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Characters and context

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  • Characters and context

This lesson shows how you can compare the characters from a novel to the real-life people from an author's life. Below you find a passage from The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, which is an excellent work for Part 3 (school's free choice). It is quite contextually rich, as it was written during the invasion of Afghanistan in the early 2000s and reflects much of the author's personal experiences. Even if you are not familiar with the characters from this novel, you will find the passage intriguing. The relationships between characters are tense in this scene, as it marks a turning point in the novel.

For Part 3 works, we will want to go beyond the text and look for relationships in the author's life that may have inspired the author to develop these fictional characters. This lesson requires that we look at the text and its characters critically by taking the context of composition into consideration. You will hunt for quotes from the passage that illustrate the various relationships in the story, and find people from the author's life that may have inspired them.

Note: Even if you are not reading The Kite Runner for Part 3, you can apply this activity to Part 3 works that you are reading. The worksheets are edit-able for this reason. 

Quote hunting

As you study literary texts, you will want to hunt for important quotes or illustrations. These shed light on the themes of a work. This exercise asks you to read a passage from The Kite Runner and look for important lines that exemplify the relationships between characters.

As a preparatory activity, you may want to create character interaction diagrams similar to the one shown here on the left. Exploring a narrative using images and spatial relations can help you to develop your interpretative ideas. Use shapes and lines to depict your understanding of character interactions, and share them with others to compare thoughts.

After you have mapped out the relationships between the characters in a diagram, you will want to find quotes or lines that shed light on these. You can practice this exercise, using the passage below from The Kite Runner. Find lines that illustrate the relationships between characters in order to fill in the left column of the table below.

 Characters, quotes and context (PDF)

 Characters, quotes and context (MS Word)

Quote from the text From the context

Baba and Ali: "'We are leaving, Agha Sahib,' Ali said." 

Quote explained: This quote represents a turning point for Baba and Ali. After years of serving Baba, Ali is forced to leave. The relationship between Hassan and Amir has deteriorated to the extent that Hassan can no longer stand working for Baba. The accusation that Hassan stole Amir’s watch is a loss of face for Ali, which makes it impossible to continue his duties. Ali may also know what happened to his son. 

 Khaled Hosseini says that his characters are purely fictional. Having said this, Khaled's family spent 4 years in Tehran, where they employed a Hazara man to look after their household chores. Khaled taught the man's son to read. The Hosseini's moved to America for political reasons in 1980, breaking the employment of this Hazara man and ceasing the lessons for the boy. It is possible that Khaled felt a sense of guilt for not continuing the lessons with the Hazara boy.

Amir and Hassan: "I flinched, like I’d been slapped. My heart sank and I almost blurted out the truth. Then I understood: This was Hassan’s final sacrifice for me."

Quote explained: Throughout the book we see that Amir feels guilty for not intervening when Hassan was raped by Asef. Amir planted the watch and the money under Hassan's bed to make it look like he had stolen it from Amir. That way, Hassan and his father would be forced to leave. He had not really expected Hassan to confess to a crime he did not commit. Hassan sacrifices himself for Amir and takes the blame, because he is loyal to his friend. This act almost causes to Amir to 'blurt out the truth' about the rape. But he cannot confess to his cowardess.

As stated earlier, although the characters are fictional, it is possible that the character of Hassan was inspired by the Hazara boy whose father worked for the Hosseini family. Khaled Hosseini was most likely fascinated by the level of servitude and loyalty shown by this Hazara family.

Khaled Hosseini did not go back to Afghanistan until 2007 with a UN mission. It is possible that he felt guilty for leaving his country for not returning to his country for 31 years. Hassan may represent that sense of guilt. 

Amir and Baba: "Forgive? But theft was the one unforgivable sin, the common denominator of all sins." [..] "hadn’t Baba sat me on his lap and said those words to me? Then how could he just forgive Hassan? And if Baba could forgive that, then why couldn’t he forgive me for not being the son he’d always wanted?" 

Quote explained: The last words of this quote are quite strong: "why couldn't he forgive me for not being the son he'd always wanted?" Amir feels inferior to his father. He feels pressured by his father to be braver, stronger and smarter. His father never seems to forgive him.

