Two Time Periods, One Image

Reading through Hamlet; it reminds me of my outside reading book A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini. Upon reading Hamlets soliloquy in class, I kept seeing the reoccurring image of isolation and the feeling of not being accepted that I found in A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Hamlet feels isolated for many different reasons. His father has recently died and it hasn’t even been two months, before everyone has moved on. His mother is even remarrying to Hamlets uncle; her brother-in-law. This was considered incestuous at the time, but Hamlet is the only one that sees the marriage as such. Everyone else seems perfectly content with it. Hamlet also feels like he cannot properly mourn his father because everyone else has moved on. He idolized his father, and while the other citizens and country people have moved on under the reign of Claudius, Hamlet refuses this and continues to think of his father as the true and better king. Hamlet doesn’t even interact with many of the other characters found in the play. While speaking in court, he only addresses his mother and never directly speaks to Claudius.

Almost the same exact story line is occurring in A Thousand Splendid Suns. Miriam has lived with her mother in an isolated area because she is considered a “bastard” child that everyone wants to forget about. They are sent away to this deserted area so people can forget about them and the original sins of the father. This is very similar to Hamlet, because Hamlet was next in line for the throne, yet people seem to want to cast him aside. Miriam also goes through a terrible loss of her Nana (her mother’s name). While she continues to mourn, others are already making plans for her future. After just 2 weeks of mourning time in her biological father’s house, he finds a suitor for her and marries her off. When she cries in front of her new husband, Miriam is continually asked why? No one seems to understand the heavy lose that she has gone through. They all expected her to move on within the course of a few weeks, which is the same exact emotional response that Hamlet is receiving from the different members of his own family.

Miriam is also very isolated. She rarely talks to different characters and when others do approach her, she rarely comments directly back to them. She prefers to spend her times alone in the comfort of her own house.

It was interesting to see almost the same exact occurrences happening in two stories that couldn’t have been more different. Although they are set in different time periods in different parts of the world, this reoccurring imagery of being alone and not being understood is prevalent in many of the stories found in literature. I thought it was very interesting just how closely related these stories were though.