Gender and Crimes in Fiction: A Reading of Khaled Hosseini’s Thousand Splendid Suns

Abstract

ABSTRACT

This research investigates how gender and crimes are presented in fiction. This study analyses Khaled Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007). By using descriptive statistics on how the narrative devices narrate the female characters, this research explores the female characters as victim and perpetrator in crimes. Butler (1990) believes that gender ideology refers to a convention that builds the way of the body is viewed as a culture. She proposes that gender departs from sexual opposition that differs between male and female. Then, it distinguishes characteristics between male and female roles. Furthermore, analysing gender means not only looking at the differences between male and female, but also discussing how gender as a hierarchy puts male as a centre that wields power, and marginalises female’s role. Narrative techniques are used as a tool to assess the author’s idea in a narrative (Genette 1970; Kenan 2003). Kenan (2003) argues that focalization, which is derived from Genette’s notion of voice, is an important tool to analyse whose perspective is used in narrative, who focalizes it, and the contents of the focalization.

Keywords: gender, crimes, focalization, narrative