Afghanistan a country we see as men walking around in robes holding guns, women covered in head to toe, children with ribs poking out lying on the streets. Afghanistan was not always like this. It started with the fall of their monarchy, then Russia invaded, followed by the Taliban, who rose to power to kick out the Russians. After September 11, 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan, stating the Afghanistan War which lasted from 2001 to 2014. This story, much like Khaled Hosseini pervious book, The Kite Runner, shows the beauty of Afghanistan, the horrors of what the Taliban had done to their own people, and how they kept faith throughout it all.
Mariam is a harami, in English that means a bastard, or the nicer term a child born out of wedlock. It was never said why Jalil, her father, never married her mother, Nana,
…show more content…
Her father, a university professor, always valued education, either it was for his sons (Ahmid and Noor), or his daughter. When she is not learning everything she can, Laila spends her time with her best friend Tariq. Tariq has been her best friend since Laila can remember, even though he has a prosthetic leg, that does not slow him down when he’s beating the bully who was mean to Laila. Their relationship was cute, this seven year girl and nine year old boy, playing games of make-believe. Yet as the years go on, her mother gets worried about her daughter reputation because of Tariq. Laila’s brothers enlist in the “army” to take down the Russians who were invading, and were killed in action. Their mother, to honor her sons, told her husband and Laila no matter how bad it gets, she will see the greatest of Afghanistan for her sons. Laila and her father stayed with her mother, as friend after friend got shot by the Taliban, or killed by a stray missile. Nothing was going to make Laila’s family, after all, Ahmid and Noor where the light of her mother’s eyes, nothing was going to make her leave, nothing but
Mariam was just something else on earth that was in his way. This proves what Nana said in chapter 2 to be right. That she and Mariam were nothing but a mug wort, they were just ripped out and thrown aside, made unnoticeable to anyone because it looked
Everyone deals with adversity, and everyone deals with it differently. The book The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, is set in present day Kabul Afghanistan where the main character Amir deals with a lot of adversity. Although Amir deals with lots of adversity, there are also other characters in The Kite Runner who also deal with adversity, including Amir's father, Baba. In Kabul, Baba was a very respectable person, but when he moved to the United States, he went from being a powerful, respected man, to living in a small apartment, and pumping gas to survive.
"And Mariam was afraid she lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies and sometimes not." (Hosseini 97) The fifth phase of the life of Mariam is Laila's Entry and Marriage with Rasheed. Laila, a neighborhood friend's daughter of Rasheed is nearly killed in a bomb blast which takes away the live of both her parents. Rasheed saves her and Mariam helps him to nurse her back to normalcy.
A way to end the cycle. With a little boy. An orphan. Hassan’s son. Somewhere in Kabul” (Hosseini).
In the Kite Runner you see small resemblance on how Afghan families treat each other even though for Amir, Baba hid the truth. Later when Amir returns, an image is presented about the change of Afghanistan. Example, when Amir visits Farid and they eat dinner. Amir realizes how the children didn’t want his watch, but the food he was eating. So instead of being the glamorous place where Amir left he returned to a poverty filled area with broken down tanks and military gear.
The theme of violence and rape has been quite common in the Kite Runner, from bullies raping younger innocent children, Russian soldiers wanting to rape a woman for passage through the country, to violence being used alongside it. In the Kite Runner, Assef, who is Amir’s and Hassan’s Bully, ends up raping Hassan in an Alleyway out of a grudge when Hassan threatens Assef some time before with a slingshot. Amir becomes traumatized when he witnesses this, so he runs away, horrified by what he has seen. Even years later after Amir leaves to America and leaves his home in Afghanistan behind, he still gets flashbacks to that day when Hassan was raped by Assef. When Amir returns to Afghanistan to save Sohrab, Hassan’s son, he finds out that Sohrab has been sexually abused by Assef (who had been working with the Taliban).
The war and prejudice against women in Afghanistan changes everything for Laura. Her parents die in a bombing and she is left to find her way and determine her fate by herself. Just like Mariam, she is married and like fate would have it, as a second wife by Mariam’s husband, Rasheed. Laila however bears two children for Rasheen unlike Mariam who has none and is treated much differently from Mariam. He compares her to a brand new first-class shiny Benz.
Her husband happens to become Rasheed. He finds Laila unconscious after a bomb went off, dissipating her entire family. Rasheed then takes her in and nurses her back to health. He feels that because he saved her, he should be rewarded, “The way I see it I deserve a medal”. Rasheed later practically forces her to have sex with him.
Afghanistan, citizens have carried on a tradition known as Kite Fighting to honor their families. Typically, the youth battle each other using kites to show dominance over each other. The rivalry is biggest between the two religious denominations, the Pashtun and the Hazaran. The novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini gives a striking example and walks you through the lives that the people in Afghanistan were living in the twentieth century through the main characters Hassan and Amir. Amir was from a well off Pashtun family, while Hassan was living the opposite following the Hazaran customs.
In this chapter, Foster discusses the importance of viewing a story from the perspective of the character. This accounts for fully understanding the character’s background and weighing that with the current occurrences. After taking into account Laila’s familial and religious background along with her new situation with Rasheed, this passage has a lot more weight. In the situation Laila is in right now, she likely feels repressed and alone. Because of this, she confides in her memories with Tariq.
The novel starts by introducing Mariam, in the beginning, she’s a self-conscious young lady with a mother who is despicable and suffers from depression. Her father has entirely different family and shuns her when she tries to be indulged in his life. Mariam is the banished child, due to Nana and Jalil having intercourse while unmarried, resulting in Mariam being illegitimate. At a young age, she was forced to marry a severely abusive man named
threat. Laila and Mariam are both forced to remain in Afghanistan and to face the ripple effects of war and what it has led them to head on. Even when they try to escape, they could not and are brought home by government officials. Because of their society, their marriage, their gender, they are left with no option other than to endure the abuse, dehydration, starvation, entrapment, rape. To undergo such pain is a noble act, something people may say a man would be able to do - to remain in Afghanistan and to stay loyal and rooted in one’s homeland-
Mariam shared her past life to Laila “about Jalil, and Nana, and the jinn… Out the words came, like blood gushing from an artery. Mariam told her about Bibi jo, Mullah Faizullah, the humiliating trek to Jalil's house, Nana's suicide. She told about Jalil's wives, and the hurried nikka with Rasheed, the trip to Kabul, her pregnancies, the endless cycles of hope and disappointment, Rasheed's turning on her” (255). [FEMALE FRIENDSHIP] Mariam and Laila developed a strong bond and trust.
The story ‘The Kite Runner’, written by Khaled Hosseini, takes place mainly during the war in Afghanistan. After the country became a republic instead of a monarchy, the former Soviet Union invaded the country. Many years later, the Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist movement , seized power in Afghanistan. This was accompanied by intense violence and the consequences were immense. Not only was Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, almost entirely destroyed, but the cost to human life was also huge.
To begin, in Khaled Hosseini’s book, “The Kite Runner,” the main character is a boy named Amir. As the story progresses, Amir turns out to be an extremely intelligent man, and also deceitful to his loyal friend, Hassan. Hassan has defended Amir in many instances. For example, he protects him from a bully Assef with a slingshot. Hassan also will take the blame for Amir.