“OMG, I hate iSearch,” said one student during the “iSearch” season in May. There were countless status updates describing the torture that AP English students had to endure while writing the feared 15 page iSearch essay. These posts were what motivated me to get an early start on my iSearch novels, themes I wanted to do, and the authors I wanted. Through tireless research I came to the conclusion that inhumanity was a popular theme that I could work well with. Inhumanity is the act of “atrocious cruelty” that lacked “compassion or consideration for others.”  Many historic events in the world were based off a form of inhumanity, whether it was towards Jews, blacks, or women. Finding books of quality that mirrored my theme was a task that relied on previous AP English students, students like Tiffaney Mitchell, Natasha Parker, and Travis Higgs.
The fate of my iSearch essays and my AP English grade was left with A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Night by Elie Wiesel, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and finally The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot. I knew I needed a book or two that portrayed inhumanity and mistreatment of people on a much more global scale, so I specifically chose Night and The Aquariums of Pyongyang.  I had little prior experiences with these authors or their writing style, so I had a challenge coming up ahead. I knew once my junior year began, my year would be nothing but challenges and the much needed endurance.
	A Thousand Splendid Suns was the book I chose that would start off my junior year. Khaled Hosseini starts the novel off with a young “harami”, or unwanted, girl, Mariam, who grows up in Afghanistan during a troublesome time period: the 1970s. She grows up with very little of a father figure and is brought up with expectations of mistreatment from males because she is merely a woman. Nana, Mariam’s mother, influences her attitude toward the world through constant complaining about how women must endure men and quotes such as: “Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman (Nana pg7).” Although Mariam knows of only one or two men in her life, she holds them to great esteem. Mariam will later learn that the men in her life are abusive and unsympathetic. Fortunately she does not have to endure this alone and is paired with Laila, another Afghani girl forced into marriage and domestic violence. Not only must they survive abusive events, but they must survive poverty, starvation, and the new militant force known as the Taliban.
	Hosseini’s book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, illustrates the hardships women are forced to face head on. Certain parts of the book disturbs the reader’s mind by providing uncensored truths about how men treat women through sex, whether it is with or without consent; violence; and degrading comments. Hosseini’s goal is not to perturb the reader but is to reveal facts of oppression of women and their constant struggle to carry on with the never ending blame, guilt, abuse, and maltreatment. The author viewed inhumanity in a specific and domestic way. He brought in the private home lives of controversial Afghani culture when dealing with third class citizen like women.
	The four main subjects found throughout the length of this novel are the following: power, inequality, motherhood and hope. The power in the book’s context was often used in a negative form and often involved the power and control that men, especially husbands like Rasheed, had over women. The aspects of inequality that were shown were of comparison between what men could do and what women could not do. A women’s main purpose in life was to tend to the needs of the man and create offspring to carry on the family’s name. Motherhood is something that has become a common theme from the beginning of Mariam’s life till the end of it.

	Power is the strongest subject that stood out at almost every flip of the page. This power was most commonly used in the negative form and was rarely, possibly never, used a positive way. The way power of men over women was utilized through the telling of this depressing tale shaped the story of the Mariam and Laila’s lives like a sculptor shaping wet clay.  There was always a constant fear that Mariam had about when Rasheed would next lash out at her or have his way with her. Mariam feared for the night that her husband might try to have sex with her. “Her teeth rattled when she thought of the night, the time when Rasheed might at last decide to do to her what husbands did to their wives (Khaled Hosseini 63).” How could Rasheed obtain this power to control what he did with his wife? He obtained it from the common practice of his culture, religious beliefs, and his obvious physical prowess.
	Besides the apparent inequalities in physical ability between men and women, there were inequalities about the rare things that women could do and the things that women could not do. Women had no say in any matter besides those that pertained to the private life at home. Women were forced to cover their bodies from head to toe, showing little or no skin, and were not allowed outside the house without being accompanied by a male.
Khala Rangmaal did not wear makeup or jewelry.She didn’t cover and forbade the females students from doing it. She said women and men were created equal in every way and there was no reason women should cover if men didn’t. (Khala Rangmaal pg 111)

If women had to abide by these rules, why didn’t men?

	One of the few things that women liked doing, that men could not do, was being a mother. Motherhood was something to be cherished because it was a woman’s only real connection to another person besides her husband.  Nana believed that Mariam’s father could not care for her like she could. “Nana said that one of those days he would miss, that she, Mariam, would slip through his fingers, hit the ground, and break a bone (Mariam pg 21).” Mariam’s mother later states that:  “A man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing, Mariam. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed, it won’t stretch to make room for you (pg27).” No relationship can compare to that of a mother’s with her child.
	Mariam and Laila’s love for their children is never ending and always needs improvement. A child’s life was never good enough and this created the dream; the hope that they could do better for their children.  The book involves the hope of running away and starting a better life without an abusive husband, a poor education, and without violence.
Maybe there would be a path to a take[sic], a path that led to a grass field where the children could play, or maybe a graveled road that would take them to a clear blue lake where trout swam and reeds poked through the surface. They would raise sheep and chickens, and they would make bread together and teach the children to read. They would make new lives for themselves—peaceful, solitary lives—and there the weight of all that they’d endure would lift from them, and they would be deserving of all the happiness and simple prosperity they would find.  (Hosseini pg 354)

Creating a better life for their children was not something that could happen overnight, it took time and dedication, and in Mariam and Laila’s case, perseverance.
	From reading this book I was able to discover that the book contained topics about the abuse of power, inequality, motherhood, and hope. All of these themes tied in well with my main theme of inhumanity, but Hosseini differs from other authors and wrote about a different type of inhumanity. He portrays the life of inhumanity in a domestic environment rather than a global one. Instead of writing about inhumanity on a scale such as the Holocaust, the Suffrage Movement, or the African American Civil Rights movement, wrote about the life of women in an abusive household. Hosseini has a negative attitude towards men and their abuse of power and shows sympathy towards women and empathizes with them. Being able to show sympathy and empathize with the women shows Hosseini’s ability to relate to their emotions, their pathos.