英语双学位毕业论文-永远的追风筝的人—对阿米尔个人成长的分析

四川农业大学 本科毕业论文 设计 2015 届 题 目 The Forever Kite Runner Analysis of Amir s Personal Growth in The Kite Runner 学 院 人文学院 专 业 英语语言文学 学生姓名 肖敏 学号 20148219 导师 郑蓉 职称 讲师 完成日期 2017 年 6 月 12 日 i 永远的永远的追风筝的人追风筝的人 对阿米尔个人成长的分析对阿米尔个人成长的分析 专业 英语专业 姓名 肖敏 指导教师 郑蓉 摘要摘要 追风筝的人 自 2003 年 6 月首次出版以来 受到世界各地读者的广泛关注和好评 小说采用了第一人称 讲述了一个生活在美国的阿富汗移民阿米尔的童年故事 以及他再 次回到祖国对自己童年时所犯的错误进行弥补和心灵救赎的过程 本文通过分析小说描绘 的情节 内容和特点来探索阿米尔的个人成长历程 总的来说 整个文章由三章组成 第一章分析了阿米尔小时候性格上的怯懦自私和体现 在行为上的背叛 第二章分析了阿米尔成长后的自我救赎与性格上的突破 从自私到无私 第三章描述了主人公和作者经历之间的相同之处 其次 讲述这一人物形象也是作者内心 世界的体现 关键词 关键词 友好与自私 背叛与救赎 肖像画 ii The Forever Kite Runner An Analysis of Amir s Personal Growth in The Kite Runner Major English Name Xiao Min Supervisor Zheng Rong Abstract The Kite Runner since its first publication in June 2003 has drawn considerable attention and enjoyed praises from readers all over the world The novel The Kite Runner was written through the first person perspective and told a childhood story of an Afghan immigrant named Amir in the United States and his process of spiritual salvation towards his fault done in his childhood when he grew up This paper chooses to analyze features contents and set of characters in the novel to explore the personal growth of Amir Overall the whole article consists of three chapters Firstly chapter one analyzes Amir s cowardice selfishness and the betrayal in childhood Chapter two analyzes the self redemption and personality breakthroughs of Amir from selfishness to selflessness Chapter three tells the similarities between the protagonist and the author s experience In addition Amir reflected the spirit world of the author Key words kindness and selfishness betrayal and redemption self portrait iii CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter O One ne Amir s Selfishness and Betrayal in Childhood 2 1 1 Amir s Selfishness and the Causes of His Selfishness 2 1 2 Amir s Betrayal 2 Chapter Two Amir s Kindness and Redemption in Adulthood 4 2 2 Amir s Kindness and the Causes of His Kindness 4 2 1 Amir s Redemption 4 Chapter Three An Ideal Portrait of the Author Himself 6 3 1 Similarities between Amir and the Author 6 3 2 Amir Emboding the Nirvana of the Author s Spirit 7 Conclusion 10 Bibliography 11 Acknowledgments 12 The Forever Kite Runner An Analysis of Amir s Personal Growth in The Kite Runner Introduction Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul Afghanistan in 1965 and moved to San Jose California for secondary education in 1984 and then enrolled at Santa Clara University There he earned a Bachelor s degree in Biology in 1988 The following year he entered the University of California San Diego s school of medicine While in medical practice Hosseini began writing his first novel The Kate Runner which won the best seller It also adapted into a movie Fortunately it was nominated for the best Oscar adapted movies It is the very first novel in English by an Afghan The novel tells a story about strained family relationship between a father and a son and between two brothers how they deal with guilt and forgiveness and how they endure the political and social transformations of Afghanistan from 1970 to 2001 The protagonist Amir is born into a wealthy family in Kabul raised by his father He has a friend called Hassan of his same age A tragedy takes place on a snowy day that Hassan gets raped by Assef due to his refusal of handing out the kite which means everything to a kite runner Amir sees through the whole scene but only to turn his back on his real friend Hassan This betrayal renders Amir constrained and uneasy to such an extent that he finally kicked Hassan out Then the war comes he and his father escape to American Throughout the novel the protagonist struggles to find his true purpose and to form an identity through noble actions Since its publication reviewers have shown admiration for the novel for its straightforward storytelling its convincing character studies and for its startling account of the human toll of the violence that has accompanied Afghanistan s turbulent political scene Maria Elena Caballero Robb interprets Hosseini s novel The Kite Runner as a work that intertwines the private and public realms of experience Chapter O Onene Amir s Selfishness and Betrayal in Childhood 1 1 Amir s Selfishness and the Causes of His Selfishness When Amir is a child he is selfish and weak Amir is the major character in this novel He is the narrator and the protagonist of the story He is born in 1963 and his mother dies after giving his birth Amir is a sensitive and intelligent boy who has a privileged upbringing His father Baba is rich by Afghan standards and as a result Amir grows up accustomed to having what he wants The only thing he feels deprived of is a deep emotional connection with Baba which he blames on himself He thinks Baba wishes Amir are more like him and that Baba holds him responsible for killing his mother who dies during his birth Amir consequently behaves jealously toward anyone receiving Baba s affection His relationship with Hassan only exacerbates this Though Hassan is Amir s best friend Amir feels that Hassan a Hazara servant is beneath him When Hassan receives Baba s attention Amir tries to assert himself by passive aggressively attacking Hassan He mocks Hassan s ignorance for instance or plays tricks on him At the same time Amir never learns to assert himself against anyone else because Hassan always defends him All of these factors play into his cowardice in sacrificing Hassan his only competition for Baba s love in order to get the blue kite which he thinks will bring him Baba s approval 1 2 Amir s Betrayal Following the whole growth of Amir especially his time in childhood it is possible to point out the fact that Amir s betrayal is somewhat destined which can be regarded as the basis of Amir s redemption His identity his family background and he himself are just like invisible evils tricking him to the negative extreme of human nature hiding the initial and pure sincerity far away Two of the betrayals are