While on Practicum, I happened to glance at the list of “Most Challenged / Banned Books” list up on one of the bulletin boards and was surprised to see the one in my hand, The Kite Runner, on the list. I enjoyed using the book as my silent reading time text so much more knowing that it was probably going to be loaded with controversial subject matter. What a brilliant way of getting kids to read good literature; put it up on a board as part of a list of books that parents don’t want their kids to read!
More seriously though, I decided to look more into the reasons for the challenge of this particular text. What I found was that the text had been widely challenged, mainly in the US back in 2008, due to one particular scene where one young boy is raped; not due to the violence in the text, where a man is beat until his aggressor has his eye gouged out by a sling shot, and not due to a vivid and violent stoning scene, but due to the child-on-child rape scene. The text was “released” as part of the University of Victoria’s Freedom To Read Week, celebrated across Canada, just this past Feb 2010.
The Kite Runner has quickly become one of my favourite books; the writing is vivid, beautiful… the voice is strong… it tackles issues of integrity, honesty, loyalty, understanding, forgiveness and compassion. I realize that the text has more moments that are moving, thoughtful and difficult than not, that there are challenging moments and that teaching this text invites a tremendous amount of processing and discussion time… but I can’t think of another text I’ve read that tackles all of these literary elements and relevant sociological and political issues so meaningfully. I think it would be important to balance out the text with additional information to ensure that students don’t walk away from the text assuming any sweeping generalizations about Afghanistan, Afghanis or Muslims in general, but to that end there are several resources online, such as one put out by Amnesty International (http://www.amnestyusa.org/education/pdf/kiterunnerhigh.pdf), which focuses more on the film adaptation of the text, but is complete with lesson plans and a foreword by Khaled Hosseini, and tackles discussion topics around the human rights issues and political situation in Afghanistan during the period the novel (and film) are set in.
This is one of several online resources I found with some additional material that you might find helpful in terms of accessing additional background information and teaching resources/ideas – enjoy.
Where Does The Kite Runner Fit in the Secondary School Curriculum?
Although I can say that I certainly enjoyed The Kite Runner overall, I found at times that I struggled with the writing, as I discussed with several people last class. Certainly the themes and issues that the book addresses – themes such as loyalty, friendship, betrayal, guilt and violence – are difficult, emotional and thought-provoking. There is a great deal of intense violence, that even I as an adult reader struggled with, and reacted to emotionally and viscerally, so it is safe to say that the book is mature, in this sense at least. However, I felt throughout the book that the level at which it was written was not in keeping with these themes and issues. Stylistically, the book is quite simple, the vocabulary is not difficult, and at times the main ideas that the author wishes to convey are presented obviously and repeatedly, to the point where I started to feel it was redundant. Of course I am biased, having just finished a university degree in literature, and to a high school student the issues I had with the writing may be of no concern. But it did lead me to wonder: with such complex and mature themes, but such easy and accessible writing, where would The Kite Runner best fit in the secondary school curriculum?
As Chantal noted in her post, The Kite Runner has been a point of controversy since it first began to be introduced to the secondary school curriculum. Although I believe it is a very valuable book for high school students to be exposed to, and I certainly feel that the classroom is a good environment for this to happen, I can understand why it might be a point of concern for parents, administrators, and those demigods who have the power to determine what literature is allowed in schools, whoever they may be. If this book was to be taught in younger grades it would need to be done so carefully and tactfully, so as to avoid upsetting parents, and also shocking or confusing students. I believe that there is great value in exposing students to controversial and boundary-pushing subjects through literature, but these subjects need to be approached cautiously, making sure that all students are okay with what they are reading and have not been negatively affected in a serious way. In our literature circle we discussed the intense reaction some of us had to the particularly violent and gut-wrenching scenes in the novel, and my own personal reaction would lead me to believe that The Kite Runner may be suitable only for upper level classes in high schools, simply based on the subject matter alone. I’m not sure that I, as the teacher, would feel entirely comfortable reviewing particular scenes in this book with grade eight and nine children, but that of course is just my opinion.
On the flip side of this is my opinion on the level of difficulty that the book presents from a literary perspective. As I mentioned, I found the writing at times over-simplified and repetitive, and the metaphors and symbols too transparent. Of course, it is important to keep in mind that Khaled Hosseini is not a writer, but rather a doctor, and this should be kept in mind when evaluating the novel from a critical literary perspective. I do not mean to say that this is bad writing, not by any means; rather, I feel that it would be too easy in this sense for older grades, who I feel should be pushed to read more challenging works. I have not been able to find any quotes from Hosseini himself as to what his intended audience was in writing the novel, specifically whether he had a young readership in mind. I saw Yann Martel speak at the Writers Festival, and he spoke of the pitfalls of writing to a YA audience; he felt that writing with such an audience in mind can affect the quality of the writing unintentionally, and I felt at times that this might have been the case with The Kite Runner. Of course, this is purely speculation on my part. I’m just not convinced that this novel would present enough of a challenge for senior highschool grades, or that it contains enough to sustain a rich discussion from a literary perspective.
