The Kite
Runner chronicles the story of Amir,
the son of a wealthy merchant living in Afghanistan. He has difficulties in
adjusting himself in the traditional Afghan society. His growing distance with
his father in Afghanistan who is the embodies the masculine traits, his
intimacy with Rahim Khan who seems have some feminine traits, and his improved
relation with Baba America have a lot to do with his failure to internalize the
traditional masculine codes. He is less competitive, more emotional, and always
craves for feminine touch and loves to read and write poems and stories rather
than playing sports. He is neither athlete like his father not has any fierceness
of his father. He in this sense stands for an emergent masculinity that
embodies virtually no traits of traditional manhood or masculinity. By
protecting Sohrab, Hassan’s son from the Talib Aseef, one of his childhood
nemeses after much tribulation in Afganistan and later adopting him as his son,
he stands for a new benevolent masculinity that has life supporting values.
Masculinity can be defined as behaviors, languages and practices which
exist in specific cultural and organizational locations. Traditionally
speaking, masculinity contains the values of strength, power, stoicism, action,
control, independence, self-sufficiency, male mate-ship and work, control over
others (Kimmel). Kimmel observes that anyone who fails to internalize these
values is scorned and deemed feminine: "We
are under the constant scrutiny of other men. Other men watch us, rank us, and
grant our acceptance into the realm of manhood. Manhood is demonstrated for
other men’s approval. It is other men who evaluate the performance…think of how
men boast to one another of their accomplishment—from their latest sexual
conquest to the size of fish they caught—and how we constantly parade the
markers of manhood—wealth, power, status, sexy women—in from of other men,
desperate for their approval" (214).
Thus, for
Kimmel, masculinity is an enactment: “We test ourselves, perform heroic feats,
take enormous risks, all because we want other men to grant us our manhood”
(214). Like Judith Butler, who focuses upon the performativity of gender, he
argues, “masculinity had become a relentless test by which we prove to other
men, to women, and ultimately to ourselves, that we have successfully mastered
the part” (215). In the novel The Kite Runner, the protagonist Amir
is under this constant scrutiny and pressure of his father and the society.
Despite being a male in the androcentric Afghan society, as he himself says later
in the novel “I had won at the genetic lottery that had determined my sex”
(130), and despite being the son of a wealthy and ‘manly’ Afghan Business man,
Baba, Amir fails to perform the socially assigned scripts of manliness.
The novel shows
that the cost associated with traditional view of masculinity are enormous at
both personal and societal levels. The belief that a boy should be tough
(aggressive, competitive and daring) creates emotional pain for him. Toughness
leads to increased chance of stress, physical injury and even death. It is
considered manly to take extreme physical risks and voluntarily engage in
combative hostile activities. Aseef, a son of a wealthy man in Afghanistan and
later a successful business man in Australia, joins Talib group and voluntarily
engages in this combative activities. (I have construed Aseef’s model of
masculinity as hypermasculinity in this thesis)
Amir as a boy in
Afghanistan experiences a greater emotional distance from other people and few
opportunities to participate in meaningful interpersonal relationships due to
the pressure to be tough and combative. Due to his disorientation
towards the topos of traditional masculinity championed by his father, and
other Pasthuns in the novel, his father Baba spends relatively
small amount of time interacting with him. Baba thinks his son is
insufficiently masculine. Baba’s preference for Hassan to Amir (as
Baba sees Hassan more masculine) transforms Amir into a bully. So, in spite of
Hasan’s devotion as a playmate and his tireless service to the household, Amir
harbors a simmering bitterness for the boy. He secretly humiliates Hasan
mocking the illiterate servant boy by defining words incorrectly and dismissing
Hassan’s keen intuition about Amir’s original stories as nonsense. The pressure
exerted by his father to show his manliness leads him to betray his childhood
friend Hassan which precipitates in Hassan’s departure from the home and his
eventual demise at the hands of Taliban. Amir and his Baba escape to America.
