KR critics Flashcards
(61 cards)
1
Q
How does the imagery of infertility in Amir’s personal life relate to Afghanistan?
A
- It reflects the bareness of Afghanistan; it has been robbed of culture, tradition and hope.
- Amir’s ‘way to be good again’ is not just salvation for him and Sohrab, but for the whole country.
2
Q
How does the pomegranate tree mirror their relationship?
A
- It is fecund and fruitful in the beginning, with their name inscribed in it.
- They eat fruit from it and read beneath it.
- The pomegranate tree is a symbol of fertility - both agriculturally and reproductively - in many cultures.
3
Q
How does the image of the pomegranate tree shift after the assault of Hassan?
A
- The pomegranates are then described as ‘bloodred’.
- Amir ‘hurled’ the pomegranates at Hassan. He does not fight back, instead crushing the ‘overripe’ fruit on his own head: ‘red dripping down his face like blood’.
- ‘look of the lamb’
4
Q
Why is the timing of the destruction of Hassan and Amir’s relationship relevant?
A
- Occurs in winter, connotes sterility, bitterness, lifelessness etc.
- The first 12 years feel like a ‘long lazy summer’, but the unforgiving winter of 1975 brings this to a halt.
- Monochromatic
5
Q
How is the setting effective on the day of the kite running tournament?
A
- a ‘frigid’ day, overcast with clear foreshadowing of what is to come.
- The sky was a ‘blameless blue’, and the lush hills are ‘buried under a foot of snow’.
- Mulberry trees were ‘stunted’ and verdant conifers ‘froze’, even the evergreen ‘snow-burdened cypress’ struggles.
6
Q
How does Amir invoke the idea of seasons to express his desire for redemption?
A
‘for the first time in my life, I couldn’t wait for spring.’
7
Q
How is Afghanistan’s denigration reflected in its bareness?
A
- ‘leafless poplar trees’, ‘bare pines’, ‘no grass at all’.
8
Q
What does Amir note when he returns to the pomegranate tree?
A
- ‘looking at the wilted, leafless tree, I doubted it ever would bear fruit again. I stood under it, remembered all the times we’d climbed, straddled its branches’
9
Q
How does Amir describe the pomegranate tree when he returns to Afghanistan?
A
‘wilted, leafless tree’
‘I doubted it would ever bear fruit again’
10
Q
How does Hassan depict the pomegranate tree in his letter to Amir?
A
- ‘The droughts have dried the hill and the tree hasn’t borne fruit in years… Sohrab and I still sit under its shade and I read to him’
11
Q
What is interesting about Hassan’s letter to Amir?
A
- He has learned to read and write.
- Unlike Soraya, Amir never even considered helping him to achieve this.
12
Q
How does Amir’s winter of discontent come to an end?
‘when spring comes it melts…
A
…snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting’
- Sohrab enters his life, ending his childlessness.
13
Q
In what ways does Baba find America to be infertile?
A
- ‘the fruit was never sweet enough, the water never clean enough, and where were all the trees and open fields?’
14
Q
Why is America a respite for Amir?
A
- It is an escape from his ‘past of unatoned sins’, America is a ‘river, roaring along’ in which he can let his ‘sins drown to the bottom’. He is carried to ‘someplace with no ghosts, no memories and no sins’
15
Q
How does Amir’s description of America as a respite show its impermanence?
A
- Use of conditional: ‘could’
- Use of ‘let’, implying a sense of fantasy
- List of negatives is highly disingenuous.
16
Q
How do Baba and General Taheri cope with living in America?
A
- The create an Afghanistan in America, a hallucination of a country which no longer exists elsewhere.
- They see it as a ‘temporary interruption’ to their normal way of life.
17
Q
What did Baba aim to achieve in building his orphanage?
A
- The easing of his guilt and placating of his conscience about Hassan.
- It is destroyed, as Hosseini once again overturns places of safety and sanctuary to create a sense of loss and despair.
18
Q
What euphemism is used to describe the dead children in Baba’s destroyed orphanage?
A
- ‘Collateral damage’.
- People are ‘sifting through the rubble of that orphanage’, finding the ‘body parts of children’.
19
Q
How does Hosseini use orphanages other than Baba’s to create a sense of disappearing safety?
A
- Assef uses the one where Sohrab was to source children for sexual abuse.
- Sohrab’s suicide attempt demonstrates the terrors they have endured.
