of violence and chooses not to intervene, but he does not play an active role in injuring anyone. Thus, I would say Luke, who is very aggressive, is not really like Amir.

All three men share a number of things in common. For one thing, they all have retrograde attitudes towards women, seeing them as little more than wives and mothers who must do whatever their menfolk tell them to do.

Even so, there are differences between their actual behavior. Though General Taheri in The Kite Runner dominates and controls his wife according to the old customs, there's no suggestion that his behavior towards her ever descends into outright abuse. The same, however, cannot be said of Luke O'Neill in The Thorn Birds or Rasheed in A Thousand Splendid Suns, which is why it's fair to say that Luke resembles Rasheed much more than General Taheri.

First of all, Luke treats his wife, Meggie, with utter contempt and disrespect. He certainly doesn't see their marriage as being based on love or mutual support. No sooner are Luke and Meggie hitched than Luke's putting his new bride out to work as a glorified servant. If that weren't bad enough, he makes sure that her wages are directly paid to him. Clearly Luke doesn't believe that women should have any financial independence.

Rasheed's attitude towards his second wife, Mariam, is strikingly similar. As soon as it becomes clear that Mariam's unable to bear Rasheed any children, he starts subjecting her to abuse, both verbal and physical. Things eventually get so bad that Mariam is driven to kill Rasheed in self-defense.

Luke's abuse of Meggie may be economic rather than physical, but it's no less oppressive for that reason. And although Meggie may not be driven to such desperate measures as Mariam, she's no less traumatized by her experiences.

I would argue that Fiona (Fee) Cleary is most like Baba in The Kite Runner and Nana in A Thousand Splendid Suns. 

At a glance, Baba seems to be a strange choice, but he and Fee share a few similarities. Both are head-strong and resourceful individuals. Both also live under the burden of a terrible secret for many years. Like Baba, Fee favors one of her children above the others. Neither Fee nor Baba fully comprehend the damage their preferences cause until years later. While Baba dotes on Hassan, Fee only has eyes for Frank. In Baba's eyes, Hassan is the son he would have dearly loved to acknowledge, if he could. After all, Hassan is brave, loyal, and conscientious. To Baba, Hassan is everything his other son, Amir, is not. 

In The Kite Runner, we learn that Hassan is the product of an affair between Sanaubar (Ali's wife) and Baba. Amir does not discover his relation to Hassan until a short while before Baba's death, and he is devastated by the revelation. In The Thorn Birds, Fee keeps her own terrible secret from her daughter, Meggie. After Fee becomes separated from her son, Frank, she reveals to Meggie her terrible secret: Fee had always favored Frank because he was the son of her lover, Pakeha, an influential politician. Because Pakeha was married during his affair with Fee, he never acknowledged Frank as his son. Fee confesses to Meggie that her father paid Paddy Cleary to marry her and to give Frank his name.

Fee warns Meggie that both of them are guilty of stealing another woman's husband and that they will pay for their sins. In Fee's eyes, the Church is the feminine equivalent of Pakeha's wife, and Meggie is just as guilty of causing a man to break his vows as she is. Fee laments that she lost her son "in the worst way a mother could" and that she will never be able to see him again.

Similarly, Baba loses Hassan when his past catches up to him; jealous of Baba's attentions to Hassan and feeling guilty about his own mistreatment of his step-brother, Amir accuses Hassan of stealing from him. This results in Hassan and Ali leaving Baba's employ and home. Baba pleads for Hassan and Ali to stay but is unable to detain them. He cannot risk openly acknowledging Hassan as his son because it will destroy his standing in society. Despite great care, both Baba and Fee are deprived of their favorite children. Both are deeply religious individuals who find themselves constrained by the social norms of their communities.

Baba doesn't harbor bitterness about his fate, but Fee does. In this, she is most like Nana in A Thousand Splendid Suns. At this point, it is worth noting that Nana, Baba, and Fee all had affairs that led to great misery in their lives. Nana's lover is Jalil, an extremely wealthy and influential man. He is also her employer. Jalil cannot acknowledge the child he and Nana conceived together, so Mariam (the product of their love) must live as a harami (or illegitimate child).

After Nana becomes pregnant with Mariam, Jalil throws her out of the house. Even Nana's own father disowns and abandons her. Because of her father and Jalil's lack of decency, Nana becomes extremely bitter and distrustful of all men. For his part, Jalil builds Nana and Mariam a small shack or kolba to live in. Despite his actions, Nana never forgives Jalil for his refusal to acknowledge her as his wife. Nana eventually commits suicide and dies a bitter and miserable woman. Both Nana and Fee refuse to accept the bitter consequences of their actions; they believe deep down in their hearts that life has played cruel tricks on them.

