhead as the house shook and flakes of plaster rained down on her from the ceiling. Some nights, when the light of the rocket fire was so bright a person could read a book by it, sleep never came” (174). This image stimulates the auditory and visual senses, allowing the reader to truly picture  Laila’s fright. Without getting the image of how intrusive the noises and sounds of war are, the reader may not understand the everyday difficulties of the social issue life in war. Another literary device describing life in war that I learned from this passage is how truly helpless the civilians of Afghanistan are. Hosseini writes that the characters are as helpless as “Old Santiago, watching sharks takes bites of his prized fish” (174). This quote gives us a comparison of the civilians’ helplessness to that of watching a sought after prize being devoured in front of you by a much more powerful and controlling entity. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, it seems as if the civilians represent Old Santiago, the fish represents what Kabul used to be, and the sharks represent the soldiers in battle, tearing up the land.