One of the biggest struggles Afghanistan has faced took place during the years of 1996to 2001 when the Taliban was in control. The novel The Kite Runnerwritten by Khaled Hosseini and the film Osama directed by SiddiqBarmak are two fictional stories that take place in Afghanistan during the time of the Taliban. The two works display the harsh reality of what it was like to be in Afghanistan during that time while also showing it from two unique perspectives. Throughout the works, the audience is able to identify the similarities and view differences in the stories through their explanations on the Taliban’s monstrous control, the lack of women’s rights and the daily dangerous lives of the two protagonists. Within the works, the audience is …show more content…
The final similarity involving how women are treated in Afghanistan is that the women have no say in who they marry. In The Kite Runner Amir’s friend, Rahim Khan, tells his story about how him and a women wanted to marry but were not able to. “She was a Hazara, the daughter of our neighbor’s servants… that same day my father put Homaira and her family on a lorry and sent them off to Hazarjat. I never saw her again” (105). Their families did not care how much they loved each other, since they were of different social classes they were forbidden to marry each other. In Osama, Osama is punished in a way that some would consider much more horrific than death. The young Osama is put under wedlock with an old man who is not going to care for her well-being as he should be. Throughout the works, the audience is able to identify the dreadful living conditions women dealt with daily in …show more content…
The main reason the stories differ from each other is because of the gender difference of the main characters. In The Kite Runner, Amir is a male. He comes from a rich family and his father is well known in the community. In the film, Osama is a female which automatically limits her rights. Osama comes from a poor family with only her mother and grandmother left. Since the women are unable to work, Osama disguises herself as a boy and goes to work to make a living for her family. This plan does work for a short amount of time, but she is discovered when she hits puberty and can no longer hide that she is a girl. Even though there is a gender difference, the audience also sees the similarities within the characters. Both Amir and Osama both have secret that they are keeping from those around them. When Amir was a young boy, he witnesses his best friend, Hassan, being raped and chooses to not help him, pretending like nothing happened. Osama hides her true identity to try and earn money for herself and her family. Along with the two of them living with a secret, they both lack courage and are afraid to stand up for themselves. In The Kite Runner after Soraya admits her own secret to Amir, Amir says, “I envied her. Her secret was out. Spoken. Dealt with… I suspected there were many ways in which
Amir is, to be put bluntly, a coward. He is led by his unstable emotions towards what he thinks will plug his emotional holes and steps over his friends and family in the process. When he sought after Baba’s invisible love, Amir allowed Hassan to be raped in an alleyway just so that the blue kite, his trophy that would win his father’s heart, could be left untouched. In the end, he felt empty and unfulfilled with the weight of his conscience on his shoulders comparable to Atlas’ burden. Unable to get over his fruitless betrayal, he lashes out and throws pomegranates at Hassan before stuffing money and a watch under his loyal friend’s pathetic excuse for a bed, framing Hassan for theft and directly causing the departure of both servants from his household. Even after moving to America, finding a loving wife, and creating a career for himself in writing, he still feels hollow when thinking of his childhood in Afghanistan. Many years later, he is alerted of Hassan’s death and sets out on a frenzied chase to find his friend’s orphaned son. He feels that he can somehow ease his regrets from all of those years ago if he takes in Hassan’s son, Sohrab. He finds Sohrab as a child sex slave for Assef, who coincidentally was the one to rape Hassan all of those years ago. After nearly dying in his attempt to take back Sohrab, he learns that he can take the damaged child back to the states with him. Sadly, Hassan’s son is so
Amir changed a lot throughout the book of The Kite Runner. He had to face many external and internal conflicts. He did learn, grow, and change throughout the book
Kite Runner depicts the story of Amir, a boy living in Afghanistan, and his journey throughout life. He experiences periods of happiness, sorrow, and confusion as he matures. Amir is shocked by atrocities and blessed by beneficial relationships both in his homeland and the United States. Reviewers have chosen sides and waged a war of words against one another over the notoriety of the book. Many critics of Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, argue that the novel would not have reached a lofty level of success if the U.S. had not had recent dealings with the Middle East, yet other critics accurately relate the novel’s success to its internal aspects.
While Amir is a Sunni, his childhood friend Hassan is Shi’a, an inferior division of Islam. Simultaneously, Amir and Hassan belong to different ethnic groups-Amir is Pashtun while Hassan is Hazara. During his childhood, Amir would constantly mock Hassan’s illiteracy and poke fun at him. But, the pivotal demonstration of pressure from his surroundings that makes Amir commit his own act of cruelty is when he watches Assef rape Hassan for refusing to give him the kite that Hassan caught for Amir. To this, Amir describes the look of Hassan’s face to “a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb” (76). Throughout his upbringing, Amir constantly believed that his father blamed him for killing his mother in childbirth. To Amir, Hassan’s rape is a sacrifice that Hassan has to pay the price, the lamb to kill, in order to win his father over. To justify his refusal to intervene, Amir reminds himself that “[Hassan] was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?” (77). Amir’s surroundings cause him to have a negative outlook on people that his society deem lower. Amir knows he is morally wrong for not helping Hassan, but his need for his father’s love overpowers his friendship. Adding to his pressures, Amir believes that Baba prefers Hassan over him, a belief that further drives him to be cruel to Hassan. As a result, Amir’s motivation for validation and love from his father
Many books today portray a different world. Few books will make readers think they’ve lived in that world all their lives. The Kite Runner is a tale about betrayal, fear, and redemption. In the book, a young boy, Amir, lives in Kabul, Afghanistan happily, until one fateful day. After that, he’s plunged into fear and regret as his life gets worse and worse. Decades later, a man reminisces on his past mistakes and desperately tries to bury his old life. Khaled Hosseini has captured the minds of many with his book, The Kite Runner. The Kite Runner was published by Riverhead Books in 2003, after Khaled Hosseini had worked on it for two years. The book immediately became an international bestseller, becoming the number one New York Times Best Seller for two years, and its fame sparked the creation of a movie based on the book. The book was inspired by Hosseini’s childhood, and it features significant moral lessons that are embedded into the very text of each chapter.
