"The Kite Runner"

 

1) How does the filmmaker "frame" the story? What words, images, events appear in the beginning and at the end?

The filmmaker frames the story with the image of a kite fight and the words “for you, a thousand times over.” In the beginning of the film, it is Amir flying the kite and when he cuts someone else’s and asks Hassan to bring the kite back for him, Hassan says “for you a thousand times over.” In the end of the film, Amir is showing Sohrab, Hassan’s son, some of his fathers old tricks, and after cutting someone else’s kite he runs to get it, turns around and tells Sohrab, “For you a thousand times over.” The similarity between those scenes functions as a reminder of how dedicated Hassan was to Amir, and that after all those years, Amir is honoring Hassan and showing that same dedication to Hassan’s son. It is a way to be good again. A way to be forgiven for the jealousy he felt toward Hassan as a child, and for not standing up for his friend/brother when he witnessed the terrible rape.

2) Why include the terrible rape of a child? Is rape used in a metaphorical sense in the film as well?

I think the rape symbolized a sort of rape of Hassan and Amir's friendship. The rape took away Hassan's dignity and innocence, and Amir's loyalty. After this event, their friendship no longer became possible, as Amir was overwhelmed with guilt at the idea of having witnessed the scene but not having done anything about it. He tries desperately to get rid of Hassan by displaying him as a thief. The rape could also be a symbol for the abuse of power, as the story is set during the time of the rise of the tyrannical Taliban government. The symbolism becomes yet stronger when we discover the Assef himself, Hassan's rapist, becomes a Taliban leader, and that he is doing the same aweful act to Hassan’s son, Sohrab.

3) Compare Amir and Hassan. What is Amir's problem? What are Hassan's strengths? Are they friends?

Amir and Hassan are both extremely different, but they both grow up together, to be great friends, until the terrible rape of Hassan. They both differ in social status. Amir is born into a privileged Pashtun family, and his mother died at childbirth. He is very literate and loves to write and read, to his father's deception, who thinks Amir is weak and lacks the qualities of a real man. Amir wants more than anything, his father's approval and understanding, and therefore partly resents Hassan for the attention Amir's father gives him. Hassan on the other hand is a poor Hazara, a minority class in Afghanistan at the time. He is a servant in Amir's home, and his fiercely loyal companion. Hassan is athletic and although illiterate, he is extremely intelligent. His loyalty is so strong that he fails to realize when Amir deceives him. He would do anything for Amir, his best friend.

4) What are Assef's issues? Did you expect him to return at the end of the film?

Assef is a bully that also comes from a wealthy family. He has a sadistic and fascist streak that he shows in the rape of the young Hassan, and further on in the rape of sohrab. Assef is thirsty for power and gets a thrill out of imposing himself on others. I did not expect him to return at the end of the film but I think that the fact that he does return, and that he is doing the same thing to Sohrab as he did to his father years ago when he was just a young boy, underlines the

5) What do you make of the relationship between Baba and Amir? Rahim Khan and Amir?

Baba and Amir have a difficult relationship. Baba expects Amir to be manly and more like him. At the beginning of the film he expresses his concerns about the boy because he is incapable of standing up for himself and more than once he has witnessed Hassan having to defend him from the bullies. Amir one day expresses his own concern to Rahim Khan. He thinks that his father Baba hates him for having "killed" his mother. Later in the film, when Amir graduates from college, the misunderstandings and false expectations between Baba and Amir are once again portrayed when Baba insists on Amir becoming a doctor. Amir has a gift for writing and is discomforted by Baba’s unwillingness to understand his desires and motivations. Rahim Khan acts as Amir's protector, someone the boy can confide in and trust. Someone he can also look up to. He encourages Amir in his writing and steps in several times when the misunderstandings between Amir and his father are creating tensions. The companionship between Amir and Rahim shows when Amir dedicates his book to the man, and writes “To Rahim Jan, who listened to my stories before I knew how to write.”

6) According to Baba, there is only one sin. What is it? What is ironic about this?

According to Baba, there is only one sin, and that is stealing. He says that every bad act that exists results from a form of stealing. When you kill, you are stealing a father from a child or a man from his wife, and when you lie, you are robbing someone of the truth. This is ironic because he himself lied to his two son’s about the nature of their relation. He never told Hassan or Amir that Hassan was his son that he had from a relationship with one of his servants, and they therefore never knew that they were brothers, until it was too late, and Hassan had passed.

7) What do Amir and Soraya have in common?

