SPEAKER'S BUREAU: Sam Coale Handout
CATASTROPHE, CULTURE AND COMPLICITIES: THE VISION OF THE KITE RUNNER by KHALED HOSSEINI
- The First Pages: Style and Possibilities
Repetitions
The verb tenses
- “The precise moment” in 1975
“My past of unatoned sin”
“There is a way to be good again”
What are the implications of a first-person narrator who controls the tale?
- A Morality Tale: What is the Moral Vision?
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Amir’s Guilt
The Context
The Necessity of Sacrifice? The Nature of the Sacrifice?
Amir’s Desire for Punishment: Assef’s Beating
A Moral Context: The Old Testament? Is this an Islamic ideal?
- The Moral Vision in a Cultural Context
Afghani Masculine Culture: Fathers and Sons: Buzkashi, Ghazi Stadium and Shari’a; Kites = competition, athleticism, winners + losers
The Balance: The Male Economy
The Taliban’s Role
- Afghani Customs
Family Values
- Questions
How much a part of his culture is Amir? Self +/vs. Society?
Must the political be relegated to the background in order for the morality tale to be played out? What is the relationship between the personal and the political, the “innocent” and the culture?
Are Hosseini’s characters “innocent” victims of history, or are they part of it?
How does/does the immigration experience change the characters in any way?