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Poetry and music
The importance of literature and poetry
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An extraordinarily amazing book by the author of ‘The Kite Runner’, Khaled Hosseini. Above lines are from a poem named ‘Kabul’ by 17th Century poet from Iran named Saib e Tabrizi (translated by Josephine Davis). Some has rightly said; if one measure the literacy of any nation on the basis of poetry & literature, Afghanistan would be at the top. Poet here uses the title ‘a thousand splendid suns’ to describe the cultural diversity & richness in beauty of Afghanistan. Ironically the author has chosen this title to describe the complete destruction of sophistication & culture of Afghanistan. This is evident from the enforcement of ill-practises on the people by Taliban’s takeover. They destroyed Buddha’s two giant statues which made global issues as well. The title can also be explained on the basis of love Laila & Mariam develops in the course of time as described in the book, irrespective of the various …show more content…
First talk about Mariam, a bastard of Jalil who makes her mother Nana & she live outskirts of Herat, away from his real family. Here the Nana is shown as an extremely possessive mother who committed suicide when her daughter leaves her to meet her father. Her mother tried to explain her how cruel the world his & there is no one in this world except her mother to give her love. She never realised it until the time when she loses her child & gets to take care of Laila (Mariam’s husband’s second wife) child. Laila, as mentioned here, is introduces in the second part very different from how Mariam was bought up. She was educated & well taken care of in the childhood. In the third part, author shows how they both live together and develops an understanding to live together & shared their life experiences. Laila stands for Mariam which helps her win Mariam confidence and also Aziza (Laila’s daughter) melted Mariam’s heart who already lost her child before they arrived in this world. All in all, amazing must read I would
For her 15th birthday, Mariam asked Jalil if he could take her to his cinema to watch Pinocchio. She also asked if Jalil could bring her brothers and sisters so she could meet them. Both Nana and Jalil thought it wasn’t a good idea, but Mariam insisted on going, so Jalil said he would send someone to pick her up. Mariam did not like this idea and said that she wanted to be picked up by Jalil. Jalil reluctantly agreed. Later that day, Mariam gets the backlash and hate from her mother from her decision: “Of all the daughters I could have had, why did God give me an ungrateful one like you? …How dare you abandon me like this, you treacherous little harami!” Mariam wakes up the next day, disappointed and fed up since Jalil did not come to pick her up. She heads out to town to find Jalil herself. She makes it to his house when a chauffeur tells Mariam that Jalil was “away on urgent business.” She slept outside of his house and was awoken by the chauffeur, telling her that he would take her home. Mariam snatches away from the chauffeur’s grip and turns around towards the house, to see Jalil in an upstairs window. It was then that Mariam figured out that all she was to Jalil was a disgrace. Jalil had always been careful with the information he told Mariam. He may have loved her, but only on his own terms. Once Mariam realizes that her father allowed her to sleep on the street rather than bring her into his
The concept of standing up for one’s self plays a key theme in the novel, Wanting Mor. The novel unfolds with an illustration of Jameela, as a timorous, obedient girl, influenced by her religious beliefs. As it states in the novel, “ ‘Don’t tell me what I am! I’ll tell you!’…My face is hot. How could I have been so careless? So disrespectful. Maybe I’m tired too” (Rukhsana 29). These statements are followed after the death of Mor and how Jameela’s father, Baba, reacts to the situation by demeaning everything including his own daughter. Jameela tries to soothe her father in the attempt to make her father relaxed by informing him he is simply fatigued. In spite of this, her father believes this to be offensive as he needs to be mollified by her young daughter, which results into Jameela believing the cause was of her own. She is also depicted as diffident because she abides to anyone regardless of her own feelings and emotions. This is illustrated through chapters’ three to nine, which begins with Baba telling Jameela that they are leaving their village to go to the picturesque city known as Kabul, regardless of Jameela’s consideration in the process. Afterwards, Jameela labours away with the multiple Khalaas, respectable term for o...