obviously showed in the novel Amir s first crime dates from an annual kite fighting tournament in Afghanistan At the very beginning of game everything between Amir and Hassan seems to be normal as usual As the best kite runner Hassan channels his effort to chase the falling kite which is the symbol of his loyalty to the little master Amir However with the break of Assef and his henchmen the crack among the two young Afghan boys turns to be clearer and clearer Because of Amir s cowardice and selfishness Hassan has to suffer the crazy revenge from Assef under his best friend s nose Amir sticks to leave while Hassan chooses to forgive Obviously the second betrayal appears Their friendship will not be cured anymore even worse when Hassan is slandered as a theft The sense of shame and awkwardness from Amir directly result to the last goodbye between them Reaching the peak of Amir s evil Amir has to carry his guilt in the rest of his time It can be said that Amir s betrayal is not only a matter of childishness but involves in the adolescent problems racial prejudice as well as the absolute belief In terms of its internal cause the factors such as family education values from parents and experiences in young age significantly make sense to the growth of teenagers like Amir and Hassan In addition to the inner factor that has mentioned above the reason from outside should also be taken into consideration Schulze proves that Afghanistan is a multiethnic society Pashtun is the largest and the most politically powerful ethnic group in Afghanistan They have historically dominated the political scene while Hazaras are reportedly ranked very low in relative ethnic status 1 Different social status between Pashtuns and Hazaras are completely displayed in The Kite Runner frequently According to Assef s words Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns It always has been always will be We are the true Afghans the pure Afghans not this Flat Nose here His people pollute our homeland our watan They dirty our blood 2 And Pashtu s prejudice to Hazaras is actually the reason why Baba has hidden the secret that Hassan is his son for years Obviously Amir is definitely influenced by Pashtun s prejudice toward Hassan more or less To conclude it is the supreme ethnic status he enjoys in Afghanistan that causes Amir s betrayal bringing him a feeling of guilt in the rest of his life Chapter Two Amir s Kindness and Redemption in Adulthood 2 1 Amir s Kindness and the Causes of His Kindness The change in Amir s character we see in the novel centers on his growth from a selfish child to a selfless adult Then he goes to America with his father but he never forgets Hassan After allowing Hassan to be raped Amir is not any happier On the contrary his guilty is relentless and he recognizes his selfishness costs him his happiness rather than increasing it He regrets his cowardly performance when he thinks of that He realizes that even time passes away he still cannot get rid of himself blame He is a kind man His guilty to Hassan after making fun of him each time his sympathy to the refugees in Afghanistan his saving to the son of Hassan and his care of him etc Once Amir has got married and established a career only two things prevent his complete happiness his guilty and his inability to have a child with Soraya His kindness appears in his act of saving Sohrab the son of Hassan which is a very dangerous thing that may deprive him of his life Sohrab who acts as a substitute for Hassan to Amir actually becomes a solution to both problems Amir describes Sohrab as looking like a sacrificial lamb during his confrontation with Assef but it is actually himself that Amir courageously sacrifices His kindness requires him to do something to Hassan no matter how dangerous it is At last Amir s kindness tells him to adopt this poor boy All those can explain that Amir is kind from his bottom of heart No kindness no guilty His guilty to Hassan tortures him a lots in fact it is his kindness tortures him 2 2 Amir s Redemption The social status of Amir crashing down to the bottom no doubt provides him a great lesson deepening a sense of guilt for his best friend Hassan who was always suffering such discrimination from Amir Hard as it is different treatments in different countries give Amir a chance to experience various roles in such diversified society In America they just the outsider who is from a country which is suffering war they just the outsider who have to earn for living they just the outsiders who are not a part of this country Days have gone when they are the people who judge the others What they are now experiencing in America seems the replay of Hassan s pain life in Afghanistan then However the external growths are not enough to push him to the redemption road The huge change in his father obviously gives Amir more confidence in his road to be a good man After fleeing to America Amir is no longer the timid boy He successfully enters the college being a well known writer in his place With the tempering by racial discrimination and hard life in America Amir gradually makes himself the person his father wants him to be The key point of Amir s changes should be from family support Without sibling rivalry for parental love Amir finally wins his father s love which in some way compensates the hurt from family in childhood No matter it is his wife s love or father s love the power of it actually arouses the initial human nature in Amir which is hided for years due to Amir s cowardice and selfishness It also can be said that it is Rahim Khan s call from hometown helps Amir to be good again In the words of Rahim Khan Amir is told that Hassen has gone with his loyalty to the master Amir At the same time Amir realizes that Hassen is actually the bastard of his father Certainly all the facts that Amir could not understand in childhood are gradually becoming clearer and clearer Faced with the betrayal of his father this time Amir will not choose to betray anyone anymore Instead after a