In A Thousand Splendid Suns many different types of rhetoric devices are used. In one particular passage he uses pathos, polysyndenton and apostrophe.
"You make the night to pass into the day and You make the day to pass into night, and You bring forth the living from the dead and You bring forth the dead from the living, and You give sustenance to whom You please without measure."
In this passage Mariam had just miscarried her first child a felt particularly sad and lonely. The use of pathos is present throughout this book and is used when speaking through Mariam's point of view. The author uses pathos to make the reader see how long Mariam is that this unborn child was the one thing that allowed her to get through the day. Polysyndenton, which is the repetition of conjunctions in close succession, in also used in this passage. The use of this is to draw attention to the passage and the message behind the passage. Attention is draw to all the functions that the baby provided to Mariam, how it made the days pass. Apostrophe is when an imaginary person or object is directly addressed. This rhetoric device is used when Mariam is speaking and addressing the "You" which is the unborn baby. This is used to show how the child is a kind of figure that Mariam clings to, that gives her happiness, even thought the child is gone.
This books function as an argument is that a person can overcome anything with the love of a family and the determination to improve their own life. This is shown by how Mariam survived the death of her mother with the live from Baba jo, Mullah Faizullah, and Jahil.
Great find. Polysyndeton is often linked to pathos because it is a deliberate choice by a writer to circumnavigate the expected norms of syntax. It is a stylistic decision. When you're reading something with style, you can pretty much be guaranteed some pathos.
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