Hosseini has
restricted the experiences of women characters to the protagonist’s wife and
his mother in law. And his female characters are not the stereotypical burka-clad
Afghan women. Similarly, in the novel, sexual violence is also not carried out
at the female sex, but at the male. Hassan, Kamaal, and later Sohrab have been
raped in the novel. Rape is one of the recurring tropes in the novel. Many
rapes are committed by Pasthun men and Talibans with the intention of
feminizing—that is humiliating through dominance—their victim. The novel, at
his juncture, implicitly questions the masculinity of the Talibans by
portraying them as hypocritical pedophiles, religious fanatics and violent.
In The
Kite Runner, the protagonist grows up in a household full of men, Baba, Ali
and Hassan. Amir’s mother died giving birth to him where as Hassan’s eloped.
Baba is an Afghan Pathan who represents robust masculinity. His
masculinity is manifested through his economic power, success in business, his
interest in Soccer and other ‘masculine’ sports, his interest in politics, his
stoicism and to some extend his misogyny since he is living without a woman for
many years.
However, from
the beginning of the novel, we find Amir’s yearning for a female presence in
the house. Due to the formidable character of his father, Amir fears to reveal
his longing. He tries to compensate this lack of his motherly love and
touch by reading his mother’s books and writing poems and stories himself.
However, this avocation of Amir creates a rift between father and son as the
former does not regard poetry writing as manly activities. Baba, who has been a
champion in kite fighting and soccer, thinks “real men didn’t read poetry…Real
men—real boys—played soccer!”(17).
The rift between father and son gets filled somehow in California as
their subject positions get changed there. Amir pursues creative writing course
in the university, falls in love with Soraya and ultimately becomes a writer.
In his transition to adulthood, Amir also transitions from one family to
another. After the demise of his father, he shifts to along with his wife to
his own house. However, Soraya is unable to conceive. After numerous tests
doctors cannot explain why they cannot have a child. To an Afghan, it meant
that there is every chance of remarriage. But Amir decides to go against Afghan
societal rules and settles with Soraya. After he listens to Soraya’s past he is
ready to forgive her and is not bothered about her past love life. He is a
liberal Afghan of new generation who believes in freedom of women and equality
of rights.
Following Rahim
Khan’s phone call, he goes to Pakistan and he finds that unknown to him, Baba
had fathered Hassan. This realization shocks Amir but he forgives his father
and performs the duty of a son by not only saving Sohrab, his half- brother
Hassan’s son, but by adopting him, thus atoning for his sin and his father’s
too, and thus performing a duty of a matured son. His model of manhood is non
violent and forgiving. He not only forgives Soraya for her past but when Rahim
Khan says “forgive your father if you can. Forgive me if you wish. Most
importantly forgive yourself” (302), he forgives them all as well.
Thus, The Kite Runner shows the conflict between
the traditional notion of masculinity and its modern practice. From a
traditional hegemonic perspective, masculine man is free of any feminine
traits, including weakness, passivity and subordination. However, in actuality,
the tactics to remain masculine have changed as cultural norms change with the
addition of traits such as vulnerability and sensitivity, which are regarded as
typical feminine traits. Sociologist Craig reinforces this concept of changing
masculine standards with his definition of masculinity, “The meaning of
masculinity is not predetermined or hidden. It is in society because it is of
society. It can be altered, shaped and molded. Ours to do what we will” (153).
My attempt in this research work verges upon demonstrating
the limitations and flexibility of the notion of masculinity which if we look
from traditional parameter, becomes one-sided and lopsided. As Craig says, the
old version of the masculine man was “serious, upright, stoic, brawny, and
ignored family responsibility” (153).
However, with the 19th century came a crisis in masculinity.
Industrial revolution bruised the male ego because the body was no longer
needed for hard labor. The brawn that once defined the working man diminished
and those males that were dependent upon muscles to define their male role were
left in crisis. During 1940s and 50s, different version of masculinity emerged
in the west. Hippy movement projected different image of man. The 1990s marked
the emergence of the ‘new man’, a man who had a right to be self-expressive and
self-indulgent and to love and be loved. “The new man may be artistic or
intimate and still considered masculine, as long as he had inner strength,
because it is still inner strength that determines one’s masculinity,” writes
Craig (153). In The Kite Runner, Amir stands for this ‘new man’: he is
emotional, artistic, less athletic, and forgiving. He defies traditional Afghan model of manhood
which necessitates a man to inhibit his emotion, to practice misogyny, and to
suppress the inferiors.
