Monthly Archives: May 2008

Amir and Afghanistan

The curious thing was, I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either. Not in the usual sense, anyhow. Never mind that we taught each other to ride a bicycle with no hands, or to build a fully functional homemade camera out of a cardboard box. Never mind that we spent entire winters flying kites, running kites …

… Never mind any of those things. Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was a Sunni and he was Shi’a and nothing was going to change that. Nothing.

In this novel Amir’s battle with his own behaviour and conscience is his greatest challenge. It can be seen as a parallel to Afghanistan’s present struggle to establish a clear identity as it is besieged by outsiders. The Kite Runner tells a fascinating story about a culture and country which has been viewed through stereotype and misconception.

It is not until Amir has lived in the United States that he is able to look at Afghanistan and himself more objectively.

Language that makes you say OMG

hahaha. lulz

A new Pew Research Centre study polled 12- to 17-year-olds about writing and 38% said they let chat-speak — such as LOL (for “laughing out loud”), ROFL (”rolling on the floor laughing”), BRB (”be right back”), TTYL (”talk to ya later”) — slip into their school work. I saw this great article by Mary Kolesnikova in the Los Angeles Times about how teens are letting emoticons and other forms of chat-speak slip into their essays and homework.

Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between a person LOLing and crying — but I am definitely weeping. The cause for my earth-shattering depression is an April 25 Pew Research Center study that polled 12- to 17-year-olds on their attitudes about writing. A heart-stopping 38% said they let chat-speak — such as LOL (for “laughing out loud”), ROFL (“rolling on the floor laughing”), BRB (“be right back”), TTYL (“talk to ya later”) — slip into essays and homework.

I propose a new chat term: KMN. “Kill me now.”

I’m an occasional tutor in San Francisco public schools with 826 Valencia, a writing-based community outreach program, and I have seen some linguistic horrors in the trenches. I’ve been asked how to spell “here” and “one” by high school seniors and seen more your/you’re, there/their, to/too mix-ups than a homophone workbook. But at least those students were using actual words. I dread my first encounter with text-speak, but I know it’s coming: “Marcel Marceau lived in France and totally brought the LOLz.” Even more gut-tossing is the fact that 25% of teens in the Pew study have used emoticons on tests, homework and essays. Oh, imagine the history papers: “When President Abe Lincoln was gatted, the whole country was =(, even though some in the South must have been =P.”

KMN, KMN, KMN.

Read the rest here.

Kites in Afghanistan

Kite flying in Afghanistan symbolises national pride, history, independence, pride and religion. In Afghanistan kite flying competitions reward the kite that destroys the opposition. In kite fighting competitions the objective is to cut the string of all other kites to leave only one kite flying.

Kite flying was one of the first activities that the Taliban banned.

The Kite Runner as a Coming-of-Age story

I had one last chance to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan-the way he’d stood up for me all those times in the past-and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run. In the end, I ran.

This was the end of innocence in Amir’s life. The Kite Runner is a coming-of-age or loss-of-experience novel, the type of book often read by teenagers. It is a popular genre because it continually speaks to the human condition. Similar novels that you may have read in English are Montana 1948, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye. Often these novels are written from the male perspective, as is The Kite Runner but you may have read parallels from a female perspective such as Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees.

The Kite Runner has some things in common with other stories of loss of innocence and coming of age. Before the pivotal event of Hassan’s rape Amir lived in relative innocence. Amir’s world is one of school and home, movies and kites, friends and bullies, and wanting to please Baba. Most of his thoughts are focused on himself: his desire to win the kite fighting competition; his selfish, self-centred, and sometimes cruel treatment of Hassan. On the same day that his innocence was taken away, he thought the greatest thing in life was a kite fighting victory that would ensure a happy ending for him. Amir was just starting to think about real issues in life – his faith and the complex meaning of relationships and friendships, when the fateful day of both victory and defeat changed his life forever. Growing up was no longer gradual-he was thrust into adulthood.

Typically in coming-of-age stories some sort of journey takes place. In The Kite Runner, the tension builds as Amir searches for Hassan. In fact, the tension has built up throughout the day. Even the kite itself can be seen as a metaphor for the journey, an attempt to flee while staying helplessly rooted in one place, a sense of detachment in a surreal world. In an indication of what is to come, Amir experiences this detachment at the moment of victory:

I opened my eyes, saw the blue kite spinning wildly like a tyre come loose from a speeding car. I blinked, tried to say something. Nothing came out. Suddenly I was hovering, looking down on myself from above. Black leather coat, red scarf, faded jeans. A thin boy, a little sallow, and a tad short for his twelve years. He had narrow shoulders and a hint of dark circles around his pale hazel eyes. The breeze rustled his light brown hair. He looked up to me and we smiled at each other.

Amir’s journey is not complete until it goes full circle. He makes the journey to America, back to Afghanistan and then back to his life in America before the events of that fateful day are resolved.

The beginning of The Kite Runner

The video is the first of our Kite Runner clips, I will post all of them so make sure that you have created your soundtracks!

This one is about the opening of the novel. In this clip we listen to the adult Amir who recalls his childhood, his past of “unatoned sins”. He thinks of the moment in the winter of 1975 when he was twelve years old and his life changed forever. It introduces to the the reader the subject of the narrative. In the novel we note that Amir is in San Francisco watching kite flying. There is an image of a pair of kites “floating side by side”, note its significance. Also note that two of the novel’s major themes – friendship and redemption are introduced right at the start of the book. See that Hosseini uses this brief juxtaposition of past and present and the contrasts of America and Afghanistan to alert readers to the oppositions of time and place which will underpin the story.