By all indications, Dane O'Neill is most similar to Mariam in A Thousand Splendid Suns and Hassan in The Kite Runner.

While it's true Dane and Hassan are more sanguine in temperament and Mariam is more pessimistic in her approach to life, there is one commonality which links the three characters together: a selfless inclination to sacrifice personal comfort and safety for the benefit of others.

In The Thorn Birds, Dane is an easy-going and affectionate man. He has an open, welcoming nature that often endears himself to anyone he meets. As a child, his

habitual expression was a smiling one, his nature a curious combination of quietness and deep, sure happiness; he seemed to have grown into his identity and acquired his self-knowledge with none of the pain children usually experience, for he rarely made mistakes about people or things, and nothing ever exasperated or bewildered him.

As a grown man, Dane proves to be adept (even more than his mother, Meggie) in navigating a relationship with his difficult and often tempestuous sister, Justine.

Dane's optimism and habitual cheerfulness is the perfect temperament for a priest-in-training; his "natural tendency was to understand and forgive human failings in others, and be merciless upon them in himself." As a result of his moral stature and his warmth, Dane maintains an effortless connection with both his mother, Meggie, and his sister, Justine.

In the story, Dane dies while on vacation in Crete. After heroically saving two women from drowning, Dane has a heart attack that proves fatal. He dies as he exerts himself on behalf of the two women. He dies as he lived, sacrificially and selflessly.

In The Kite Runner, Hassan shares Dane's sanguine and forgiving nature. His loyalty to Amir is what compels him to sacrifice himself time and time again for his employer's son. When Assef threatens to appropriate Amir's kite, Hassan stands his ground. Despite Assef's cruel taunting about a Hazara's loyalty to a Pashtun, Hassan stands up for Amir and maintains he and Amir are friends. Hassan's courage is repaid by treachery on Amir's part and brutal violence on Assef's part. In the story, Amir remembers Hassan had the "look of the lamb" while Assef raped him. Essentially, Hassan sacrificed himself to save the kite he had retrieved for Amir.

Later, Amir, in a stunning act of betrayal, accuses Hassan of stealing his money and watch. Disregarding the pain inflicted on him, Hassan owns up to the theft, despite his innocence. The text tells us why:

This was Hassan's final sacrifice for me. If he'd said no, Baba would have believed him because we all knew Hassan never lied. And if Baba believed him, then I'd be the accused; I would have to explain and I would be revealed for what I really was. Baba would never, ever forgive me. And that led to another understanding: Hassan knew. He knew I'd seen everything in that alley, that I'd stood there and done nothing. He knew I had betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.

Hassan's rape is a symbol of innocent sacrifice and the kind of sacrifice that is especially portrayed in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam gives her life in a sacrificial death in order to save Laila from sure execution. Despite her status as a harami (illegitimate child), rejected and reviled by the larger society, Mariam is an honorable and selfless woman. When Laila begs Mariam not to sacrifice herself, Mariam answers that she's lived life on her terms and she's proud to give herself one last time for those she loves.

"For me, it ends here. There's nothing more I want. Everything I'd ever wished for as a little girl you've already given me. You and your children have made me so very happy. It's all right, Laila jo. This is all right. Don't be sad."

She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last.

Hassan, Mariam, and Dane O'Neill lived for others. Their warmth, loyalty, compassion, and selflessness can be seen in the way they chose to decide their destinies in life.

Readers who have read all three novels will all have differing views on the messages within them. In answering the question "Who is Meggie Cleary in The Thorn Birds most like in The Kite Runner?" students are being asked to identify and extrapolate similarities and challenges in common. For example Meggie and Baba are both parents so there's a simple place to start; a student could start by just looking at the parenting experience of each character. Was it difficult and disappointing at times? Or was the experience of the parent joyful and rewarding? In the case of Meggie and Baba, it would seem disappointment and even surprise are true. For example Meggie is unlucky in love twice over, once when Ralph leaves her in order to remain in the priesthood and also when her son by Ralph becomes a priest and drowns when still quite young—so there is bitter sorrow there and also unfulfilled dreams. Meggie's daughter Justine, who is fiercely independent but perhaps a disappointment to a mother who may have expected a more traditionally feminine daughter, takes up the unsteady career of acting and has total freedom as her goal. Many mothers want secure and lucrative careers for their daughters.