They are both Afghan and they both fled their countries when they were young because of the war, ending up being raised in America. They both also have or had somewhat strained relationships with their fathers. Soraya brought shame upon her family’s name when she ran away with an Afghan man at the age of 18. Her family found her and they had to move to California, creating huge conflict with her father, with whom she didn’t speak to for a very long time.

8) List the steps in Amir's redemption. What does he do to be good again?

To be good again, Amir goes to Kabul to find Hassan’s son Sohrab. He finds him in the hands of Assef, who has made the boy his slave. For the first time, Amir shows a sign of standing up for someone else and insists on leaving the Taliban’s house with Sohrab. Assef goes to beating him and reduces him to a helpless state until Sorhab uses his slingshot abilities to defeat Assef and allow them to make a run for their lives. Towards the ned of the movie, Amir once again stands up for the boy in front of his own father in law, when the general questions the necessity of having a Hazara boy live with his daughter, and the reputations this will give them among their neighbors.

9) What is the point of the scene with Amir, Assef and Sohrab toward the end of the film?

The scene shows the abus of power of the talibans at the time as Assef has clearly made of Sohrab his slave. It also shows the similarity between Hassan and Sorhab, when the young boy brandishes his slingshot against Assef and shoots him in the eye. Just like his gfather, Sohrab is a brave and dedicated person, and not afraid to stand up for his friends.

10) How do the following function symbolically: Kite flying, fighting, running; Sohrab's name; pomegranates and the pomegranate tree?

I think that the kite flying in the movie symbolizes friendship and companionship… Hassan and Amir share a moment of friendship when they fly their kites together. It is also through kite flying that Amir first makes his father truly proud. And Amir and Sorhab make a connection and establish their first bond whilst flying their first kite together. The kite connects Hassan, Sohrab and Amir together. I think the fighting and the running represent the unstable state of the country at the time, politically and economically. There is fighting going on in the streets between the children, just as there is fighting going on, on a larger scale between countries. The pomegranates also have a symbolic meaning… Hassan and Amir engrave their names on a pomegranate tree, Hassan squashes a pomegranate on his forehead when Amir asks him to hit him, and pomegranates fall from a truck as Amir is reading Hassan’s letter. In Iran and Persia, pomegranates take on a symbolism of love and fertility, as well as patriotism in death for the country. The pomegranates could therefore symbolize the true relationship between Hassan and Amir, they are brothers, and Hassan’s dedication for Amir.

Lahiri's "The Namesake"

1) Compare/contrast Gogol's "The Overcoat" with Lahiri's "The Namesake." How is a name like an overcoat?

Dostoevsky said: “We all came out from Gogol’s overcoat.” Ashoke refers to this quote when giving the book to his son Gogol, hoping that some day he will understand what was meant by it. In Nikolai Gogol’s “The overcoat,” the author makes much of his protagonist’s name: “His name was Akakiy Akakievitch. It may strike the reader as rather singular and far-fetched, but he may rest assured that it was by no means far-fetched, and that the circumstances were such that it would have been impossible to give him any other.” The way Ashoke chooses his son’s name is much like the way Gogol finds his protagonists name. He did not look very far; he chose the one moment in his life that changed everything, the train accident. I think the meaning of the overcoat is that your origins are not very far. In a way, us all coming from Gogol’s overcoat symbolizes the fact that we all have the same origins; we are all the same in some ways. The quote binds Gogol with his family and his origins that he denies for such a long time. 

2) Trace Gogol/Nikil's struggle with his name and his identity. Do you think he ever makes peace with his name?

Gogol shows the very first sign of struggling with his name and identity on his first day of school when his parents explain to him that now that he is going to school he has to be called his "good name." Indians receive two names: a pet name that shall only be used by their family members, and a good name that is used by everyone else. Gogol's pet name is Nikil. But on his first day of school, he feels uncomfortable with this name that no one has ever called him by. A name that is not his. Later on, when he is 11, he comes to realize the peculiarity of his name, on a field trip with his school to a graveyard. He realizes that he is the only person to have his name. He shares it with no one. He then grows ashamed of his name: "Other boys his age have begun to court girls already, asking them to go to the movies or the pizza parlor, but he cannot imagine saying "Hi, it's Gogol" under any circumstance" (p.76.) For years, until he finds out the real reason behind his pet name--the story of the train--Gogol is confused and irritated with it: "The writer he is named after--Gogol isn't his real name. His first name is Nikolai. Not only does Gogol Ganguli have a pet name turned good name, but a last name turned first name. And so it occurs to him that no one he knows in the world, in Russia or India or America or anywhere, shares his name. Not even the source of his namesake" (p.78.) His discomfort with his name strengthens when one of his English professors decides to study Gogol's short stories in class. Gogol is viscerally upset when he sees the printed letters spelling out Gogol on the cover of the book.

