Discrimination, bigotry and class structure are all very present in Afghan Society. This is outlined well in Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, where each character experiences or witnesses one of the aforementioned characteristics of society. The incessant use of discrimination in the novel is significant for many reasons, the most prominent of which is that these elements of society are still present today. The Kite Runner helps students understand how unjust life can be, and how fortunate we are to be so far removed from such circumstances. The three dominant points in the story about discrimination, bigotry and class structure are how women are viewed and treated; how Hazaras are seen as inferior; and the differences between Amir’s old neighbourhood versus the rest of Afghanistan.
Women are not treated as equals to men in Afghanistan; they are expected to sit quietly and do what the men in their life want them to do. Many of the women in The Kite Runner are victims of such injustice, and have to deal with the harsh consequences of making mistakes. Soraya, Amir’s wife, experiences these consequences endlessly from a trivial mistake she made as a teenager. As a girl, Soraya ran away with an Afghan man who was into drugs. All of the Afghans in Virginia had talked about it, and Soraya had been forced to live with a terrible reputation ever since. Years later, at Soraya’s cousin’s wedding, she overheard a conversation between two middle-aged women. “That boy did well not to marry his cousin.” one of the women remarked, and Soraya broke down into tears in the car later. “It’s so f***ing unfair. Their sons go out to nightclubs looking for meat and get their girlfriends pregnant, they have kids out of wedlock and no one says a...
... middle of paper ...
... Afghanistan that one may not ever know what it’s like in the ‘real’ world.
Most of the population in Afghanistan experienced many hardships in their daily lives. In the novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini brilliantly depicts what life is really like in Afghanistan from a privileged boy’s point of view, and his horror when he realizes that Afghanistan is not, despite how he grew up, a very nice place. Discrimination and bigotry are ever-present in Afghan society, and no one is exempt from the brutality of the Taliban. If any of the restrictions are breached, the Taliban will publicly hang, ‘stone’, or otherwise execute the offender. Discrimination, bigotry and class structure have always, and will likely always be around in Afghan lives. Afghanistan has become a place of death and destruction, and people that live there are constantly fearful for their lives.
Much of Afghan society is built on the concept that a man’s image comes from his status, and that his manhood is defined by his honor and his pride, his nang and namoos. In this society, men appear to hold most of the power. This power is fragile, however, because “all a man ha[s is] his honor [and] his name” (223). Without honor, or with a tainted name, a Pashtun man is nothing. In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, some characters follow this standard to a fault. General Taheri, for example, is so prideful that he remains on welfare in the US, as he believes that getting a job would be degrading to him and his position as a general in Afghanistan (176). Ironically, the women in the novel achieve true nang and namoos, while most men cannot,
Khaled Hosseini is the author of “The Kite Runner” the first Afghan novel published in English is a story set in the mid 1970’s to the early 2000’s is about a young Pashtun boy named Amir and his friend/servant and someone who he soon realizes as his half-brother a Hazara boy named Hassan , shows us that Amir goes through man changes as a person would in real life, these changes are what people of all cultures, religions and regions experience without any boundaries stopping them from doing so this is what is known as the human experience. Many experiences such as overcoming obstacles to suffering from disease or illness are all incorporated thorough out Hosseni’s novel. He uses Amir, the main character; to show the readers that in the beginning of the novel how a young boy, naïve to all that is around him can develops into a grown man because of his experiences such as loss of family members, happiness, and friendship something that all of us can experience as human beings and make us who we are.
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).
From the 1950’s until around 1985 the Soviet Union had Afghanistan under its control. This Soviet involvement in Afghanistan caused the ideologies of communism to spread into the Afghanistan culture. One of the communistic ideas that were assimilated into was the thought that every person is equal. This idea made life a lot easier for the women of Afghanistan. One of the freedoms they were given under Soviet control was the allowance of woman being educated, “The government had sponsored literacy classes for all women. Almost two-thirds of the students at Kabul University were women now… women who were studying law, medicine, engineering” (135) Hosseini expresses this through the character Laila. Laila’s father, Babi, was a professor and strongly urged the necessity for Laila to get an education. He was so dedicated that he would help out Laila with her homework every night. Hosseini expressed this when Laila claimed “Babi thought that the one thing that communists had done right- or at least intended to- ironically, was in the filed of education… More specifically the education of women.” (135). To Babi there was nothing more impertinent than the education of woman in Afghanistan. He knew that when half the population is illiterate the country cannot properly aspire to new and better things. Along with the new right to learn, women’s requirement to cover their skin was relaxed all throughout Afghanistan. ...
In the literature, The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, the idea and representation of justice, and its relationship to that of the treatment of women in Afghan society, the ever-changing politics of Afghanistan, and the desired results of redemption and forgiveness, become illustrated through the novel’s characters and motives. Justice can be defined as the quality of being guided by truth, reason, and fairness. The Kite Runner illustrates the power of influence from an outside power and its effects on society, and the minds and lifestyles of the people. In relationship to the Cheverus High School Grad-at-Grad profile the actions and wrongdoings that take place in the The Kite Runner and in Afghanistan prove to be injustice.