 The role of Baba may or may not have been inspired by Khaled Hosseini's own father. Throughout the novel we sense a pressure on Amir to live up to his father's expectations. Similarly, Hosseini studied medicine and became a doctor in the US to meet his family's expectations. It was only later that he persued his dream of writing novels.

Baba and Hassan:  “I forgive you.”

Quote explained: Amir is surprised to hear his father forgive Hassan. He thought that stealing was the one unforgivable sin, according to his father. What Amir doesn't know is that Hassan is also his father's son. This may explain why the father easily forgives the boy. He does not to see Hassan and Ali leave, for he would lose his other son.

 Khaled Hosseini has said that Hassan is a fictional character, so it is safe to assume that he does not have a half-brother in real life. In Tehran, Khaled most likely saw his father treat the Hazara boy with equal respect, even though he was the son of a servant and a Hazara. Remember the Hazara people were looked down on. This may have inspired Hosseini to create a half-brother character who was publicly discriminated and secretly loved like one's own son.

Hassan and Ali: "They’d both been crying; I could tell from their red, puffed up eyes. They stood before Baba, hand in hand, and I wondered how and when I’d become capable of causing this kind of pain."

Quote explained: Hassan has most likely told his 'father' Ali everything; he has told him about the rape and he has told him about the money and the watch, which he did not steal. They hold hands, as they form a team. They have decided together that Hassan will confess to stealing the money and watch. This is the only way for them to get out of this painful situation that Amir has caused. 

 There is nothing from Khaled Hosseini's real life to suggest that their Hazara workers in Tehran confessed to crimes that they had not committed. Hosseini created this moment of emotional crisis in the novel to mark a turning point for his characters.

Primary source

The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
2003

Through my bedroom window, I watch Ali and Hassan push the wheelbarrows loaded with meat, ‘naan’, fruit, and vegetables up the driveway. I saw Baba emerge from the house and walk up to Ali. Their mouths moved over words I couldn’t hear. Baba pointed to the house and Ali nodded. They separated. Baba came back to the house; Ali followed Hassan to their hut.

A few moments later, Baba knocked on my door. “Come to my office,” he said. “We’re all going to sit down and settle this thing.”

I went to Baba’s study, sat in the one of the leather sofas. It was theirty minutes or more before Hassan and Ali joined us.

They’d both been crying; I could tell from their red, puffed up eyes. They stood before Baba, hand in hand, and I wondered how and when I’d become capable of causing this kind of pain.

Baba came right out and asked. “Did you steal that money? Did you steal Amir’s watch, Hassan?”

Hassan’s reply was a single word, delivered in a thin, raspy voice: “Yes.”

I flinched, like I’d been slapped. My heart sank and I almost blurted out the truth. Then I understood: This was Hassan’s final sacrifice for me. If he’d said no, Baba would have believed him, then I’d be the accused; I would have to explain and I would be revealed for what I really was. Baba would never, ever forgive me. And that led to another understanding: Hassan knew. He knew I’d seen everything in that alley, that I’d stood there and done nothing. He knew I had betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time. I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone, and I wanted to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn’t worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, and a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.

Except Baba stunned me by saying, “I forgive you.”

Forgive? But theft was the one unforgivable sin, the common denominator of all sins. When you killed a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no act more wretched than stealing. Hadn’t Baba sat me on his lap and said those words to me? Then how could he just forgive Hassan? And if Baba could forgive that, then why couldn’t he forgive me for not being the son he’d always wanted? Why—“We are leaving, Agha sahib,” Ali said.

Secondary sources

In order to fill in the right hand column from the table above, you will have to do some research on the context of the author's life. You may want to find out what kinds of people he or she knew and how they possibly inspired the author when developing characters. Here are three websites that you could check to find out more biographical information on the author. 

Towards assessment

Paper 2 - This kind of activity is good practice for the Paper 2 exam, where you have to comment on how the context of the author influenced him or her to write in a certain style or develop a particular character (closely linked to the second learning outcome for Part 3). Practice writing a paragraph on characterization and context for a specimen Paper 2 exam question. 

Written task 1 - Furthermore, you may want to write a transcribed interview as a written task 1, in which you interview the author for a literary magazine. Read more secondary sources on the author's life and ask him or her critical questions that relate to the characters of the novel or play that you have read.