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Kite Runner (A04 (Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day: Stevens the…
Kite Runner
A02
Form
Fable: a story that often features animals or inanimate objects rather than humans - convey a moral lesson. Kite Runner does this as it reinforces what is good and what is bad through Amir's guilt and his need to atone
Allegories: a metaphor is expanded out into a whole story so that a smaller narrative stands for a larger one. Amir's journey of redemption becomes an accompaniment to a description of the trials of the Afghan people - search for reconciliation can be seen as representative of their search for peace and self determination
Narrative: Amir - telling the story at the end, events have already happened. As readers we must be aware of details that have changed or granted unimportance - this is heightened by Amir's guilt - 'unreliable narrator'
Tales from unconscious: inclusion of various dreams - foreshadow events, symbolism. - provides hidden knowledge that characters are unable to see.
Hassan's dream on the day of the kite-flying competition - prophetic of the danger which is waiting for him in the apparently safe day before him.
The dream that Amir remembers during attack on Hassan - symbolic of feelings of being lost, but also guilt of being safe.
Amir's later dream when recovering from Hassan's attack of wrestling a black bear - provides revelation both to him and us- finally reconciled himself with his father
Structure
Looking Back: novel is told from chronological end point - Amir frequently foreshadows events . Using this technique a storyteller undercuts current events by revealing they will not last as the end of chapter 5 ' that was the winter that Hassan stopped smiling' - used to build tension .
A Central Moment: the rape. Earlier chapters - straightforward structure, events in order, foreshadowing event that will happen. The event - narrative structure fractures and never fully resumes linear structure of earlier chapters - Amir veers to other stories whilst witnessing rape. Later Chapters - events are presented out of order, up to the reader to interpret events
Supporting Stories: there are sup-plots throughout the novel - including stories of mothers. Soraya (Amir's wife) - carries burden of guilt and shame from events.
Language
Rahim Khan: graceful and less straightforward. When talking about Kabul after Amir and Baba left - 'No one to greet, no one to sit down with for chai, no one to share stories with, just Roussi soldiers patrolling the streets' - repetitive structure more like poetry than prose
Amir: voice changes when stressed or anxious - structure becomes hesitant and broken to reflect the fragmentation of Amir's mind
Character's words: what is their class, personality, education, gener, age?
Hassan: more foreign cadence - learnt to read later in life - only ever lived in Afghanistan - most of reading and writing we can assume is religious.
A03
Kite runner is someone who runs after the free flying kites released during a kite fight - which is a popular sport in Afghanistan - Taliban ban it as it is a sign of freedom and it was 'anti-islamic'
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1973: Prime minister Mohammad Sardar Daoud Khan, king of Afghanistan's cousin and brother in law seizes power in a military coup
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A04
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day: Stevens the butler is an example of an unreliable narrator. In one scene we only find out that Stevens is crying because of the comments of other characters
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E.L. Konigsburg’s The View from Saturday - another novel where uses flashbacks to tell the story and has interjections from other narrators in the first person - has a similar moral about kindness and friendship versus cruelty and selfishness.
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Joseph Campbell A Thousand Faces - examines myths for common elements. One which he identifies is ‘atonement with the father’ - Amir’s needs to do this is just one of the ways in which his journey matches Campbell’s scheme :
Rostam and Sohrab - tragic tale about a great warrior who defeats and kills his own son in battle unaware that he is his son
Great Expectations - Amir’s mistreatment of Hassan and the guilt he then feels is similar to how Pip treats his brother in Law, Joe after he is informed of his new profound status as a gentlemen. Hassan’s tolerance and acceptance is also similar to Joe’s.
Atonement by Ian McEwan - another novel where the central theme is based on the witnessing of a sexual incident and the lasting effect is has on those involved
The Odyssey by Homer - concept of ‘returning’ is one that runs through the whole novel of the Kite Runner and the Odyssey is a famous story about returning home and the perils and possibilities of the journey
Slumdog Millionaire (film) - Indian children are ‘rescued’ and employed as beggars by a corrupt orphanage owner
Narnia - uses animal characters to tell a story with a moral message and an allegory with Aslan representing Christ who dies and is resurrected as the saviour of Narnia
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A05
Edward Hower - ‘people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence - forces that continue to threaten them even today’
Postmodernism - fragmented and fractured narratives are used to create meaning from the juxtaposition of individual sections of text and the contrast between them. This is evident in the Kite Runner when Amir is under stress, such as during the attack in the alley. The use of an unreliable narrator is another postmodern feature - amir is clearly burdened by his past and we therefore distrust what he tells us and are forced to interpret his words to find an ‘objective’ truth. This makes us question the role of the narrator as the source of all information and also highlights the idea that experience is personal and individual.
Marxism - examine narratives to find the distribution of power between different societal groups - wealth, class. In Kite Runner this distinction is drawn on ethnic lines, between the Pashtuns and the Hazaras as well as the class divides on master and servant. Amir’s people, the Pashtuns, seem to have less respect for religion than the Hazaras: Baba is dismissive, Amir is largely indifferent and someone like Assef uses his religion as it suits him to further his own ends. Hassan and Sohrab are shown as much more obedient and mindful of their faith and so according to Marxist theory exist under a great degree of control.