Rasheed tries to convince Mariam that the only way to keep Laila safe is by marrying her. He ends up hiring a man named Abdul Harif to tell Laila that he had met the love of her life, Tariq, in the hospital and that he had died. Laila is told this right when she finds out that she is pregnant with Tariq’s child. Rasheed had hired Abdul Harif to tell Laila this because he wanted to get Laila to marry her. When Rasheed brings up marriage to Laila, she jumps on board right away, and falls into Rasheed’s trap. After Rasheed and Laila get married, he treats her like a queen. He becomes very protective of Laila. Almost all his attention is spent on her, and in a sense, forgets that he is even married to Mariam. But him acting affectionate and caring does not last very long. When Laila gives birth to a baby girl, named Aziza, Rasheed starts to treat Laila how he treated Mariam when she could not successfully carry a child full term. Again, Rasheed ends up not getting what he wants, and therefore he turns onto Laila. The abuse, both verbal and physical, starts to get worse in the household. A particular situation that displays just how violent the abuse in their household can get is when he locks Laila and Aziza in their room, and Mariam in the shed because they tried running away from Rasheed and the abuse. He leaves them without water or food, and it ends up almost killing Aziza. This is where Rasheed falls into the paradox of power again. “ ...the 16th century Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli insisted that compassion got in the way of eminence. If a leader has to choose between being feared or being loved, Machiavelli insisted that the leader should always go with fear. Love is overrated” (Lehrer The Power Trip). Rasheed would rather have his own family be completely afraid of him and almost
From start to finish, one could see how much Mariam values Laila, Aziza, and their friendship. The first example is when Mariam vows to help Laila while they are in the hospital for Laila’s unborn child: “I’ll get you seen, Laila jo. I promise” (287). This simple promise is a deep portrayal of Mariam’s desire to help Laila find a doctor and deliver her baby. Additionally, one can see Mariam’s love for Laila when she protects her from Rasheed’s grip of death, “‘Rasheed.’ He looked up. Mariam swung. She hit him across the temple. The blow knocked him off Laila” (348). Rasheed was going to kill Laila, but Mariam steps in and knocks him off of her with a shovel to save her life. Mariam forms a tight-knit bond with Laila, and when Hosseini includes their relationship, one can see how Mariam values Laila enough to kill another man. The author also describes their relationship after Mariam and Laila discuss plans for leaving: “When they do, they’ll find you as guilty as me. Tariq too. I won’t have the two of you living on the run like fugitives.” … “Laila crawled to her and again put her head on Mariam’s lap. She remembered all the afternoons they’d spent together, braiding each other’s hair, Mariam listening patiently to her random thoughts and ordinary stories with an air of gratitude, with the expression of a person to whom a unique and coveted privilege had been extended” (358). The love Mariam has for
Mariam has built a mutual relationship with Jalil in her childhood, with weekly visits every Thursday. Mariam has hid behind a wall of innocence, and Jalil helped her get past the wall with the harsh realities of the world. Mariam was an innocent being at childhood: she was stuck indoors in Kolba. Mariam does not know what is going on around her home, because she has not experienced the outdoors as well as others. All she gets at is from Jalil’s stories, and Mullahs teaching. She does not understand that the world is not as as happy as it seems. In Khaled Hosseini’s novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini uses Jalil’s character to show development in Mariam's life, in order to emphasize how significant the impact of trust breaks Mariam’s innocent in the story.
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, follows the maturation of Amir, a boy from Afghanistan, as he discovers what it means to stand up for what he believes in. His quest to redeem himself after betraying his friend and brother, Hassan, makes up the heart of the novel. For most of the book, Amir attempts to deal with his guilt by avoiding it and refusing to own up to his mistakes. Because of his past, Amir is incapable of moving forward. His entire life is shaped by his disloyalty to Hassan and his desire to please his father over helping his friends. Throughout the novel, his attempts to atone for his sins end in failure, as neither physical punishment nor rescuing Hassan’s son, Sohrab, from Assef prove to be enough for Amir to redeem himself. Only when he decides to take Sohrab to the United States and provide his nephew with a chance at happiness and prosperity that was denied to his half-brother does Amir take the necessary steps toward atonement and redemption. Khaled Hosseini uses a series of symbols to reinforce the message that atoning for one’s sins means making up for past mistakes, rather than simply relying on forgiveness from either the person one betrays or from a higher power.
The novel is told by Amir, one of the novel's main characters. Amir is an Afghan man living in Fremont, California remembering his childhood in Kabul in the 1970s.