Some readers may see the disappointed parent character in Baba too in the way he is presented in The Kite Runner. They may even suspect that he actually rates Hassan more highly, because Hassan seems more masculine in his interests and pursuits. Baba doesn't seem to understand his own son, Amir, who is not a fan of aggressive Afghan sports. He wonders why Amir can't defend himself and give back as good as he gets. What both these parents are missing is acceptance of their child's right to be his/her own unique self and love them for who they are, not for who they want them to be.

In A Thousand Splendid Suns Rasheed is also a parent who has certain expectations of his children even though he does not set them a good example himself and is disappointed to have a daughter. He appears to feign fundamental beliefs but does not practice them properly. He only values sons and is disappointed with his daughter and mistreats girls and women. This contrasts sharply with his inflated sense of pride in his son. Rasheed also drinks alcohol, looks at demeaning portrayals of women, and during Ramadan he doesn't bother to fast.

Meggie Cleary in Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds is a strong woman who tends to be most unlucky in love, yet she keeps on with her life and throws herself in to Drogheda. Let's look at how Meggie is similar to and different from the female characters in The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

We might contrast Meggie to Soraya in The Kite Runner, for Soraya is happy in her marriage to Amir although Soraya is also a strong woman like Meggie in some ways. They both rebel against the standard treatment of women in their cultures. We might compare Meggie, at least to a point, with Sanaubar, who behaves in an immoral way as a young person as Meggie does in her affair with Ralph. The situations are not exactly alike, of course, but both women make wrong choices that they must live with.

As for A Thousand Splendid Suns, we might compare Meggie with Laila in some ways; they are both caught in a loveless marriage and both in love with another man. We might contrast Meggie with Mariam in some ways (although Mariam, too, is stuck in a loveless marriage) because of Mariam's eventual violence toward Rasheed (although this was in defense of Laila) after years of abuse at his hands. Meggie, on the other hand, left Luke.

The characters referenced all serve as antagonists in the respective novels. The main personality trait that Mary Carson, Fiona Cleary, Luke O'Neill, Assef, and Rasheed have in common is selfishness. Each of them is primarily concerned with achieving their own goals, and they show remarkably little concern for the welfare and happiness of other people. There are significant differences among these characters: Some of them seem to personify evil and can be seen as complete villains. Others show some positive traits to temper the primarily negative ones, but nevertheless they apply those qualities toward getting what they want.

In The Thorn Birds, Luke has the fewest redeeming qualities. He marries Meggie to gain control of her family’s land, treats his wife like a servant, and shows little paternal affection. Fiona commits the sin of adultery and lives a life of deceit forever after. However, she rationalizes her behavior out of concern for her son. Mary is the most complex of the characters: she relentlessly manipulates Ralph, but she also believes he can make a positive contribution to the church.

The most one-dimensional character is Assef. He embodies evil in his personal behavior—as Hassan’s rapist—and his politics, as he climbs the ranks in the Taliban. Rasheed is similarly portrayed in an almost entirely negative light, as he emotionally and physically abuses his wives and only cares about male children who can perpetuate his line.

The characters of Mary Carson, Fiona Cleary and Luke O’Neil in The Thorn Birds have some similarities to Aseef in The Kite Runner and Rasheed in A Thousand Splendid Suns. They all exhibit a certain amount of cruelty, but their reasons vary.

Mary Carson is all about vengeance. She pines for Father Ralph de Bricassart and tries to seduce him with her money. She smothers him with lavish gifts, including a car, but Ralph is devoted to his ambition to attain a position of power in the church. When a woman finally turns his head, it’s Mary’s niece Meggy. This rejection stirs Mary’s ire, and she devises a brilliantly vicious revenge. After leaving her massive sheep ranch to her brother, whom she lured to come with the promise of inheriting it, she writes a second will. The new will leaves everything to the Church, with the stipulation that Ralph must be the custodian, handing him the power he has been craving. Ralph is the only one who knows about the will, so he needs to choose between his love for Meggy and his ambition. Mary knew Ralph would choose power and thereby condemn himself to a life of searing guilt over what he did to the woman he loved.

Ralph’s choice left Meggy without financial security, so she married Luke O’Neil. Luke exhibits cruelty as well, but his actions seem to stem from a lack of awareness of anyone else’s perspective. When he marries Meggy, he books their travel in a cheap, sitting upright train car to save money and has no idea why his new wife is unhappy. When they consummate their marriage, he ignores the fact that she is young and inexperienced and pursues his own pleasure while brutally hurting her. He does not expect that Meggy would have a problem with him hiring her out as a maid while he goes off to another farm to work for months at a time. He thinks of himself and his desire to accumulate money (but not to spend it) but not of his wife. He is cruel, but unlike Mary’s vindictiveness, it is a thoughtless cruelty.

