research paper on kite runner

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

The Kite Runner: An intimate account of betrayal and salvation

Related Papers

International Journal of Literature Studies

LITO DIONES

The novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini shows how the main character Amir reflects a sense of self through the views of the other characters. At some point in the story, Amir’s self-conceptualization changes radically. Thus, the paper wants to make a psychological interpretation of how emotional traumas affect the self-perception, moral-development, and planned behavior of the main character by scrutinizing the plot, conflicts, and point of view of Amir. Additionally, this study applies the discourse analysis method of the qualitative approach. The gathered data is analyzed through Ajzen and Fishbein's Theory of Planned Behavior, Bem's Self-Perception Theory, and Kohlberg's Moral Development Theory as the main theories. Higgin's Theory of Discrepancy and Tajfel and Turner’s Social Identity Theory also serve as sub-theories to Bem's Self-Perception Theory. The moral developments of Amir reveal that he has reached the final stage, called stage 6: Universal Pri...

Emily ShuHui Tsai

This short paper aims to discuss the unbearably-heavy weight of childhood memory and the survivor's guilt as the symptoms in the novel, The Kite Runner, published in 2003, by an Afghan-American writer, Khaled Hosseini. It describes the ambivalent relationship between the father and the son against the background of political turmoil in Afghanistan—how they have a good life together in Afghanistan and afterwards how they are forced to leave their homeland like refugees to Pakistan and then to The United States for a new life with the survivor's guilt after the tumultuous period of the Soviet military invasion. The narrator, Amir, treasures the memories of his old homeland, Afghanistan, the innermost remnants of his being, which has become as the specter haunting his present life in the United States. Amir has to return to his old homeland to meet his father's closest friend, Rahim Khan, and to rescue Sohrad, the son of his half-brother, Hassan, from the Taliban regime. This ethical return to the past not only has unfolded certain secrecy of his father's dishonor but also has healed his sense of survivor's guilt because of his evil rivalry of jealousy against Hassan to fully possess his father's love in his childhood. In my discussion of ethnic hierarchy and conflicts in Afghanistan described in the novel, Jacques Derrida's and Giorgio Agamben's theoretical concepts, such as the problematic of sovereignty, sovereign animality and bare life in The Beast & the Soveriegn and Homo Sacer, will be used to penetrate the deeper understanding of their traumatic past as haunting specters.

Ribut Basuki

World Journal of English Language

Hussein Kanosh

The current study undertakes a detailed analysis of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner representative novel. Hosseini, an Afghan born American writer depicts a war-torn Afghanistan in various universal themes i.e., family re-union, discrimination, regret, childhood, guilt, womanhood, betrayal, religion and salvation that played a considerable role in abating commission of crimes in Afghanistan during pre and post-Taliban periods which ended up shaping the interminable psychological scars of the protagonist. In his work, Hosseini reveals the devastating status of Afghans in general and women and children in particular who have, for decades, been irrationally marginalized and confined to the four walls of their homes by the society. His quests for wealth, love, loyalty and unqualified peace among Afghan citizenry whom he equates to have rights just like other human beings globally is the only means through which the protagonist considers a key to chart out a new future. Moreover, in re...

Triana Dewi

The basic difference between novel and film is that each has its own medium. The medium of film is pictures and music but the medium of novel is language. Although it is a different media but transformation from novel to film is one of the common literary works nowadays. The best seller novel or a famous novel usually will be adapted into a film. This research aims to describe and compare the novel and film The Kite Runner . The analysis only focuses on the guilty feeling and the redemption described in the novel, the guilty feeling and redemption portrayed in the film and how the novel is adapted into the film. The research is descriptive and qualitative research. The research objects are character of Amir, Baba and Sanaubar. In this research, the use of intertextuality of Riffaterre theory is supported by the theory of psychological in the concept of feeling guilty and redemption. The concepts are used to describe how the guilty feeling is. The result of the research are formulate...

Progressive research journal of arts & humanities

Ayesha Perveen

LITE: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, dan Budaya

Muhammad Rifqi

This paper discusses Amir’s anxiety and motive in Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner". The library research method was applied in this research. In analyzing the data, the structural approach was used to scrutinize the intrinsic elements such as character, conflict, setting, and plot, while the psychological approach was used to examine extrinsic elements such as anxiety and motive of Amir as the main character in “The Kite Runner”. The results show that Amir, as the main character, is a caring, inferior, coward, optimistic, anxious, selfish, careless, sly, and patient person. It also indicates that Amir is a round static character since he has complex traits but his character as a caring person remains the same from the beginning to the end of the story. Besides, as the main character, Amir experienced both internal and external conflicts. The settings of time, social, and place showed the period in Afghanistan between 1975 and 2001 and the social stratum, Pashtun and Hazara i...

International Journal of Progressive Sciences and Technologies

Dilnoza Ruzmatova

Anbar University Journal of Languages & Literature

The Criterion: An International Journal in English

NIMISHA SHARMA , Dilkesh Gangwar

Afghan literature is produced in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, influenced by Central and South Asian literature. The text is primarily written in Dari and Pashto, the official languages of Afghanistan. Afghanistan, a muslim country, has always been counted as the most barbaric country for humanity worldwide. Jim Fowler remarks: “There is no country in the world that’s more devastated from natural resources than Afghanistan”. (web). Since its emergence to power in the mid-eighteenth century, Afghanistan had come under the monarchial reign of several monarchs, whose consolidation of power was constantly undermined by civil war and foreign invasions. “The upheavals in Afghanistan are not an Afghan thing. It had its roots outside the country, which eventually led the country to be the hub of terrorism,…..who had a different agenda.” (web). After the upheavals societal displacement, political exploitation, gender discrimination, cultural chaos, mental, physical, and emotional turmoil, and many other atrocities have become a common phenomenon in the life of Afghans. These circumstances have shoved Afghanistan into such a dell of hell that human life cannot even be imagined. Some seeds, which surmount similar cataclysmic circumstances, blossomed and gave birth to such a literary medium, which not only voiced out their nostalgic anguish but also unveiled the blemish of contemporary Afghan society. Khaled Hosseini, who emerged from the sludge of the same morass, exposed the dark side of the norms, culture, customs, and traditions of his motherland. Khaled Hosseini's novels articulate the enduring agony of Afghans, who carry the burden of remorse throughout their existence. The paper interprets the socio-political scenario, traumatic and poignant experiences of human relationships, hollowness of customs, and untold grief of Afghans portrayed in Hosseini’s novel ‘The Kite Runner’ (2003). Hosseini as a writer has offered his infancy world of Afghanistan as a background of his fiction. The novel deals with the theme of societal discrimination, emotional conflict, racism, superego, guilt, atonement, and redemption. It sheds light on human nature by showing the inherent evil that can be evoked, and how it leads to the impairment of childhood innocence and the hardships of entire life. The purpose of this paper ruminate on the social and cultural turmoil of war and foreign invasions and their impact on the lives of ordinary citizens of Afghanistan, especially the societal conflict of Hazaras, the sexual exploitation of Sanubar, the physical and mental trauma of Hassan and his son Shorab, and nostalgia of Amir.