20
Q
How does the teacher’s reaction to Amir’s mentioning of Shi’a people show entrenched prejudice?
A
- He ‘snickered’ and ‘wrinkled his nose’, like it was ‘some kind of disease’.
21
Q
What aspects of the depiction of the US does O’Rourke find unappealing?
A
- ‘Hosseini wisely steers clear of merely exoticising Afghanistan as a monolithically foreign place, he does so much work to make it emotionally accessible… that there is almost no room for us to consider… what might differentiate Afghans and Americans.’
22
Q
What can be said about the accessibility of the characters?
A
- Assef is an archetypal villain, embodying all the mainstays of what can be considered evil: Nazism, paedophilia, rape and genocide.
23
Q
How is America depicted?
A
Lacking nuance, a simplified and liberal haven.
24
Q
How does Hosseini glorify American foreign policy?
A
- The boys go to see the Magnificent Seven in which farmers and cowboys unite to defend their village.
- Reflects the American saviour complex, he seems to be placating American pallates.
25
What is significant about Assef joining the Taliban?
- He is an enemy made within, catalysed by the country's ethnic tensions.
26
What is problematic about Amir's pastoral and harmonious childhood?
- from his perspective it may have been this way, but Hassan and Ali's servitude is inescapable and they lack a voice
27
How do radical fundamentalists defend their cruelty and brutality?
- Assef says God wanted him to 'live for a reason'
- In Ghazi stadium, the preacher states that 'God says that every sinner must be punished'
28
Hassan is an accessory to Amir at all times, how can his experience of wealth, and arguably joy, be described?
- He enjoys success vicariously through Amir's success at the kite fighting tournament.
- The same can be said about his experience of wealth and privilege
29
How is Amir redeemed?
- Not through his fight with Assef, but by offering Sohrab an equal chance at attaining success and happiness regardless of his ethnicity.
- This is exemplified by his anger at General Taheri, he will not allow him to refer to him as 'Hazara boy'.
30
What is the oxymoronic nature of Taliban violence?
It is both discriminate (the massacre of Hazaras at Mazar-i-Sharif, towards women etc) and indiscriminate (slaughtering, torturing, abusing innocent people needlessly)
31
How does Rahim Khan show a true understanding of the nature of God and forgiveness?
- He says in his final letter: 'I know that in the end, God will forgive. He will forgive your father, me and you too... Forgive your father if you can. Forgive me if you wish. But most important, forgive yourself'.
- Amir must forgive himself, his inability to do so has been destructive.
- God is merciful; it is people who are not.
32
What is the significance of the ending of 'The Kite Runner'?
- Amir takes on Hassan's childhood role of the kite runner, demonstrating his adoption of Hassan's devotion, patience and self-sacrifice.
- This demonstrates his commitment to Sohrab, and the extent of his redemption.
- 'In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was a Sunni and he was a Shi'a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.' He overcomes this.
33
What line of Baba's proves true for Amir in the long run?
Baba says that a boy who doesn’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything. As a boy, Amir fails to stand up for himself and Hassan. As an adult, he can only redeem himself by proving he has the courage to stand up for what is right.
34
How does Assef exemplify his motivations for acting as he does?
Assef, who becomes a Taliban leader, justifies his murder of Hazaras as “virtuous” and truly believes he is “doing God’s work.”
35
How does Assef's religious zealotry manifest itself?
- Fear mongering and abuse
- arguably he adopts zealotry in an attempt to guise his villainy as something other than pure psychopathy. It is a convenient excuse to wield power.
36
How does Assef portray Hazaras?
Assef compares Hazaras to garbage littering the “beautiful mansion” of Afghanistan, and he takes it upon himself to “take out the garbage” by murdering those he views as second-class citizens.
37
What does Amir do to finally challenge implicit racism?
Amir finally publicly rejects his implicit racism when he instructs General Taheri that the General can never refer to Sohrab as “Hazara boy” again.
38
Why is rape a crucial motif in the play?
- Hassan’s rape is the source of Amir’s guilt, which motivates his search for redemption, while stopping Sohrab’s rape becomes Amir’s way of redeeming himself. In each case, rape is a critical element in the novel’s plot.
- There is also the scene in the lorry, when Baba shows Amir how he should have acted.
39
What literary movement is the Kite Runner a proponent of?
