Biblio Breakdown: A Thousand Splendid Suns, Part Two

Notes on the metasphere and relationships as metaphor.

Welcome to part two of this Biblio Breakdown for A Thousand Splendid Suns. Looking for part one? You can find that here.

Alright—now let's get right back to it.

Relationships as Metaphor

In part one, we explored the notion that characters are comprised of more than a list of traits: that they're defined also by the cultures they inhabit and the relationships they have to other characters. Once we as writers have established that foundation for our own characters, we can build upon that in such a way that these relationships grow upward beyond the terrestrial world of the page, and into a sort of atmosphere that surrounds the world of the book itself. For the purposes of this post and those going forward, we'll call this atmosphere the metasphere.

Before you get to wondering what I'm smoking, consider this: like our characters, nothing exists in a vacuum, including the books we read and write. That is to say, we must consider all things against a greater context, which, for our readers, includes things like the society in which they're living as they read, the history of the cultures in which we write, and the presentation of our book's subject matter.

Woe be it of me to suggest that writers must actively be considering all of the above as a necessity when writing, but if these matters are considered when writing, one can craft a manuscript with an even further enriched theme, using the power of nuance and subtlety by pulling from the metasphere to shape readers' understandings of character, plot, and theme.