An Essay on Orientalism Through Novel the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

In this time period many authors have written books that are pieces of propaganda portraying the “Orient” the east to be Orientalist which heightens the risk of hate crimes aimed at people of the east. The author Khaled Hosseini who wrote this novel The Kite Runner tells the story of a man who wants to make up for all the wrongs he did throughout his life. This novel portrays Orientalism. Orientalism is a negative point of view that is to look at the west (Occident) with. This novel The Kite Runner has many characteristics that tell us that this book is portraying an Orientalist view. An example of this would be characters that show themselves as everyday Afghanistani stereotypes. This novel does not only portray stereotypes of the east but it also compares the two countries which are Afghanistan and America in which America is shown as a “Heaven” compared to Afghanistan. To know that this book is an orientalist book there is a type of lens that is called the “Post-Colonial Lens” which was invented by a man named Edward said who refers to the “Orient” as the east and the “Occident” as the west. There are seven orientalist themes/traits that Said had come up with which are: The Barbaric, The Effeminate man, The Erotic, The Exotic, Cultural Stasis, Inability to fight, and Backwardness. In this novel Khaled Hosseini uses orientalism themes to portray the real truth of the Afghan society.

In this novel Khaled Hossseini makes/shows that the characters in his book are orientalist. The best example of an orientalist character in this novel The Kite Runner would be a boy named Amir who is the narrator of this novel and as well as the protagonist. As mentioned before one of the orientalist traits that Amir Shows have is the inability t...

... middle of paper ...

...he got this far in the book he knew that it was going to be great. I still am not on board with this novel not being an orientalist novel. This is because there is too much evidence in this novel that shows that this novel is an orientalist novel. There is also evidence in this novel that this novel is not orientalist but there is more evidence that this novel is orientalist than it is not.

In conclusion this novel The Kite Runner is an orientalist novel. This novel is used to promote stereotypes of the east to the west of Afghanistan and its people. This novel promotes orientalism it uses its characters and what happens to the throughout the novel to promote orientalism. This novel shows a sign of dominance in relationships between men and women. Lastly this novel shows how the relationship between America and Afghanistan represent characters in the book as well.