Gender Mosaics - a Masculinist Reading of Khaled Hosseini's 'the Kite Runner'
Gender Mosaics: A Masculinist Reading of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner
An individual’s esteem of himself and thus, by extension, others’ opinion of him is determined by a simultaneous play of variegated factors. This paper is an attempt to unravel various such subtleties of a masculine identity as depicted in the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. At the same time, it also tries to determine the importance of culture in determining an individual’s identity and that of transcending certain pre-conceived notions in order to arrive at a just society.
Khaled Hosseini is a truly talented story teller and has two touching novels to his credit, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Both the novels talk about the plight of the Afghani people during the late twentieth century with various forces taking over the country, incessant bloodshed of innocent people and religious fanaticism. Of both his novels, The Kite Runner is more popular and has been acclaimed as the better novel by both, the public and the critics unanimously. The novel is an account of a twelve-year old boy, Amir and his lower class servant-friend, Hassan. Amir struggles to win his father’s approval all his life, which Hassan seems to get without any effort. Finally, when he is twelve, he wins the local Kite-flying tournament and gets what he always wanted, his father’s pride in him. However, on the same day, he sees Hassan getting raped by an older boy and fails to stand up for Hassan against Assef’s malevolence out of fear. Hence, Hassan and his father are forced to leave the city. Political troubles stir up in Afghanistan and Amir and his father escape to America. Over the years, Afghanistan is transformed into a living hell and Hassan and his wife are killed by the Taliban. Amir, then, has to return to America to save Hassan’s son from meeting the same fate as his father and at last, find salvation from his nagging guilt.
“Their sons go out to nightclubs looking for meat and
An individual’s esteem of himself and thus, by extension, others’ opinion of him is determined by a simultaneous play of variegated factors. This paper is an attempt to unravel various such subtleties of a masculine identity as depicted in the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. At the same time, it also tries to determine the importance of culture in determining an individual’s identity and that of transcending certain pre-conceived notions in order to arrive at a just society.
Khaled Hosseini is a truly talented story teller and has two touching novels to his credit, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Both the novels talk about the plight of the Afghani people during the late twentieth century with various forces taking over the country, incessant bloodshed of innocent people and religious fanaticism. Of both his novels, The Kite Runner is more popular and has been acclaimed as the better novel by both, the public and the critics unanimously. The novel is an account of a twelve-year old boy, Amir and his lower class servant-friend, Hassan. Amir struggles to win his father’s approval all his life, which Hassan seems to get without any effort. Finally, when he is twelve, he wins the local Kite-flying tournament and gets what he always wanted, his father’s pride in him. However, on the same day, he sees Hassan getting raped by an older boy and fails to stand up for Hassan against Assef’s malevolence out of fear. Hence, Hassan and his father are forced to leave the city. Political troubles stir up in Afghanistan and Amir and his father escape to America. Over the years, Afghanistan is transformed into a living hell and Hassan and his wife are killed by the Taliban. Amir, then, has to return to America to save Hassan’s son from meeting the same fate as his father and at last, find salvation from his nagging guilt.
“Their sons go out to nightclubs looking for meat and
Bibliography: 1. Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1999. 2. Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. Bloomsbury, London, 2004. 3. Threadgold, Terry and Cranny-Francis, Anne (eds.) Feminine, Masculine and Representation. Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1990. 4. Vannoy, Dana (ed.) Gender Mosaics Social Perspectives: Original Readings. Roxbury Publishing Company, California, 2001.