Context Flashcards
What is a post modern novel?
Characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues.
What is the effect of it being post-modern?
Instead of enjoying it passively, they have to work to understand it, to question their own responses, and to examine their views about what fiction is.
-Engagement makes them more likely to understand the political message.
Temporal Distortion
The use of non-linear timelines and narrative
techniques in a story
Metafiction
The act of writing about writing or making readers aware of
the fictional nature of the very fiction they’re reading
-Amir is a writer
-blurs the border between fiction and the real world - brings attention to Amir as an unreliable narrator - the idealization of Hassan etc.
-presents an external lens to events occurring in the text - Hosseini can analyze events in more depth - furthering the protest.
Minimalism
The use of characters and events which are decidedly common and non-exceptional characters.
-Don’t have super-powers or anything crazy.
-Reinforces the idea that this is real lived experience of normal people in Afghanistan.
Faction
The mixing of actual historical events with fictional events without clearly defining what is factual and what is fictional.
-Effective tool to make audience understand this is lived reality.
Pashtuns vs Hazaras
The Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. They mostly live in the south and east of Afghanistant. They speak Pashto but can also speak Farsi. Pashtuns are Sunni Muslims. They constitute the ethnic majority in Afghanistan. The Hazaras are an ethnic group that lives mainly in central Afghanistan. They have Mongolian ancestry. They speak Hazaragi, a Persian dialect. Hazaras are Shia Muslims and make up the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. Many Hazaras migrate from rural areas to Kabul. The Hazaras have been discriminated against for centuries.
Brief history of Afghanistan
From 1933-1973, Afghanistan was a monarchy ruled by King Zahir Shah. On July 17, 1973, when the king was on vacation, Mohammad Daoud Khan seized power. Mohammad Daoud Khan was Zahir Shah’s cousin and a former Prime Minister of Afghanistan. For six years, Mohammad Daoud Khan was President and Prime Minister of Afghanistan. Then, on April 27, 1978, he was violently overthrown by the PDPA, People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Daoud was killed in the coup along with most of his family. The PDPA was a Communist party and therefore held close ties to the Soviet Union.The PDPA instituted many political and social reforms in Afghanistan, including abolishing religious and traditional customs. Factions arose, and they began to challenge the government so rigorously that in 1979, the Soviet Army entered Afghanistan, beginning an occupation that would last a decade. The United States was among the countries that supported the resistance, because of its own anti-Soviet policies. When the Soviet Troops finally withdrew in 1989, Afghanistan remained under PDPA for three more years. Then in 1992, the mujahedin finally won Afghanistan and converted it to an Islamic State. In the years following Soviet withdrawal, there was a great deal of infighting among rival militias, making everyday life in Afghanistan unsafe. In 1996, the Taliban took control of Kabul. The Taliban were strict in their practices. Being Sunni fundamentalists supremacists, they systematically massacred Shiites including the Hazara people. They also enacted fundamentalist laws, most famously those banning music and dance, and those severely restricting women’s rights. After the events of September 11, 2001, namely 9/11, the United States invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban. The end of The Kite Runner occurs in 2002, when a provisional government was in place. It was not until 2004 that the current president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, was elected. Although, even today, due to a weak governance, violence and human rights abuses are still a common reality in Afghanistan
post-colonial novel
A post-colonial novel, The Kite Runner was written by a member of a formerly colonised society. A colony of course is a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country. (Britain colonised 1800s, then soviet, then Us-led coalition).
Personal background -hosseini
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 4, 1965, and was the oldest of five children. Kabul was a cosmopolitan city at the time. Western culture, including movies and literature, mixed with Afghan traditions, such as kite fighting in the winter. Lavish parties were normal at the Hosseini family’s home in the upper-middle class neigborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan. Hosseini’s father served as a diplomat with the Afghan Foreign Ministry, and his mother taught Farsi and history at a local high school for girls. . Then, in 1970, the Foreign Ministry sent his father to Iran. There, Hosseini taught a Hazara man, who worked as a cook for the family, how to read and write. By this time, Khaled Hosseini was already reading Persian poetry as well as American novels, and he began writing his own short stories. Repeated moves marked the next decade of the Hosseini family’s life. They returned to Kabul in 1973, although the Afghan Foreign Ministry relocated the Hosseini family to Paris in 1976 and being unable to return, instead, the Hosseinis moved to San Jose, California. Khaled Hosseini went on to graduate from high school in 1984 and attended Santa Clara University, where he received his bachelor’s degree in Biology in 1988. In 1993, he earned his Medical degree, and in 1996 he completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai medical Center in Los Angeles, making him a full-fledged doctor. After nearly twenty-seven years however, he returned to Afghanistan to see what had become of his country and his people. He was shocked
Afghanistan 2001 onwards
The Taliban encouraged a fundamentalist form of Shari’a law - a branch of islam - and endorsed atrocities( like public stoning and amputations as punishments for adultery and theft). In the novel Amir highlights both the hypocrisy and violence of the Talibs who govern Kabul.
Fremont, California 1980s
When Amir and Baba arrive in California in early 1980s they experience the country in different ways. There’s irony as Amir notes the wealth on display and that they make Babas mansion look like a servants hut. Wealth coexists with poverty. They experience economic hardships and Babas ethnic pride leads him to reject social benefits. The ‘flea market’ serves both economic and social purposes. Provides as a second source of income whilst an arena for meeting fellow Afghans. It’s here Amir learns of the differential treatment of men and women, Amir learns of Soraya Taheri’s previous ‘disgrace’.
San Francisco, 2001
Amir has spent his adult life in America, and has a wife Soraya. They have fertility problems. Soraya’s father is adamant that they don’t consider adoption as he feels it is at odds with the Pashtunwalli code, which is based on honouring blood ties. Amir asserts his beliefs and they adopt Sohrab. The novel ends with Amir introducing Sohrab to kite running.
Pashtuns and pashtunwali
Pashtuns are culturally defined as Muslims of Eastern Iranian descent who live In Afghanistan and western Pakistan with large migrant communities in Europe and North America. This predominantly Sunni Muslim population form the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. They are mostly Mediterranean people with light hair and eye colour. They seek swift revenge for injustice they also believe in Nanawati, the humble admission of guilt which should result in automatic forgiveness. Amir is a Pashtun. The love of literature and poetry that Amir has inherited from his from his mother serves to highlight the rich literary culture of the Pashtun people.
Hazaras
Hazaras form the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. One theory is that they are of Mongolian descent. They are predominantly Shi’a Muslims and as such are in the minority in a county adhering to the Sharia Law of Sunni denominations. Ali and Hassan face a number of hardships due to their ethnicity.