tangled struggle with himself Amir sets foot on the challenging journey to rescue Hassan s son Sohrab and cure the poor child of his trauma At the end of the story Amir chases a kite just like a child and he found innocence and kindness that he loses in his childhood He tells himself For you thousands times over 3 Amir is kind to Hassan s son and then he redeems himself The story begins with a kite and ends with a kite During his journey of redemption Amir ultimately accomplishes the integrity of human nature making himself a real man Chapter Three An Ideal Portrait of the Author Himself 3 1 Similarities between Amir and the Author We know about Khaled Hosseini from a lot of information Khaled Husseini was born on March 4 1965 in Kabul Afghanistan s capital who is the eldest of the five children in the family a son of a diplomat of Afghanistan s Foreign Ministry His mother a teacher of a girls school in Kabul taught Farsi language and history his family belongs to the prestigious Afghanistan upper class families but being a diplomat s son his life is not very stable and in ten years he has lived in three countries In 1970 he went to Iran with his father and the family returned back to Kabul in 1973 and in 1976 his father was sent to work in Paris France In 1980 when he was ready to return home but due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan Khaled Hosseini s family sought asylum in the United States and was granted After that they settled in San Jose California the United States Early in the United States due to poverty they applied to the Government of the United States for food stamps and welfare checks Although life was so difficult for the Khaled Hosseinis they revived Khaled Hosseini graduated from Independence High School in San Jose in 1984 applied for Santa Clara University and obtained Bachelor s degree in biology in 1988 and the next year he entered the University of California San Diego School of medicine in 1993 he obtained M D license He completed his practicing physician in internal medicine at Cedars Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles in 1996 He had been practicing medicine until the novel The Kite Runner was published 1 5 years later he specialized in fiction In 2006 he received the United Nations humanitarian award and was invited to serve as Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency He and his wife Roya their two children are currently living in Northern California He is an Afghanistan American He sets up a Khaled Husseini fund through which Khaled Hosseini has been to Afghanistan to provide humanitarian aid When he was a child with his father in Iran there was a Hazara named Hosseiro Khan working in his home for many years but the Hazara was much older than Hassan He was 38 years old They became good friends He helped Khaled flying kite and Khaled taught him to read In his childhood Khaled read a large number of Persian poetry and Persian translation such as Alice s adventures in Wonderland etc This is Khaled Hosseini s resume What about the protagonist Amir The Kite Runner describes this clearly Amir was born in the summer of 1963 an only child in his family whose father was a respected successful businessman who donates an orphanage Amir s mother taught classical Farsi literature at the University but died of dystocia when she gave birth to Amir in 1963 not in 1965 who is a descendant of the Afghanistan Aristocrats Amir s family belongs to the Afghanistan prestigious upper class His family is wealthy In 1970 he had been in Tehran for a month watching a game of The Soccer s World Cup He experienced the coup in 1973 and witnessed the invasion of Russia in 1978 In March 1981 he with his father fled Kabul in a Russian shabby truck by Jalalabad to Peshawar Pakistan Half a year later they went to The United States and lived in Fremont California Their early life in America was hard receiving food stamps from the Government of the United States In the summer of 1983 he graduated from high school then to a junior College majoring in English began practice writing Then he enrolled in San Jose State in English major In the summer of 1988 he completed his first novel His wife Soraya likes education work has been teaching in a school They have no child and later they have adopted nephew Sohrab Amir and Soraya organize fundraising activities helping a small hospital located in the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan Amir when a child read Masnavi the writer Saadi Victor hugo Jules Verne and Mark Twain and Ian Fleming He is good at telling stories and writing stories 3 2 Amir Emboding the Nirvana of the Author s Spirit We by comparing their experiences can easily find too many similarities Just as Khaled Hosseini said in an interview that Amir s experiences in Kabul in the 1970 s all come from Khaled Hosseini s childhood experiences he saw the movies flew kites and loved to tell stories everything from Khaled s childhood experiences Amir and Khaled Hosseini s similar experience can be interpreted in the words above And at the same he said that the stories are fictional The key is the differences in their experiences where are the imagery and ideals that the author tries to express The author designing the main characters lives is to achieve his desired result that it is understandable in Western culture that the father and his son s betrayal of Islam making these betrayals reasonable In fact he used the same thought and action to mold Amir As the author describes out of the protagonist s mouth Baba was always telling us about the mischief he and Ali used to cause But in none of his stories did Baba ever refer to Ali as his friend The curious thing was I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either 3 Relationship between master Amir and servant Hassan was formed in the mold of the predecessors Both of them betrayed their childhood Playmates Kite fighting and the victory was Amir s only goal He never cared about his friend or playmate Thus he became an