Stereotypes In The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a multithreaded, Bildungsroman novel. It tells the story of a young Afghan boy Amir, whose closest friend is Hassan. The plot of the novel focuses greatly on number of events, like political and cultural situation in Afghanistan or relationships between Amir and his father, Baba. The novel has been praised for its role in understanding the complex nature of Afghanistan by Western audience. According to former Afghan ambassador in The United States, Said Tayeb Jawad, This book generates a tremendous amount of goodwill for Afghanistan.(Wilson) The novel helps understand the everyday reality of Afghanistan that is greatly unknown to the societies of the Western culture. The Kite Runner is an attempt to deconstruct Western stereotypes considering Afghanistan. In order to break the associations that Afghanistan is the mountainous country of poor shepherds, Hosseini presents a lot of elements new to the Western reader. This attempt is achieved thanks to characters like Baba, who is the unordinary representative of Afghan society, deep insight into meaning of the Afghan traditions like Kite …show more content…
The story of two boys and their friendship can be treated as an pretext to show Western audience the folklore of Afghanistan. The passion of competition during the Buzkashi tournament or social impact of the Kite Running. Social conflict between Pashtun and Hazara ruin the overall image of Afghans being simply Muslims. The novel also uncover long and turbulent era of political changes, conflicts that led to external intervention of the Soviet Union. All these elements allow to understand that behind mountainous country stands mosaic of culture and social diversity. Although people in Afghanistan have their own issues, those problems can be fleshed out to prove how similar they are to the people in Europe or United