![]() As a child, Amir knows he is complicit in the Historically grounded, 'massacre of the Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif'. This event which Amir witnesses and about which he does nothing haunts him for life.Īssef's brutal actions on a domestic scale reflect the later, The central event of the novel is the rape of Hassan, an atrocity that results from his loyalty to his Pashtun friend Amir ![]() In this way, Hosseini comments on gender politics, class and ethnicity by his representation ofĬontemporary Afghan society. The Taliban, Amir's feelings of inadequacy with regards to his father, Soraya's rebellion against her parents (because of her having lost 'the genetic lottery') and Amir's physical fight with Assef for Sohrab, are all examples of conflicts between those with power and those without. Other power struggles and political tensions are also important in the narrative. Late in the novel when Amir returns to Afghanistan to try to atone for his sins, the otherwise positively characterised Farid asks why Amir 'came all the way from America for…a Shi'a?' Indeed, the divisions are so deep that even after the Soviet invasion the Hazaras are still scorned by their compatriots, and after the rise of the Taliban the divisions are intensifiedīecause the Taliban are largely Pashtuns. Subjected to terrible insults such as 'mice-eating, flat-nosed, load carrying donkeys' which is aimed at Hassan in the streets of Kabul and reflects the oppressive attitudes of many Afghan Pashtuns. The 'school text books' Amir reads barely mention the history of the Hazaras showing how seriously they are marginalised, invisible to an extent. 'mansion' and Hassan's 'mud hut'), but is also present in the representation of everyday life for Afghan people in the early chapters of the novel. This inequality is initially foregrounded through the characters' homes, (Amir's The two protagonists, Amir and Hassan, represent the two different ethnic groups and the different lives lived by those with and those without political power. Significantly HosseiniĬhooses to make his narrator a writer who himself has a political and personal mission – a mission to tell the truth about himself and his country.Ĭentral to Hosseini's post-modern novel is the division between the two factions of Afghan society: the politically andįinancially superior Sunni Pashtuns and the oppressed Shi'a Hazaras. In writing The Kite Runner, Hosseini had a clear political intent: to humanise a region, for western readers, which is either remote or clouded by negative media coverage. The story shows how the lives of ordinary people are affected byĭomestic and international power politics. Hosseini incorporates into his narrative the late 20th century and early 21st century politics of both Afghanistan and the western world. The political context of Hosseini's story of two brothers is of fundamental importance to the events which unfold and those events which have happened in the backstory. 'In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was a Sunni and he was a Shi'a, and nothing was ever going to change Instead we hope this guide will provide a springboard to help you plan, and to get you and your students thinking about the text in more detail. We haven't covered every element of this genre. Can consider The Kite Runner in relation to the genre of political and social protest writing.
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