Comparing The Kite Runner 'And Cat On A Hot Tin Roof'

English Language and Literature HL
With reference to at least two works of literature you have studied, discuss how sex and sexuality are portrayed to fuel their respective plot lines.

‘The Kite Runner’ written by Khaled Hosseini is a novel which revolves around the protagonist, Amir and how different incidents related to sex and sexuality change his life and the play ‘A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ by Tennesse Williams, is about a married couple whose lives have changed due to recent events involving sex and sexuality. In the following essay you will be able to see how these two closely linked topics helped develop the plotline of both these wonderful stories.
Both Brick and Maggie and Amir and Soraya’s childlessness plays a massive role in
their respective plotlines and family life. In ‘A Cat on a Tin Roof’, Maggie strives to secure a place in inheriting Big Daddy’s riches but in her eyes she thinks she will fail to do so because she bares no children where on the other hand, Mae and Gooper are referred to as a ‘production line’ as they have five children and a sixth one on the way. The entire play portrays how a few members of the family are only after the wealth and the amount they inherit from the head of the family and shows how far relatives can go, how selfish they can be and how cold they can become just to get what they want. We can see this while everyone is, especially Mae and Maggie keep bickering each other without actually being concerned about Big Daddy’s health. At the end of ‘A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ we can see that Big Daddy readily accepts the fact that Maggie is “pregnant” even though it is an obvious lie and decides to hand everything over to Brick and Maggie. Family, relationships and blood have a lot to do with both the stories we have read. Similarly in ‘The Kite Runner’, when Amir first heard about Sohrab he did not want to do much about it as he might thought it was not much of his problem till Rahim Khan told him that Hassan was in fact, his half-brother. Awestruck by the news Rahim Khan threw upon Amir, he did not believe Rahim Khan as he did not think his Baba would ever be able betray his friend, Ali, have sex with Sanaubar and then lie to Amir and Hassan about it their entire lives. As Sohrab, turned out to be Amir’s nephew because of the hideous act of betrayal by Baba and Sanaubar, Amir took it upon himself and found it his responsibility so save Sohrab, the son of his late half-brother, Hassan. This made all the incidents in the last half of the book take place in Afghanistan. Also, I would like to believe that Amir and Soraya’s childlessness helped to encourage Amir to taking good care of Sohrab and taking him back to America to raise him as his own son.
Skipper and Maggie, Baba and Sanaubar, in both the pieces of literature that we have read, we have witnessed betrayal by key characters because they are not only guilty of mendacity but also have committed the hideous act of adultery. Sanaubar was married to Ali and Maggie was married to Brick and yet these two ladies had sexual intercourse with Baba and Skipper respectively. In ‘A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’, I feel that if Maggie had not have had sex with Skipper, then the entire play and the attitude of the entire family towards Brick and Maggie as a couple would change. Brick may not have been an alcoholic and if Brick and Maggie were to have sex and if Maggie had actually become pregnant, then the entire plotline of the story would change as there would be no competition in inheriting Big Daddy’s property.
Baba, an extremely respectable man in society and Sanaubar, a servant’s wife, got together and had a child together called Hassan who was brought up as one of the main character, Amir’s servant when truly he was his half brother.
All throughout the Kite Runner we see that Amir is sometimes insecure about the way Baba treats Hassan, he always felt as though Baba felt more for Hassan than him because of the way he acted, maybe because then as a child he felt like Baba saw himself more in Hassan than in Amir and later on, in Pakistan, Amir understands why, it was not because Hassan was always the son Baba wished he had, but the son Baba did have. As Ali was infertile, Hassan would never have been born if it weren’t for the time that Baba and Sanaubar had gotten together; therefore, changing the entire plot line of ‘The Kite Runner’, if there was no Hassan, there would be no story to tell, just a lonely rich boy named Amir who went off to America with his father when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. Also when it comes to Sohrab, we see that Amir’s attitude towards him changes when he finds out Sohrab is not his servant friend’s son, but his own nephew, his blood
relative.
We all have that one best friend who is our biggest priority, they are on top of everyone else on your lists of, well, everything!
And when someone accuses them of something we know they can never be capable of doing, we get hurt and we rebel, different people resort to doing it in different ways. In Brick’s case, he resorted to drinking so that he never even had to think about the rumors that were going around and the problem that orbited around it, about his dear friend, Skipper. In many parts in the play, many people strongly imply that Skipper was gay for Brick. Brick not only denies this fact but does not even want to hear people uttering such words. When people blame Maggie for Brick’s drinking problem and their childlessness Brick seems to be indifferent but when anyone even starts to say anything offensive about his late friend Skipper, he does not even want to hear it. He dreads his last conversation with his friend and if Skipper were not accused of being gay, or was not gay in the first place, he might have been alive and Brick would not be an alcoholic, he might not have been disgusted with Maggie as Maggie might not have to commit the act of adultery which could, in the end lead to Brick and Maggie having a child together, a legacy to lead on Big Daddy’s
empire.
In ‘The Kite Runner’, Hassan, a 12 year old hazara boy was running down a kite for the winner of the kite competition, with nothing but loyalty and determination on his mind, and that 12 year old boy was successful. When he was on his way back home with the kite, a rich bully of the upper class approached him and harassed him which eventually ended up in the older boy raping Hassan. As an eye witness to this dreadful event, not only did Amir’s entire life change, but the way he acted around his best friend and half brother, Hassan changed as well. This change in attitude eventually leads to Hassan and Ali leaving Baba’s house and thus their lives. The raping scene not only caused a family to break, a father to lose a son, a brother to lose a brother, but it also eventually resulted in many children losing their innocence and purity even years after.
In both the texts that we have read in class, sex and sexuality has quite a big influence in developing the plotlines of these stories. Both these stories have been written many years ago and yet the world still revolves around the same thing fueling their lives, emotions and actions; love, lust, sex, sexuality and discrimination. These are human characteristics that are inbuilt in every nation, in every race and in every gender which will not only influences the plotline of novels and plays but everyone’s lives as well.