Psychological Trauma and the Reconstruction of Identity in The Kite Runner

Abstract

Abstract

The paper is an exploration of the relationship between processes of psychological trauma and identity reconstruction in The Kite Runner (2003) by Khaled Hosseini using the theoretical framework of trauma studies, specifically on the processes of guilt, memory and redemption. The main character of the novel Amir observes the rape of his childhood friend Hassan in a Kabul alleyway and will not help, a wound of origin that threatens to shatter his identity and initiates a decades-long period of repression, shame and ethical paralysis. Using a qualitative textual analysis based on the trauma theories of Cathy Caruth, Judith Herman and Dominick LaCapra, this paper traces the ways through which the untouched guilt on Amir emerges as compulsive repetition, emotional avoidance, and fragmenting identities. The discussion also examines the way in which Hosseini implicates individual trauma into the larger system of Afghan national trauma, specifically, the ethnic and social disparities that initially place Hazaras under Pashtuns. The article considers the fact that Amir has returned to Afghanistan, where the Taliban rule is in place, and saved the life of Sohrab, the orphan of Hassan, to be a path in trauma facing and identity re-building which, although unfinished, proves the redemptive power of ethical action. The repetition of the image of the kite is examined as a polysemous image that codifies the main dialectic of loss and recovery, betrayal and atonement of the novel. This work is a contribution to the emerging scholarship which applies the theory of trauma to postcolonial and diaspora literature.

Keywords: psychological trauma, identity reconstruction, and guilt, and memory and redemption and The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini, and trauma theory and Pashtun-Hazara and kite motif.