Meggy did not experience tenderness from her husband, and she had never known it from her mother, either. Fiona Cleary was a cold woman who only showed affection to her oldest son, Frank. She is described as always silent. She eventually tells Meggy the secret source of her unhappiness: she had an affair with a married politician who got her pregnant. He could not acknowledge Frank or marry Fee, so her father paid Paddy Cleary to marry her and raise Frank as his own. She therefore loved Frank best and snubbed the rest of her children and even her husband. But her cruelty is a reaction to the disappointment in her life.

In The Kite Runner, Aseef did not have a disappointing life. As a child, he lived in relative privilege and security, but he was a racist bully. He looked down on Hassan because Hassan is a member of the minority native group the Hazaras. As a boy, his limitless cruelty is displayed when he rapes Hassan while the boy is held down. As an adult, he finds an outlet for his violent urges by joining the Taliban to cleanse the country of Hazaras. However, he sees this as a mission given to him by God. He had been a captive of the Taliban who tortured him by kicking him repeatedly. One blow found his kidney, dislodging a painful stone. He took that as a sign that he belonged with the Taliban: it became his justification for a life of satisfying his malicious appetites.

The character of Rasheed in A Thousand Splendid Suns is cruel to both his wives. His first wife, Mariam, “disappoints” him when she miscarries repeatedly. He psychologically abuses her by ignoring her, ridiculing her when she asks questions, and attacking her cooking to the point where she finds it hard to function in the kitchen. Finally, he takes a younger second wife, Laila, into the house. He adds to the last humiliation by making Laila “queen” of the house and demanding Mariam act as her servant. But Laila disappoints Rashid eventually, arguing with him about his support for the Taliban. Rasheed believes Mariam has corrupted her, and now he ignores them both. His abuse escalates to kicking, punching, and choking them, and even breaking Mariam’s teeth. When they try to run away and fail, he severely beats them. For Rasheed, it seems to be about power. Wives are meant to be submissive and fertile, and when they fail at this, he believes they must be punished. His vindictiveness probably makes him the most like Mary Carson.

Mary Carson, Luke O'Neill, and Fiona Cleary are three of the most negative characters in The Thorn Birds. Mary Carson, in particular, is malignant and manipulative and uses her immense wealth to extend her power beyond the grave, parting Meggie and Ralph with her malicious will. Between them, Fiona, Mary, and Luke manage to spoil Meggie's chances of happiness. Although she is later reconciled to some extent with Fiona, all three play the part of antagonist for Meggie, placing obstacles in her path.

In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Rasheed plays the same role with respect to both Mariam and Laila. His position most resembles that of Luke O'Neill as the husband of both women, and like Luke, he is a petty, controlling domestic tyrant, who sees women as possessions for him to use as he wishes. If he is not as manipulative as Mary Carson, or even Fiona Cleary, it is only because his position in a patriarchal society means that he does not have to be.

No character in The Thorn Birds or even A Thousand Splendid Suns reflects the sheer evil of Assef in The Kite Runner, the character being a serial rapist who joins the Taliban to find an outlet for his sadism. Nonetheless, he is the principal antagonist for two generations of boys in the novel, abusing Sohrab as he did Hassan. This makes him the nearest equivalent to Mary, Luke, Fiona, and Rasheed in the other books.

The five characters in question are all, broadly speaking, antagonists who stand in the way of more heroic and sympathetic characters, presenting obstacles for them to overcome either emotionally or practically. Of the three antagonists from The Thorn Birds, Fiona Cleary is the one who fits this pattern least well, since one might argue that she is principally bitter and unhappy rather than villainous. However, her treatment of Meggie, while not motivated by malevolence, has similar effects to Luke O'Neil's tyranny and Mary Carson's cynical manipulation. Mary is the most intentional and spiteful of the three characters, but they all have strongly negative effects on those around them.

Aseef in The Kite Runner is clearly not only an antagonist, but an exceptionally despicable character, who admires Hitler, exploits the weak, and rapes Hassan. He finds his natural place in the Taliban, of which Rasheed in A Thousand Splendid Suns is also broadly supportive. Rasheed is a toxic influence on the lives of both Mariam and Laila. Though he is not such a thoroughgoing sadist as Aseef, his abuse of power on a domestic level is more thoroughly explored. In this sense, he closely resembles Luke O'Neil, who exercises a similar tyranny over his family in The Thorn Birds.