One evening, at a party, when Gogol finds himself alone with a girl and she asks him his name, he lies: “I’m Nikhil.” He then kisses her, but when he tells his friends about the kiss, “he doesn’t tell them that it hadn’t been Gogol who’d kissed Kim. That Gogol had had nothing to do with it” (p.96.) This just shows us how confused Gogol/Nikhil is about his identity. He doesn’t love himself as Gogol, but doesn’t identify himself to Nikil either. Similarly, he is neither Indian nor American, he is stuck somewhere in the middle. In an interview, Lahiri explains that “The question of identity is always a difficult one, but especially so for those who are culturally displaced, as immigrants are, or those who grow up in two worlds simultaneously, as is the case for their children. The older I get, the more I am aware that I have somehow inherited a sense of exile from my parents, even though in many ways I am so much more American than they are. In fact, it is still very hard to think of myself as an American.”

During Gogol’s search for his identity, Gogol goes through phases where he first denies his origins and lives someone elses life, the American life. But after his father dies, he realizes that living in exile from his own culture is not an option: “with a stamina he fears he does not possess himself. He had spent years maintaining distance from his origins; his parents, in bridging that distance as best as they could” (p.281.) As he goes home, he makes peace with his family, his mother, and starts immersing himself in his old life again. But essentially, Gogol/Nikil will always have a certain confusion concerning his identity. He will always be living in two worlds, nether completely American or completely Indian. But yet, that is what has formed Gogol, that is what has made him who he is. In a way, he makes peace with his name after his father’s death:”The name he had so detested, here hidden and preserved—that was the first thing his father had given him” (p.289.)

3) Consider the blossoming of Ashima in the course of the novel. In what ways does she grow and develop?

Ashima’s development and growth is apparent in the novel. When she moves to the United States, she resists her new environment slightly. She is unhappy, in a word so far from everything and anyone she has ever known. Before her first child is born, she expresses her fear of raising him in this foreign country, and wants to go back to India. Ashima feels extremely lonely and isolated, especially because her husband spends the entire day away and only comes home in the evenings. She has no friends or people to lean on. When her son is old enough to go to school, she will once again feel this loneliness, but eventually grows to accept it. She eventually stops resisting to her children’s inevitable immersion in the American culture, and even ends up accepting the fact that her daughter will marry a non Indian man.

4) Discuss Gogol/Nikil’s relationships with women. What do the relationships have in common? Why does each break down at some point?

Gogol has two major relationships in the book. In both relationships, Gogol becomes passive, and lets the other control his life. Both Maxine and Moushimi make all the decisions. Gogol completely adopts Maxine’s life style, culture and even her family. He becomes as much a child to Maxine’s parents than a lover to her. He sleeps in her bed, moves in with her when she asks him to, and would rather go on vacation with her family than spend time with his. At the beginning, he is as happy as ever, enveloping himself in this new lifestyle, so different from the one he had known so far, the one he had spent such a long time rejecting. But soon enough he begins to realize that living the life of someone else is not healthy, and not a way of life.  His regrets, that he had until now buried deep inside him, surface from time to time: “he is conscious of the fact that his immersion in Maxine’s family is a betrayal of his own.” (p.141) He then realizes that all this time, he had been immersing himself in her life without letting her into his. In fact, Maxine hardly knew him. And the people he had surrounded himself with, were not the people that truly cared for him: “Everybody sings Happy Birthday, this group who had known him for only one evening. Who will forget him the next day” (p.158.) Gogol’s father’s death is what truly ends up separating him and Maxine. When she asks Gogol to get away from his family, shortly after his father dies, it is evident how little she really knows him, and he finally stands up to her. In a similar way, Moushimi also dictates Gogol’s life. They start visiting with her friends all the time, dinner party after dinner party. Despite the fact that Gogol and Moushimi have the same cultural background, he feels very misplaced and uncomfortable when he is around her and her friends. To make things worse, they constantly compare him to Graham, her ex fiancé. Moushimi keeps a part of her life secretive. She never reveals the sentimental details of her relationship with Graham, to Gogol, like the fact that it was so passionate. Inevitably, the two grow apart. Gogol feels judged by Moushimi, for example when she mocks his name change in front of her friends. I think that Gogol’s problem remains in his relationship with his family and himself. In both relationships, he lets his significant other take control. Instead of each sharing parts of their lives with one another, Gogol is too focused on the other person and tends to forget that he has a life of his own.