Amir gets more upset after this, thinking he can’t possibly fix this anymore. But he realizes he has one final chance at redemption, saving Hassan’s son, Sohrab. He needs to save Sohrab. Once he gets to where he is being held, he realizes Sohrab has been made into a sex slave for the Taliban.
The peaceful Afghanistan that Amir was born into is no longer in existence; rival groups now fight amongst each other. “There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little children”. Throughout The Kite Runner, there is tension on account of religious, ethnic, and economic factors. Amir, a privileged Sunni, struggles to understand his relationship with his Shi’a servant, Hassan. The boys grew up together, but “in the end, [Amir] was a Pashtun and [Hassan] was a Hazara, [Amir] was a Sunni and [Hassan] was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that.
The movie The Kite Runner is based on the book and it contains both subtle and explicit differences as all books and movies do. Both the book and the movie have very compelling and moralistic themes though at times the movie’s themes seem limited. The themes presented throughout the movie and the book are penance, loyalty, prejudice, religion and growing up. The characterization, overall plot of the movie and the setting of the book seem to be consistent with each other though at times they both may vary both slightly and drastically.
The Kite Runner “illuminates ethnic tensions, political turmoil and Taliban repression in Afgahnistan through the story of boyhood friendship and betrayal” ('Kite Runner' Shines A Light On Afghan Sport). By intertwining the real life struggles of Afghani people and the characters of this fiction novel, “Hosseini brings us into the politically chaotic but beautiful world of Afghanistan and one man’s journey through guilt and trauma from his childhood” (Pearson 66).
Amir, the main character and narrator in the Kite Runner, belongs to a wealthy family in which his father is a powerful businessman. Amir is also a part of the dominant Pashtun ethnic group and Sunni religious group. Amir in the Kite Runner tells the story of his friendship with Hassan. Hassan and his father, Ali, are Amir’s servants. Hassan on the contrary is a low-caste ethnic Hazara and belongs to the minority Shi’it religious faith. This provides many of the Afghan’s who are different such as Sunni’s, who make up 85% of the Muslim faith, to persecute people like Hassan for their religion.
Throughout the thought provoking and eye opening narrative, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini provides a vivid and in depth story told through the eyes of a privileged young narrator who is forced to come of age in the capital of Afghanistan. As a story told from a different cultural perspective,culture and morals in this society are different from foreign beliefs. A reader will not fully comprehend The Kite Runner without discerning the differences between social classes and understanding the importance of honor in the Afghanistan culture.
There are numerous methods to store and present information, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. As a result of this, whenever a creative work is adapted into a new medium, the source material is altered to optimize the communication of the original ideas. After reading the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and analysing the merits and faults of the film adaptation, it can be concluded that the adaptation deserves praise. This assertion is based on the success of three elements employed by the filmmakers when converting the novel to film, notably, the exclusion of unnecessary plot, the representation of Afghan culture, and the interpretation of major scenes. While there are several reasons to hold this film in high esteem,
In The Kite Runner, many characters were portrayed differently than in the movie. These differences among character appearances changed some aspects of the movie. In the novel Amir and Hassan were much older than in the movie, which made things feel off. The first thing I noticed was how Hassan did not have a cleft lip like in the watching the movie feel off. The cleft lip was something that was important because it was something that symbolizes Hassan 's social status, because his father couldn 't afford to fix it. Hassan is a very loyal character who often takes the blame in both the movie and novel. When Hassan and Amir get in trouble Hassan takes the blame, or when Amir hides the watch in his room to get him kicked out of his house Hassan said that he stole it. In when novel Ali has a condition called Polio, which makes him walk with a limp whereas in the movie he doesn 't have this condition and walks normally. Assef in the novel is a blonde haired boy with blue eyes with a German background. He is someone who is very harsh, demanding, which mades him seem very threatening. He wore brass knuckles which mades him seem very
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a heart breaking novel. It features events that bring tears to the eyes of its readers, as well as a look into the world outside our own. This book deals with tragic adult themes such as racism and child rape. The story takes place in two different countries, Afghanistan, and later the United States. The novel is in the point of view of the main character Amir and it begins as he recalls events from his childhood in Kabul, Afghanistan in a time on the brink of civil war, when the Afghanistan king is overthrown.
The Stoning of Soraya M. is a film based on the book of the same name by Freidoune Sahebjam, a French-Iranian journalist. Both the film and the book are clearly from a feminist perspective. They make a clear case against the Iranian Sharia Law system, championed by Zahra, the aunt of the titular character, Soraya. While acknowledgement of an individual's right to choose and freely practice their religion is laudable, more important is the recognition that there is a clear moral distinction between right and wrong. The events depicted in this film fit unambiguously and absolutely into the category of wrong. The inherent failings and obvious injustice for women due to a strict and barbarous interpretation of religious law are made indisputably clear in this film.