Hosseini’s novel is rich with beautiful imagery and settings. The book also masterfully tells of
The Kite Runner focuses on the relationship between two Afghan boys Amir and Hassan. Amir is a Pashtun and Sunni Muslim, while Hassan is a Hazara and a Shi’a. Despite their ethnic and religious differences, Amir and Hassan grow to be friends, although Amir is troubled by Hassan, and his relationship with his companion, one year his junior, is complex. Amir and Hassan seem to have a "best friend" type relationship. The two boys, Hassan and Amir, are main characters in the book titled, The Kite Runner. The two boys have a relationship that is significantly different compared to most. There are many different facets that distinguish the relationship the boys possess. The boys do write their names in a pomegranate tree as the "sultans of Kabul" (Kite Runner 27) but, their friendship is not strong and it is one sided. Hassan has love for Amir. He loves him like a brother. Hassan is exceedingly loyal to Amir. The relationship between the two boys is emotionally wearing and rather gloomy for the most part. The main reason for their complicated relationship is the fact that Amir is Pashtun, and Hassan is Hazara. The Afghan society places Hassan lower than Amir. Hassan is Amir's servant. The placement of Hassan in the Afghan society disenables Amir from becoming Hassan's true friend. Amir sees Hassan as lower than human. Amir ruins the chance for friendship between himself and Hassan because he is jealous of Hassan, he thinks of Hassan as a lower human, and because Amir possesses such extreme guilt for what he has done to Hassan. Amir is an unforgivable person overall.
He is able to capture the realness of the time and setting through his words, and write for a purpose. As a result, it can be said that he uses this work of historical fiction less as a theatrical stage and more as a platform to introduce the audience to the inhumaneness of Afghanistan. He not only incorporates the Taliban’s grueling “beard lookout men,” who patrol the roads in their fancy Toyota trucks in hopes of finding “a smooth-shaven face to bloody,” but he also displays the horrific and bloodcurdling abuse of women that exists at the hands’ of men and the feelings of great despair and pain that these women face as a result. Living in a state of unbearable fear of the next beating, the next detonating bomb, and the next brutal attempt of the Taliban, the lives of these characters feel almost too real to not be true. Resultantly, the reader is left to wonder whether or not this added literary dimension of realness is actually an introspective study of individuals that Hosseini has long
Afghanistan; Taliban controlled, discrimination and love everywhere yet nowhere at the same time. It’s a nation where culture and tradition are of immense importance, especially to the older generation. Over 53% of Afghan population is below the poverty line, making the country one of the Earth’s poorest. Life would be lived on a day to day basis, not knowing if it’s safe to be outside, when...
...xists in the lives of Pashtun women, their songs live on to communicate a spirit of beauty amidst their helpless plight. Through careful analysis of her songs, we are able to see behind the veil and reach the rich heart of the Afghan woman. There is a joy in her songs that illustrates the perseverance of the human spirit. No matter how demoralized one’s life may be, there is a spirit within us all to survive; a spirit that cannot be crushed even in the bloodiest of wars or the most hostile of oppressions. It is this universal desire the endure and find quench the thirst for human happiness that connects us all the Pashtun women and their beautiful songs. (1915 words)
Khaled Hosseini, the author of The Kite Runner, grew up in prejudiced Afghanistan during the 1960’s as a middle-class Pashtun living with Hazaras working for his family. His move to America after the Communist Coup proved difficult for his family, especially his father. In his novel, Hosseini writes through a young boy, Amir, very similar to himself, who grows up with his father and two Hazara servants in Afghanistan at the time of the Taliban attacks. Both Amir and his father, Baba, treat their servants, Hassan and Ali, like family. Society, however, does not approve of such relationships between Pashtuns and Hazaras. As Amir hides and watches horrified, another Pashtun boy rapes Hassan. This leads to the continuation of Amir’s internal conflict about the treatment of Hazaras by the public, and also makes him feel guilty and self-conscious throughout his entire life. In addition, Amir strives for affection and attention from his rather indifferent father. Amir’s outward conformity to societal values in his relationships with both Hassan and Baba, as a result of his inner struggle and guilt, contribute greatly to the significance of The Kite Runner.
As implied by the title, kites play a major role in the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. They appear numerous times within the text and prove to be surprisingly versatile in their literary function. They provide common ground for characters whose interests do not normally intersect. They are also present as a very powerful symbol, which adds an extra dimension to this already literary rich novel. Reversing the roles transcending generations, it shows itself to be a multifaceted medium.
Hamid’s fiction deals with varied issues: from infidelity to drug trade in the subcontinent and, in the light of contemporary developments, about Islamic identity in a globalised world. His first novel, Moth Smoke (2000) won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2000. His other novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Decibel Award and the South Bank Award for Literature. This book serves as a testament to his elegant style as he deftly captures the straining relationship between America and Pakistan.