Michael Kimmel also argues that we need a new definition
of masculinity in this new century, “a definition that is more about the
character of men’s hearts and the depths of their souls rather than the size of
their biceps, wallets, or penises; a definition that is capable of embracing
differences among men and enabling other men to feel secure and confident
rather than marginalized or excluded” (254). He further writes “we need men who
are secure enough in their convictions to recognize a mistake, courageous
enough to be compassionate, fiercely egalitarian and powerful enough for
holding others up rather than pushing them down” (255).
When The Kite Runner was published in 2003, it
clicked so powerfully with the American audiences. After the success of various
civil rights movements in 1960s, a new image of man came to prominence: a man
with inner strength and who shunned violence. Mahatma Gandhi in India, Martin
Luther King Jr. in America and Nelson Mandela in South Africa stood for
different non-violent, non-traditional model of manhood. When the novel was
published, America was going through the traumatic experience of Taliban attack
in Twin Towers. Following the attack America used the rhetoric of masculinity
to rationalize violence and their retaliatory actions against Talibans in
Afghanstan. Jasbir Puar and Amit Rai write: “The U.S. State, having experienced
a castration penetration of its capitalist masculinity, offers up narratives of
emasculation as appropriate punishment for Bin Laden, brown-skinned folks, and
men in turbans” (126). Americans
condemned the attacks on Twin Tower but protested the State’s attack on Afghanistan
as well. They protested the hypermasculine role of the USA and the Talibans in
Afghanistan (Noami Ektins, 9). For example, Noam Chomsky criticized the US as a
‘leading terrorist state” (9/11, 38) for its policy against Afghanistan.
When the novel was published, the readers identified themselves with the
hero Amir who imbibes feminine behaviors that results in life-supporting
actions. He is more feminine, less belligerent, more forgiving, more artistic
and of course protective as evidenced by his rescue of Sohrab.
However, the novel was criticized “for its false representation of
the Afghan society” (Janette Edwards 5). Edwards notes how the parallels
between author and character seem to position Hosseini himself as an outsider
to Afghan identity. Through interviews with Afghan-Americans, Edwards exposes
the view of Hosseini as a “guy in America […] whose voice […] is inauthentic
and whose motives are suspect” (5). Edwards explains that
Hosseini was a diplomat’s child who had, in all likelihood, spent most of
his life outside of Afghanistan before emigrating to the United States. His
early separation from his homeland and the fact of his reckless devising of
characters and situations that would certainly pit neighbor against neighbor back
in Afghanistan [demonstrate that he did not] really know the fabric of the
society […] about which he wrote. (5)
Edwards quotes Hosseini’s response to
criticisms of The Kite Runner: “I guess it’s my Western sensibility, now
that I’ve lived here for so long, that I feel like these are the things we
should talk about” (qtd. in Edwards 8).
Reviews of the novel have not been
uniform. While some have hailed the novel for its insightful portrayal
of an “obscure nation’s” recent history (Publisher’s Weekly), others have cited its failure to provide a complete
picture of the twenty years that it spans. According to these critics, the
history is incomplete as it leaves out relevant details during the time period when
Amir immigrated to the USA. It fails to detail the reason behind the rise of
the Taliban in Afghanistan. According to Aubrey, in a book which arguably aims
to break through stereotypes and misconceptions, “an unrealistic, demonizing
portrait” is painted of the Taliban, which “de-emphasizes the historical
conditions that help account for their emergence” (34).
