The Kite Runner: A Mythic Tradition

Stories of youthful passage into maturity abound in the history of the novel. We all remember Jane Austen’s disenfranchised young women, Charles Dickens’ exploited youngsters, Alice Walker’s African American youth, and of course, J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield. Even today, Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker perpetuate these quest stories in film and print. Now, hundreds of thousands of contemporary readers worldwide have immersed themselves in the journey of Amir in his passage from callous youth to deeply redemptive adult in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. So universal is this concern that world–renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell identified it as a “monomyth,” or common narrative pattern that lies underneath the actual details of the story and links it to all other rite of passage tales. This monomyth generally follows several cycles of “separation” and “initiation” to arrive, finally, at “return.”  What follows is a review of just how powerfully The Kite Runner fulfills the monomyth structure and thereby captures the hearts and minds of a phenomenally large readership in the contemporary world.

Set in late 20th Century Afghanistan, The Kite Runner recounts the journey of Amir, the son of wealthy businessman (Baba), and the adventures he shares with Hassan, the son of his father’s servant. Amir believes Baba strangely favors Hassan and so strives to gain his father’s approval, mostly by becoming a champion “kite fighter” in the local competition. Hassan, the “kite runner,” recovers all the trophy kites, battle tokens cut free in free-flight encounters, endearing himself to Amir by selfless devotion and skill at recovering kites. Thus Amir is deeply troubled when he cowardly watches Hassan’s rape by a vicious, neo-Nazi youth, Assef, a reprisal for Hassan’s refusal to surrender the championship kite. This betrayal, the first “separation,” marks the first of several contentions between Amir and others that he must resolve as rites of passage from youthful fecklessness to mature self control.

Following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Baba and Amir escape first to Pakistan and then to Freemont, California, leaving behind their luxurious life and descending into humble immigrant underclass life. In terms of the monomyth, this is Amir’s second separation and it sets the stage for his next initiations, which involve helping his father earn money and fashioning his skills as a writer. Planning a literary life, Amir separates from his prior life and initiates into a new one when he meets Soraya, who will be his partner in the grand journey of life. Baba, dying of lung cancer, arranges their Afghan marriage, enabling a return to tradition, wherein the father and son become at-one in mythic atonement. After Baba’s death, Amir slowly becomes a very successful novelist, fulfilling his initiation and returning with a new status in life.
Fifteen years have passed when Amir receives a phone call from his old friend Rahim Khan offering him a cryptic redemption: “there is a way for you to be good again.” Specifically, Rahim asks him to rescue Hassan’s orphaned son, Sohrab, from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.  In answer to this mythic call, Amir separates himself from his comfortable life and undertakes a new set of trials, including a monster battle with Assef, his youthful nemesis, now a powerful Taliban official. It is only after he has rescued Hassan’s son, when Amir lovingly reminisces about Hassan’s kite fighting skills with Sohrab, that he fulfills the mythic at-one-ment wherein father-brother-son blend as one.

Khaled Hosseini’s novel thus fuses all the factual tribulations facing Afghanistan, one of the most dangerous places in the world, with a universal plot of self discovery. It is a novel well worth reading.

-- Ron Evans, Professor Emeritus, UWF Department of English