对自由的追求《追风筝的人》主题分析(2)
4。3 The Social Oppression in Afghanistan 17
V。 Conclusion 19
Bibliography 21
The Pursuit of Freedom—A Study on the Theme in The Kite Runner
I。 Introduction
Khaled Hosseini is one of the most widely read and popular novelists all over the world。 He was an Afghan-American novelist。 In 1965, Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan。 His father was a diplomat, and this job mobility rendered him lots of writing material。 His mother was a teacher in Kabul girls’ school, which developed him a habit of writing。 After 1973, the regime in Afghanistan was no longer stable—regime change and foreign intervention。 Under these circumstances, Hosseini’s wonderful childhood was over。 In 1976, Hosseini’s father found a job in Paris, so the whole family moved to Paris and never returned back。 In 1980, the Soviet invaded Afghanistan, so his father applied for political asylum in America, and he later became an American citizen。 His life experience in Afghanistan made his description on Afghanistan much more persuasive。论文网
Based on the social environment and personal experience, Hosseini published his first novel The Kite Runner。 Library Journal gave a comment on this novel: “It provides a vivid glimpse of life in Afghanistan over the past quarter century, the character of Amir and his father, their relationships and the relationship of Hassan and Amir are all carefully and convincingly described and developed, which made people from all over the world have a new understanding of Afghanistan” (David, 2009)。 Hosseini set the story in the tumultuous events, from the fall of Afghanistan’s monarchy under the force reign of Taliban。 And the book mainly tells a story about two brothers—Amir, a young master of the house, and Hassan, a young servant。 Due to the social system and racial discrimination in Afghanistan, Hassan lived a terrible life and never enjoyed freedom throughout his life while Amir enjoyed many privileges and lived an extremely rich life。 Because of the differences in social and ethical background, Amir committed a great deal of bad things to Hassan, so he felt guilty with the time passing by。 In order to give himself relieved, Amir risked his life to Afghanistan from America, and finally rescued Hassan’s son, Sohrab。
Many domestic and oversea experts together with scholars have been devoted to studying it。 Researches on this novel mainly focus on the literary theme of “growth” and “salvation”。 Take Ding Shouyi’s thesis as an example, she thinks Amir’s life experience is a story of initiation and redemption in her thesis “An Analysis of The Kite Runner as Bildungsroman” (Ding，2013)。 And in Chen Da’s article “The Process of Self-salvation: A Psychological Read of The Kite Runner”, he analyzes the protagonist’s sins and redemption, so that it embodies the relationship between the self and the other (Chen, 2014)。 In addition, in Kang Qian’s thesis “External Growth and Inner Redemption—On Amir’s Journey in The Kite Runner”, she elaborates the theme of “growth” and “salvation” according to Amir’s journey (Kang, 2011)。 All the previous studies inspire the author to write this thesis。 Meanwhile, there is still a broad space to conduct further research on The Kite Runner。 This thesis attempts to have a different theme analysis—the pursuit of freedom。
This thesis is pided into five parts。 The first part is a brief introduction to the author Khaled Hosseini and The Kite Runner。 The next part elaborates people’s pursuit of physical and spiritual freedom with some specific instances。 The following part focuses on the description of most Afghans’ real situations: their pursuit of freedom is oppressed both physically and spiritually。 The oppressed pursuit of physical freedom can be seen from personal bondage and human trafficking; and the oppressed pursuit of spiritual freedom is illustrated from two generations。 Part Four explains why people’s pursuit of freedom is oppressed。 This part puts three reasons: the racial discrimination, the gender discrimination as well as the social class oppression。 And in the last part, the author draws a conclusion of the whole article。