Despite my differing views on the novel and its appropriateness in high schools, I do feel it potentially has much value for the right audience. Because of the mature themes, but rather simple writing, I feel it could be a good text for older ESL students, or reluctant readers. I also feel that it would work well with a grade 10 or 11 class, but that the weight could be shifted either more or less towards the themes or the language, depending on the specific class.
This was, for me, the first book in a long time that I wasn’t able to put down. I’m a pretty crumby reader though, so even though I wasn’t able to put it down, it still took me about a week to read. I made the mistake of reading it on the bus one day and ended up crying at one point! It was really embarrassing! But I guess that just shows how powerful I found the writing. At another point, also while reading in a public place, I had to put the book down because the description of the narrater’s injuries was very graphic and I felt woozy. I find it interesting that both of these times that I was really effected by the novel have nothing to do with the child on child rape scene for which the novel has been placed on the most challenged/banned books list.
My role in the lit circle was to look at the characters in the book, and while I was thinking about the characters I realized how interesting the relationships between the characters are. Amir passive-aggressively attacks Hassan throughout the early part of the book because he is jealous of the attention Hassan gets from Baba. Baba is often emotionally distant from Amir and we learn the reason for this near the end of the story-he is torn between Amir and Hassan – his illegitimate son. It is interesting that Amir and Baba’s relationship improves when they have fled Afghanistan and are struggling to make ends meet in America. Baba no longer feels guilt for not being able to provide a privileged lifestyle to both his sons. While Amir transforms from a selfish child to a selfless adult, Hassan remains good-natured and loyal throughout the novel. Sohrab becomes a kind of substitute for Hassan in the last parts of the story after Hassan’s death and so Amir is able to become good again by rescuing Hassan ‘s son in place of Hassan himself.
One thing that I didn’t really like about the end of the book was the extent it went to with Sohrab’s attempted suicide. I felt this went just a little too far. The author had me feeling terrible for this poor boy-so many horrific things had happened to him: his parents killed, put in an orphanage, abused by the Taliban. Then finally when he starts to trust Amir and it looks like Amir and Soraya will have the child they’d been hoping for and Sohrab will have the loving home he deserves, my heart broke again with his attempted suicide and subsequent refusal to speak. I just felt it was pushed a bit too far. Character wise, I also didn’t believe at that point that Sohrab would try to take his life-though he had been through so much…it just didn’t seem like something he would do. Or perhaps I just didn’t want to believe…
by Ronald Mathai ~ November 15th, 2010 (edit)
A question that was raised during my group’s discussion of the text concerned the legitimacy of Hosseini’s written work as it pertains to his occupational background formerly being foreign to the fictive, creative, novel-writing arena. Hosseini was a practicing physician with no prior “education” in creative-writing, style or form, and yet he produced The Kite Runner which has little evidence of this relative inexperience. His next novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, offers noticeably less fodder for so-called critics to denounce his writing as amateur or somehow less valuable due to his occupational background. Now this begs the question(s), does one’s background academically preclude him or her from the basic respect accorded to all authentic literary work and is there a prejudice today against those who are not “learned” (in a contemporary sense) and yet write?
Historically – prior to the 18th century – it was not unusual that the wealthy and social elite were the only ones privy to literacy, and the writing consumed was, therefore, also composed by the learned. The stratification of society, particularly between the learned and the common people, essentially precluded the general public from written works as only the upper classes received education in reading and writing, often both in English and Latin. However, there are a number of prominent, historic examples of authors who were not known for their academic background in philosophy or literature but still contributed, in a significant way, to the cannon of literature. Geoffrey Chaucer is a prime example of a distinguished writer who, despite his humble beginnings as a noblewoman’s page and a courtier, is now a mainstay in contemporary literary study for his unfinished Canterbury Tales. Furthermore, his writings assumed a perspective that distinguished itself in difference from the culture of literature at the end of the 14th century, providing a blunt criticism of the social elite, religious institutions, and the moral depravity of society. Edgar Allan Poe is another example of a writer who did not attend university and yet whose writings are widely considered to be a major contribution to the Romantic Movement and literature as a whole. While university study with its academic atmosphere undoubtedly helped form and hone the skills of writers like T.S. Elliot and Samuel Coleridge, it must not be seen as a requirement for authentic creative writing. It is interesting, also, to consider how many writers have been frustrated, their potential suppressed, by the same institutions.
The Kite Runner is beautifully written: its power is in its honesty to the human experience. Hosseini skilfully crafts a fluid story while tackling a variety of themes, from betrayal and redemption to freedom and forgiveness, all of which are readily applicable to young and old alike. As a child born in an independent Afghanistan, Hosseini provides the reader with an unvoiced, underrepresented perspective of the region – in its beauty and normalcy – that conflicts and contradicts the “reality” we perceive and believe as truth in the western context. And this is one of the many purposes of literature: to challenge and displace our misconceptions through the experience of realities distinct from our own made accessible to us through literature. The wealth of experience, knowledge, and insight into multiple realities that we interact with when viewing different acts of writing would be severely curtailed if the scope or legitimacy of writing was restricted to texts based in, and authors versed in literary studies and creative-writing backgrounds. The power of language is not gauged by the level of eloquence but by its ability to move, to inspire, and to change us.