The Kite Runner Essay

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The author, the History, and the Story
The author’s personal experiences and the history of the worlds past are used as a literary masterpiece: from Khaled Hoessini’s The Kite Runner that tells of the last days of the Afghan monarchy in the 1970s to the post-Taliban near present or Markus Zuask’s exploration of the Holocaust in The Book Thief to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird that tells a story by depicting life-altering events throughout his childhood. History is the study of change overtime and historical fiction brings the history alive through characterization, themes and an accurate setting. The historical experience is entertaining and instructive – a prominent pattern in literature that creates an in-depth story as well as lasting
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Violence and rape, both figural and literal is prevalent in Hosseini’s experiences and Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, which is depicted within The Kite Runner. Rape is a perpetual occurrence and appears several times throughout The Kite Runner, it is depicted as the ultimate act of violence and immensely affects not only the characters, but also the country. The crucial events that occur within the novel are the rape of Hassan by Assef at the beginning of the novel and the rape of Hassan’s son Sohrab by Assef at the denouement. Other outlying instances such as the rape of Kamal by solders and the rape of a young woman by a Russian solider support the eminent motif. These examples recreate the conditions of Afghanistan and how individuals were affected by violence and war, beginning the Russian invasion and the Taliban regime. Examining nationalism of the past through historical fiction, motifs and characterisation rid of the predisposition and allow a newfangled …show more content…
Scott Walter Scott (1771-1832) was a Scottish playwright, credited for popularising history through the medium of fiction. Scott’s novels combined the amusement of fiction and the intelligence of historical content to inform and provoke change among other historical processes. Historical fiction in the eighteenth century was the act of fixing a historical protagonist into a fictitious story, while alternating and combining the two realms. Historical fiction and author’s experience resurfaced within the nineteenth century as a reaction to the Enlightenment. Well-known writers consisted of Charles Dickens, George Elliot and Thomas Hardy. These novels touched on horrific and violent stories acting as a warning for current governments and citizens. By the twentieth century historical fiction transformed from marginal to widespread and can be seen from writers such as Khaled Hosseini, Harper Lee and Markus Zuask. Predominately, historical works of the twentieth century focuses primarily on ninetieth century events. This is evident throughout the historical novel The Book Thief; which was based on the Holocaust and his parents’ stories of their childhoods in Vienna and Munich during World War II. Although the novel is considered an outstanding twentieth century historical fiction novel the events come from those mostly in the ninetieth

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