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Power In The Kite Runner

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An Analysis of Power in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner provides insight into how power affects people and what it can do to relationships. Humans, by nature, crave power and seek control over others. Power is addictive. Once someone has had a taste of power, they will do everything possible to hold onto it. Throughout Hosseini’s novel, characters gain and lose power. They also abuse power, whether through friendship or fear. They manipulate the powerless to stay in their position. In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, aggressors evoke guilt and shame in their victims in order to maintain their power, bespeaking the human need to be in control. Characters understand the appeal of power at a young age. Even as a child, Amir manipulates Hassan’s loyalty in order to make himself feel superior. Amir has always felt inferior to Hassan, mainly due to his yearning for Baba’s love. Because of this, he enjoys using his opportunistic advantages to make Hassan think less of himself. As children, Amir and Hassan enjoy reading under their favorite tree, but Amir’s favorite part is when they come “across a big word that [Hassan does not] know” and he has the opportunity to “expose his ignorance” (Hosseini 28). Amir craves so badly to be superior that he …show more content…

Amir exploits Hassan’s loyalty in order to feel superior. Assef uses sexual abuse to give himself power over Hassan and Sohrab. The Taliban use religion and terror to enforce their rule over the people of Afghanistan. Although all of these people employ different means to maintain power, the root of their strength is the guilt and shame of their victims: Hassan’s need to be a good friend, Sohrab’s sinful feelings, and the people’s guilt of not adhering to their religion. The Kite Runner illustrates how power changes people and relationships, and exhibits the extremes a person will go to into order to keep a firm grasp on

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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a fiction novel about the complicated relationship between two half-brothers. One of the brothers, Hassan is portrayed as a very loyal, brave, and selfless person while enduring the unfairness of the societal hierarchy. Furthermore, Hassan never changes and represents the innocent archetype throughout the book. Reading through the archetypal criticism lens allows readers to identify patterns and predict what will happen throughout the book. In addition, by knowing how characters fit into an archetypal role, readers can gain a deeper understanding of the characters’ motivations, actions, and relationships with other characters.

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The novel Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a poignant story about the main character, Amir, a young Afghan man running from the traumatic events of his past, who travels to America with his father after a Russian takeover, and then back to Afghanistan to confront his demons. For Baba and Amir, America is a chance to escape Afghanistan and change their lives for the better. Baba and Amir’s move to America affects many parts of their life, including differences in their lifestyle, a change in their unstable relationship, and traits that persist throughout their difficult transition. The move to America changes Baba and Amir’s lavish lifestyle to one of minimum wage and social programs.

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The author puts a lot of moral ambitious character in the story the Kite Runner. Amir is an example of a moral ambitious character. He is evil in the beginning of the story, but as he matures and grows up as an adult. The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini, is a novel about a young boy named Amir and how he grows up in the Afghan war and how life was during the war. Amir's Moral Ambiguity is important to this story because he provides readers to like and hate him.

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In Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, Amir grows up surrounded by a culture that hinders his identity through its conflicting nature. The outside world interferes with the way Amir thinks, preventing him from discovering different aspects of life. Amir’s growth is withheld from him through Baba’s traditional views of power.

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The corruption of power and excess power is evident in regards to how the characters of The Kite Runner interact with each other. One can see this through the interactions of Amir and Hassan, a wealthy Pashtun in society compared to a servant Hazara. Due to the Pashtuns being in control and overpowering the Hazaras, Hassan is denied basic human rights that Amir takes advantage of, for example the right to education. Hassan is an “illiterate Hazara” who would never surmount to anything other than being a servant simply because of the culture he was born into (Hosseini, 34). Amir uses this to his advantage by informing Hassan that imbecile means smart and intelligent, then saying that “Hassan is an imbecile” (22).

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He resists for Amir whom he loves with his whole heart. Amir witnesses this struggle, but he does nothing; he runs away since “he was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?” (Hosseini 77). Amir has always believed, deep down, that his father favored Hassan, a Hazara, the dirt of Afghan society, over him, his own son. Seeing Hassan reduced to that level of baseness is perversely satisfying for him.

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Khaled Hosseini’s first novel The Kite Runner published in 2003 is a sensational tale of Afghanistan caught in a devastating battle between opposing forces, fighting for power and authority over the land. The story of The Kite Runner is fictional, but it is rooted in real political and historical events ranging from the last days of the Afghan monarchy in the 1970s to the post-Taliban near present. In addition to its historical background, the novel is also based on Hosseini 's personal memories of growing up in the Wazir Akbar Khan section of Kabul and a subsequent migration to USA and adapting to life in California. The nightmarish saga of war torn Kabul is told in a cool and detached manner, a voice that provides a growing sense of tension and crises desperately stretched to bring to reconciliation as the story approaches its end.

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