5) Many episodes in the novel occur in the train. What is the significance for this?

The trains in the novel symbolize change. Change can take on several variations. When Ashoke comes close to death in a train accident, his life changes. A man he had met on the train told him of the wonders of traveling. He said: “Do yourself a favor. Before it is too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can” (p.16.) After the accident, those words stay with Ashoke and he decides to move to America, starting a new life. The train can take on the meaning of growing up as well, a change from childhood to adulthood. Gogol meets his very first girlfriend, Ruth on a train, and together, they travel on the same path of life for a little while. The symbolism behind the train is there to reinforce the changes that the characters are experiencing. For example, Gogol finds out about his wife Moushimi’s affair in a train station. This is significant in that they are not on the actual train, but have come to a halt. They are no longer moving forward together, their relationship has come to a stagnant stage, and they now part ways. The train could also symbolize a sort of deracination. Trains are often associated with hobos that travel from city to city without a home. Gogol resembles a homeless person in that he has no sense of belonging to a single culture, a single home. He is neither Indian nor American, and this is a struggle that is present throughout the entire novel. He is still searching for his identity.  At the end of the book however, I think that Gogol has finally stopped seeking. He has finally found himself. The story ends with Gogol opening the book his father had given him years ago. The book that had always been there, but Gogol simply hadn’t paid any attention to it. This illustrates the fact that the answer to Gogol’s identity search had been there the whole time, in his very own home; he just had to look closer instead of searching on the outside, far away from home and his origins. .

6) In an interview with the author, Lahiri said she wanted India to function as a ghost in the background of the story. Does India function as a ghost or as something else?

The fact that she desires India to function as a ghost in the background of the novel draws another parallel between “the namesake” and “the overcoat.” Indeed, in Gogol’s “The overcoat” Akaky comes back from the dead in the form of a ghost, to haunt people on the bridge and steal their overcoat. The ghost is here to remind us of the things that are important in life. Part of the criticism of human nature that Gogol implies in his story is that people assign too much value to unimportant things such as social status, financial means, and material possessions. In that sense, I think that India functions as a ghost in the story. It is there to remind us that we can never deny our origins, because that makes us who we are.

Gogol's "The overcoat"

"The overcoat" is the story of Akakiy Akakievich Bashmachkin, a poor and insignificant clerk who has been working for many years in the same unspecified department within the Russian government in St. Petersburg. He spends all day copying letters mindlessly, but puts all his passion and heart to his work. The narrator's tone of voice is often condescending, critical and ironic. 

"The Overcoat" treats several themes whilst blending comic, grotesque, realist and fantastic elements into his story. 

The first and most obvious theme is human condition. Akakiy seems to be an isolated human being with no great significance or importance to the world around him. The need for human compassion is central to the story. It appears in the very first paragraph when we see how Akakiy is mocked by everyone at his office: "some writers make merry, and crack their jokes, obeying the praiseworthy custom of attacking those who cannot bite back." This theme of human condition encompasses isolation, as Akakiy often seems completely alone in his own world. When he walks in the streets he does not see the people around him. He lives alone and has no friends. The author's tone makes it difficult for the reader to decide whether he should feel sympathy for the poor mistreated clerk, or if he should take it as a comic tale that makes fun of Akakiy Akakievich. Often times the descriptions of this sad and poor character border the ridicule: " And something was always sticking to his uniform, either a bit of hay or some trifle . Moreover, he had a peculiar knack, as he walked along the street, of arriving beneath a window just as all sorts of rubbish were being flung out of it: hence he always bore about on his hat scraps of melon rinds and other such articles."

Another theme of the story would be social status. There is a clear distinction between Akakiy and his superiors. The difference of social status is shown when Akakiy is on his way to the party thrown in the honor of his overcoat: " Akakiy Akakievitch was first obliged to traverse a kind of wilderness of deserted, dimly-lighted streets; but in proportion as he approached the official's quarter of the city, the streets became more lively, more populous, and more brilliantly illuminated. Pedestrians began to appear; handsomely dressed ladies were more frequently encountered; the men had otter skin collars to their coats; peasant waggoners, with their grate-like sledges stuck over with brass-headed nails, became rarer; whilst on the other hand, more and more drivers in red velvet caps, lacquered sledges and bear-skin coats began to appear, and carriages with rich hammer-cloths flew swiftly through the streets, their wheels scrunching the snow."