- post-modernism
- Because of the unreliable narrator
40
What is the cause of the division between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims?
- Sunni Muslims believe that descendants of any of the first 4 successors of Muhammad (Caliphs) can be seen as legitimate leaders of Islam.
- The Shi'a believe that only the descendants from Ali, the fourth Caliph, can be seen as legitimate.
41
Why is Amir's desire to live up to Baba's wishes/image futile?
- Amir mythologises Baba, and thus he is living up to an unreal precident.
42
How can 'The Kite Runner' be criticised for its overly simplistic moral framing?
1. Overly Simplistic Moral Framing: presents good and evil in a relatively black-and-white way, particularly with characters like Assef, who is almost cartoonishly evil. Critics might say this lacks the nuance of real human behaviour and oversimplifies complex political and social issues in Afghanistan.
43
How can The Kite Runner's naïve political and ideological representation be criticised?
It seems to be a Western-oriented narrative that simplifies Afghanistan’s rich and complicated history to fit a redemptive arc. Naïve/tailored to appeal to a non-Afghan, often Western, audience. The U.S. is portrayed as a safe haven while Afghanistan is largely shown as brutal and chaotic can feel reductive and one-sided, despite the US massive role in the conflict.
44
How can TKR's narrative/plot devices be criticised?
The story heavily relies on articial devices such as coincidence and melodrama (e.g., the orphan Sohrab being the son of Hassan, the Taliban captor turning out to be Assef). Come across as contrived or manipulative/inorganic.
45
Why is the depiction of Amir's narrative problematic?
Amir’s redemption through rescuing Sohrab is arguably too neat or emotionally convenient. Critics may say it simplifies the messy nature of guilt, trauma, and forgiveness. The idea that rescuing Sohrab somehow redeems Amir for his betrayal of Hassan could be seen as an unrealistic moral resolution.
46
What is ironic about Amir's betrayal of Hassan?
- In wanting to live up to Baba (who has become mythologised) he compromises every principle Baba wanted him to stand for.
47
What choice is Amir confronted with during Hassan's rape?
- To choose his father or Hassan
- in choosing his father he in fact loses them both
48
What is the significance of child Amir's voice in Chapter 7?
- It juxtaposes a moment of horrific brutality with his innocence.
- Also used by Joyce in 'An Encounter', arguably an SPP text which explores the danger of unchecked wanderlust/expectations. Also has sexual undertones.
49
Why is Rahim Khan's death arguably more important than Baba's to Amir?
- It facilitates his transition from weakness to strength: he knows his secret and can thus aid Amir in overcoming it.
50
How is the destruction of the orphanage in chapter 15 a synecdoche?
- It represents the suffering and abuse faced by Afghan children.
51
In what ways is Sohrab described like he is Amir and Hassan's son?
- He is the son Amir failed to have due to his infertility and he has the potential to fulfil Hassan's potential which Amir's actions denied.
52
How does the structure of TKR reflect Amir's moments of profound sadness/negative emotions?
- The structure of the language breaks down.
53
What is significant about Afghanistan's state of relative dilapidation?
- It reflects the turmoil and destruction of Amir's internal landscape, destroyed by guilt.
54
What is significant about the relationship between Amir and Sohrab and Ali and Hassan?
- Acts of love, care, and guidance are shown to be as, if not more, influential than blood ties.
55
How is Baba shown to be denigrated in America?
- He goes from being a 'six foot five' 'towering Pashtun specimen' to a vulnerable shell of his former self.
- 'The Bay Area smog stung his eyes, the traffic noise have him headaches, and the pollen made him sneeze' - he is incompatible with his environment and loves only the 'idea of America'.
56
Where is Baba buried? Why is this significant?
- In the 'small Muslim section' of the graveyard.
- Demonstrates their cultural alienation; sequestered.
57
What concepts still endure in the Afghan diaspora?
- Treatment of women
- General Taheri silences his wife and treats Soraya like damaged good/a child incapable of making her own decisions.
58
America is a '____ ______of the past'
river unmindful
59
How can Hosseini's depiction of America be described?
- Sanitised, designed to appease
60
What happens to Amir when Baba says he wished Hassan could have been at his graduation?
- 'a pair of steel hands closed around [his] windpipe at the sound of Hassan's name'
- It is interesting that Baba doesn't mention whether Hassan would also be graduating, or merely observing Amir's privilege
61
