A Thematic Study Of The Kite Runner From Trauma Theory

Khaled Hosseini(1965-), the Afghan American writer, displays a road of an Afghan boy tomanhood with his simple and unadorned description in his first novel, The Kite Runner.In his works, Hosseini has attached great attention to love, betrayal and redemption betweenpeople. In The Kite Runner, the author conveys a profound description of a story that on theAfghan land overflown with splendid culture yet tortured by wars and poverty, after havingsuffered the family alienation, betrayal, coup, foreign invasion, and Taliban ruling, theprotagonist Amir eventually chooses to confront the past, and sets out stepping on the path toredemption.Amir’s road of betrayal-redemption is the very reflection of the process of healing trauma inTrauma Theory. Therefore, based on the Trauma Theory, this thesis intends to make its cut-in atthe cultural and individual traumas in Amir, dissecting the undetectable influences that culturaltrauma imposes on Amir’s consciousness and the functions that the family environment exerts onthe personality development and identity construction. It aims to reveal that psychologicaltrauma is a consequence of joint efforts of complex external and internal factors. The thesisfocuses on that after having experienced traumas from culture and personal experience, Amirencounters the self isolation and community alienation, the disintegration between past andpresent, and the confusion in the process of identity construction. The thesis makes furtherefforts to explore how Amir redeems himself via mental breakthrough, identity construction andrelationship with community reconnection to overcome his traumas.By analyzing the course of trauma-healing in The Kite Runner, the thesis demonstrates that inhis way to redemption, Amir transforms the misfortune to a motivation for a brighter future byendowing traumatic experiences with positive meaning, so that the traumas in him can be healedand higher ideological comprehension can be gained than that in ordinary people. The betrayal–redemption in Hosseini’s writing implies his concern and retrospection about the currentsituation in Afghanistan, as well as expectations for future in the hope of arousing the universalattention on Afghanistan.