Some reviewers lauded the novel for its ethnographic value
as it was the first Afghan novel in the West written in English; The Kite
Runner teaches the non-Afghan readers about the history and culture of
Afghanistan. Hosseini himself said, the novel is really about “finally putting
a human face to the Afghans” (qtd. in Jefferss 389). Ruth R. Caillouet also
argues the novel is a useful medium for the American students to get familiar
with the faraway African culture. He writes thus:
The Kite Runner is filled with details of the culture and society of
Afghani people. Hosseini includes depth and description of the city and of its
people. Students enjoy hearing about the attention to sports and the details about
food as well as explanation of Amir’s school year. Winter vacation, instead of
summer, is certainly a new twist for American students. The preparation and
techniques of kite fights, enhanced by Hosseini’s description of the
competitions, bring the kite festival to life for readers. (English Journal
31)
According to
Caillouet The Kite Runner has provided a contradiction to the previously
held assumption about Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan. It has offered
an alternative means of learning about the nature and culture of the people of
Afghanistan. The images and impressions
American students have been receiving are “distorting the lives and realities
of Middle Eastern people” (Webb 88). So this novel is an opportunity for
American students to consider the humanity behind the media hype. Mashael Al-Sudeary writes: “Hosseini has
enraptured readers not only in the West but all over the world, who no longer
flinch at the name of Afghanistan, but are striving to be familiar with the
sympathetic to its multitudinous problems and conflicts” (247). He further writes,
the novel “rectifies the narrow views of the West and opens up new vistas for
the East” (247). Similarly, Timothy Aubrey writes: “The Kite Runner
seems to only activate the desire to overcome or elude partisan, ethnic,
religious, and national divisions” (26).
Drawing on
Hayden White’s theory (Metahistory: A Historical Imagination 1973) that
all literature, in certain sense, is always history, new historicist critic Mashel
Al-Sudeary, writes:
As the personal and political intertwine in the narrative, Amir’s
tragic relationship with his father and Hassan becomes symptomatic of the
political struggles in Afghanistan. … Amir and Hassan’s and Amir and Baba’s
distorted relationships become representative of the social and religious
struggles of the country. (243)
According
to him, the betrayal and sacrifice in the interpersonal relationships run
parallel to the events taking shape in the country.
The novel has also been commended for the way in which it
transcends the locality of its setting to provide a universal and a familiar
narrative. One reviewer writes: “Rather than settle for a coming-of-age or
travails-of-immigrants story, Hosseini has folded them both into this searing spectacle
of hard-won personal salvation. All this, and a rich slice of Afghan culture
too: irresistible” (Review 630). Similarly, Jeferess describes the novel as “a
political allegory of a global ethics” (392):
The narrative of The Kite Runner is
allegorical in the sense that the story is concerned primarily with moral
questions regarding responsibility and intervention, and it reflects or is
translatable into contemporary ethical-political discourse of humanitarianism
and globalized identities. (394)
Critics like Robb Cline criticize this debut novel of Hossini
for its lack of literary finesse. According
to him, The Kite Runner “should
be a disaster as a novel” because it is filled with “stock characters
traversing a tired plot driven by well-worn themes, not-so-surprising plot
twist and several staggering coincidences” (263). However, Ronny Noor in World Literature Today
writes:
This
lucidly written and often touching novel gives a vivid picture not only the
Russian atrocities but also those of Northern Alliance and the Taliban…we get a
selective, simplistic, even minded picture of the [Afghan Conflict]. Hosseini
tells, for example, that “Arabs, Chechens, Pakistanis” were behind the Taliban.
He does not mention the CIA or Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security
advisor to President Carter, ‘whose stated aim,’ according to Pankaj Mishra in
the Spring 2002 issue of Granta, “was to ‘sow shit in the Soviet backyard.”’ (148)
Alexandra Bailey, drawing on a study
of Julia Kristeva and her thoughts on Jacques Lacan, argues:
Amir’s sacrifice of Hasan at the scene of
the rape is a result of his fall out of the symbolic order […] [T]he
protagonist pursues a creative, self-inflicted abjection or subject/object
dismissal that celebrates the positive possible outcomes of boundary failure,
or the failure of the individual to conceive of him/herself as a subject within
a Symbolic economy. Supporting a less logo-centric conception of the world,
Amir learns to see and to contribute to that aspect of Afgan national identity
which figures subjecthood as effacing of the self/other binary. (2)
All these ideas suggest that The Kite Runner
is open and can be interpreted from multiple perspectives. Using the
theoretical insights from masculinities studies, this research work will first
highlight the multiple and conflicting masculinities operating in the novel. First I will identify instances of dominant masculinity of
Baba and other Pashtuns and then show how other characters who do not meet the
ideal of dominant masculinity have been emasculated. Most importantly, the
research will underscore Amir’s defiance of the traditional codes of manliness
by performing a benevolent and liberal model of masculinity. In the final
chapter, outcome of the thesis will be stated briefly.
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