A Spiritual Journey To Redemption-A Bildungsroman Perspective To The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner is the first novel of Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Since its first publication in June 2003, it has been sold over ten million copies in the past seven years and translated into forty-eight languages. The novel has been the best choice for French Book Club and the recommended book of American Library Association in 2006, the author, Khaled Hosseini, due to this novel, receives the favorable comments and the widespread attention as well.The Kite Runner is a tale of the experience of an Afghan-American immigrant's friendship, betrayal and redemption in the first-person perspective. So far,the research articles about it mainly focus on the following perspectives, kite images, portrait of Hassan, religious disputes, racial discrimination, redemption and human nature return. Although this novel seems involved a variety of topics, one theme running throughout the book is personal growth—a boy overcomes his darkness of human nature, and finally grows into a virtuous, righteous, courageous and mature person.Through analyzing the redemption journey and growing experiences of the protagonist, this thesis mainly deals with how the protagonist understands his past mistakes in his thoughts and actions, and with some internal and external impetus, how he gradually overcomes his flaws and grows matures through the redemption.Bildungsroman is a type of literature, which first originated in Germany and then spred into Europe, the US, or even the whole world. Generally speaking, this type of novels is educational, and may give one an uplifting power and stimulate one's keen desire to be a good person. In this novel, Hosseini focuses on developing the main character, Amir, portraying his inner struggles and growth. Meanwhile, he creates a positive, respectable image of Hassan, a Hazara boy who was humble and kind, suffered from the racial discrimination. Through the depiction of a scene that Amir indifferently witnessed Hassan being attacked and raped by some bully but failed to intervene, the readers feel sympathy for the characters in the story, and may think it is reasonable for the story setting. In addition, a list of things that the protagonist experienced all contribute to the protagonist's growth, such as the invasion of the Soviet Union, the wreak havoc of Taliban, Baba's heroic behavior on the way to Pakistan, the hard life in America, and the final duel with Assef.In order to well depict the growing experiences of the protagonist, the author creates the kite images by using a literary device—symbol, hence the readers can better understand the initiation theme of this story. In the novel, Amir seemed to think his father was blaming him for his mother's death, thus he decided to participate in the annual kite tournament in order to earn father's love. Here, the kite symbolizes the protagonist's ideal in his childhood that is earning his father's love. Finally, Amir cut the last blue kite and got the first place in the tournament while Hassan was the very person who would run to get the kite. On his way back with the kite, Hassan was cornered and raped by Assef and his henchmen for refusing to give up Amir's kite. Amir wondered why the kite was taking so long to run, so he looked for Hassan and witnessed the entire rape incident but he was too frightened to try to help Hassan. He ran away, and when he saw Hassan a short time later he pretended not to know what happened. After that, Amir felt ashamed by his weakness and Hassan's loyal behavior in refusing to give the kite up. Finally, he forced Hassan to leave by framing him for theft, to get away from the source of his guilt. Soon Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviet Union, Amir and his father fled to America, however, he was hunted by his past behavior in his childhood. Twenty-six years later, for redemption, Amir rescued Hassan's son Sohrab in Kabul, fighting against his sworn enemy, Taliban member Assef. Eventually he rescued Sohrab from Assef and made an effort to adopt Sohrab. At the end of this novel, Amir and Sohrab flied the kite in a different country, and he gained Sohrab's full trust, which demonstrates that he had found a way to be good again, to redeem the past guilt for himself. Thus, the flying kite symbolizes not only ideal and humanity return, but also a real growth of the protagonist.