KR critics Flashcards
How does the imagery of infertility in Amir’s personal life relate to Afghanistan?
- It reflects the bareness of Afghanistan; it has been robbed of culture, tradition and hope.
- Amir’s ‘way to be good again’ is not just salvation for him and Sohrab, but for the whole country.
How does the pomegranate tree mirror their relationship?
- It is fecund and fruitful in the beginning, with their name inscribed in it.
- They eat fruit from it and read beneath it.
- The pomegranate tree is a symbol of fertility - both agriculturally and reproductively - in many cultures.
How does the image of the pomegranate tree shift after the assault of Hassan?
- The pomegranates are then described as ‘bloodred’.
- Amir ‘hurled’ the pomegranates at Hassan. He does not fight back, instead crushing the ‘overripe’ fruit on his own head: ‘red dripping down his face like blood’.
- ‘look of the lamb’
Why is the timing of the destruction of Hassan and Amir’s relationship relevant?
- Occurs in winter, connotes sterility, bitterness, lifelessness etc.
- The first 12 years feel like a ‘long lazy summer’, but the unforgiving winter of 1975 brings this to a halt.
- Monochromatic
How is the setting effective on the day of the kite running tournament?
- a ‘frigid’ day, overcast with clear foreshadowing of what is to come.
- The sky was a ‘blameless blue’, and the lush hills are ‘buried under a foot of snow’.
- Mulberry trees were ‘stunted’ and verdant conifers ‘froze’, even the evergreen ‘snow-burdened cypress’ struggles.
How does Amir invoke the idea of seasons to express his desire for redemption?
‘for the first time in my life, I couldn’t wait for spring.’
How is Afghanistan’s denigration reflected in its bareness?
- ‘leafless poplar trees’, ‘bare pines’, ‘no grass at all’.
What does Amir note when he returns to the pomegranate tree?
- ‘looking at the wilted, leafless tree, I doubted it ever would bear fruit again. I stood under it, remembered all the times we’d climbed, straddled its branches’
How does Amir describe the pomegranate tree when he returns to Afghanistan?
‘wilted, leafless tree’
‘I doubted it would ever bear fruit again’
How does Hassan depict the pomegranate tree in his letter to Amir?
- ‘The droughts have dried the hill and the tree hasn’t borne fruit in years… Sohrab and I still sit under its shade and I read to him’
What is interesting about Hassan’s letter to Amir?
- He has learned to read and write.
- Unlike Soraya, Amir never even considered helping him to achieve this.
How does Amir’s winter of discontent come to an end?
‘when spring comes it melts…
…snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting’
- Sohrab enters his life, ending his childlessness.
In what ways does Baba find America to be infertile?
- ‘the fruit was never sweet enough, the water never clean enough, and where were all the trees and open fields?’
Why is America a respite for Amir?
- It is an escape from his ‘past of unatoned sins’, America is a ‘river, roaring along’ in which he can let his ‘sins drown to the bottom’. He is carried to ‘someplace with no ghosts, no memories and no sins’
How does Amir’s description of America as a respite show its impermanence?
- Use of conditional: ‘could’
- Use of ‘let’, implying a sense of fantasy
- List of negatives is highly disingenuous.
How do Baba and General Taheri cope with living in America?
- The create an Afghanistan in America, a hallucination of a country which no longer exists elsewhere.
- They see it as a ‘temporary interruption’ to their normal way of life.
What did Baba aim to achieve in building his orphanage?
- The easing of his guilt and placating of his conscience about Hassan.
- It is destroyed, as Hosseini once again overturns places of safety and sanctuary to create a sense of loss and despair.
What euphemism is used to describe the dead children in Baba’s destroyed orphanage?
- ‘Collateral damage’.
- People are ‘sifting through the rubble of that orphanage’, finding the ‘body parts of children’.
How does Hosseini use orphanages other than Baba’s to create a sense of disappearing safety?
- Assef uses the one where Sohrab was to source children for sexual abuse.
- Sohrab’s suicide attempt demonstrates the terrors they have endured.
How does the teacher’s reaction to Amir’s mentioning of Shi’a people show entrenched prejudice?
- He ‘snickered’ and ‘wrinkled his nose’, like it was ‘some kind of disease’.
What aspects of the depiction of the US does O’Rourke find unappealing?
- ‘Hosseini wisely steers clear of merely exoticising Afghanistan as a monolithically foreign place, he does so much work to make it emotionally accessible… that there is almost no room for us to consider… what might differentiate Afghans and Americans.’
What can be said about the accessibility of the characters?
- Assef is an archetypal villain, embodying all the mainstays of what can be considered evil: Nazism, paedophilia, rape and genocide.
How is America depicted?
Lacking nuance, a simplified and liberal haven.
How does Hosseini glorify American foreign policy?
- The boys go to see the Magnificent Seven in which farmers and cowboys unite to defend their village.
- Reflects the American saviour complex, he seems to be placating American pallates.