In Khaled Hossenini’s novel The Kite Runner, one of the main themes is separation. Separation is an important theme in this book in order to capture life in Afghanistan and how it reflects the characters’ lives. Afghanistan is a land with many values when it comes to class, gender, religion, race, and political climate. Their culture isn’t based on equity for the people, but the traditions that they’ve had for thousands of years and the teachings from the Quran. Since their traditions are so valued; Afghanistan reflects some of the values of the characters. As the book progresses, you can see Afghanistan separating and effected negatively by terrorism throughout the land. This affects the characters, especially Amir’s relationship with Hassan. Separation is an important factor to this book in order to express the elements of class, religion, and political climate and how it effects to the characters.
In English class, I read a book called The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Overall a splendid book, I enjoyed it quite a lot and I highly recommend reading it for those who haven’t because it really is a powerful story that grasps readers attention. Anyways, there are these 2 boys in this book, Amir who comes from a privileged background in Kabul and has a wealthy dad whom he calls Baba, although he is not a completely sympathetic character. Hassan is a hazara, which is the most disrespected and the lowest status group in
Travesties are committed against women every day, in every country, in every city, town and home. In Afghanistan women are not only discriminated against, they are publicly reduced to animals. Women are deprived of basic human rights: they are not allowed to travel outside their homes without being completely covered by the traditional shroud-like burqa; they are not allowed to speak or walk loudly in public; they are not allowed to laugh or speak with other women; they are not allowed to attend school nor work; they are expected to be invisible; they are the ghosts of what were once educated, notable, and successful women. With their ruthless and extreme laws, the Taliban have effectively removed the physical presence of women in Afghanistan. The Taliban have stolen the very souls of these women and have turned them into the “living dead” of Afghanistan. The Taliban’s harsh restrictions and extreme religious laws have tainted the freedoms and basic human rights of the once valued and prominent women of Afghanistan.
Before the rise of the Taliban in the early 1990s, women in Afghanistan were mostly treated as equals and with respect. Though women were still expected to be submissive to their husbands, the mother in a family would play a key role in family decisions such as who a son should marry (“Society and Norms”). The “Taliban regime cruelly reduced women and girls to poverty, worsened their health, and deprived them of their right to an education” (“The Taliban’s War Against Women”). Due to the Taliban’s oppressive presence, women are seen as below men. In The Kite Runner, Amir’s wife Soraya is still under her father’s authority, even though the family is no longer in Afghanistan. While Soraya’s position is due in part to the traditional Afghan culture, it may also represent how Taliban values and beliefs have infiltrated into everyday lives of Afghan people in some form or another (Hosseini).
Afghan women are treated as an inferior group compared to the Afghan men. Many Afghan women are “required…to cover themselves completely when in public. They also made it illegal for women to work outside their homes. Women who violated Taliban laws were punished severely” (World Book). The consequences they had faced for insignificant trifling actions were inhumane and simply outrageous. For example, many of them were publically beaten for accidentally revealing their ankle under their veil (Bobic). The measures taken in order to make certain that women are basically kept invisible were malicious. The veils they wear and were forced to wear during the Taliban reign are usually black and thick and they also have to keep a screen on their face so that no one could see their faces. The screen makes it hard for them to breathe but they had no choice since removing the screen would be a punishable crime. Even women working for the Un...
War establishes many controversial issues and problems within society and can often expose an individual to many economic and sociopolitical hardships; thus creating an altercation in the way they view life. Amir, from the novel The Kite Runner and the novel’s author Khaled Hosseini, both saw the harsh treatment toward the people of Afghanistan through a series of wars, invasions, and the active power of a Pashtun movement known as the Taliban. Amir, much like Hosseini, lived a luxurious and wealthy life in Kabul. He is well educated and immerses himself in reading and writing. After transitioning from a life in Afghanistan to a life in the United States, both Hosseini and Amir faced obstacles in order to assimilate to American society. In The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, the protagonist Amir parallels the experiences and hardships that Hosseini endured in his own lifetime.
In his novel “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, Khaled Hosseini skillfully illustrates many aspects of Afghan culture to the reader. The novel explores the struggles that have plagued Afghanistan, and how they have affected the lives of its people. Through the story’s two narrators, Mariam and Laila, the reader is presented with examples of how the nation’s culture has changed over time. Through “A Thousand Splendid Suns” Khaled Hosseini emphasizes the struggle in the area between traditional beliefs and progressive changes, specifically as they relate to women’s rights. Throughout history it has been shown these that progressive reforms are unable to coincide with strict Islamic beliefs.
Women in Afghanistan weren't always suppressed by the government. Amir, the narrator of The Kite Runner, talks about a time when women were allowed basic rights like jobs, for example, his "mother taught at the university," (250 Hosseini). In one instance in the novel, a beggar man describes to Amir how his mother and him "would sit and talk after class," (249), that may not seem like a big deal, but she was a woman talking to another man who wasn't her husband or father, and under the Taliban that would be under severe penalty. Women also "didn't have to wear burqas out in the public" (Katz), and had complete freedom as to what they wore and how they presented themselves. Sanaubar was a woman who took complete control of this freedom, for she had "brilliant green eyes and an impish face and [ ] [walked with a] suggestive stride" (8 Hosseini). Women were also allowed schooling, and the freedom to leave the house a...
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.
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...