Another important historical theme has to do with modern and twisted ideologies that have motivated nations to fight wars over the last two hundred years. For example, when one reads of the life story of the main character, named Amir, in THE KITE RUNNER novel, one cannot ignore the transformation of the boy raised in the family of enlightened well-to-do business-class world of pre-Soviet Invasion Afghanistan to the man who prays regularly his prayers in a daily ritual practiced half-way across the world in Haywerd, California (a year after the 9-11 bombings in New York and Washington, D.C.) In short, the tale of the kite flyer, Amir, and his journey back to Afghanistan in 2001 is similar to the American soldiers' journeys to do good or to achieve real manhood in the 21st Century.
THE KITE RUNNER is partially a coming of age story for men in his 30s because he has hesitated to grow up earlier. This is not a bad way to look at it because many American leaders, like the last U.S. President Bush, have too too often never really grown up--and only barely try to grow-up with the nuclear war buttons first at their finger tips. The fact is, in a more favorable light, the kite flyer, Amir, is growing up slowly throughout Hosseini's novel. Bit by bit, Amir very gradually becomes "man enough" to overcome his own actions of the past which have haunted him from his earliest child-hood years.
All adults need to do this to some degree, otherwise we end up like George W. Bush, trying to fight the wars of, or clean up the mess of, our fathers.
Amir faces the same nemeses that Americans and their military have fought on-and-off in the 20th Century, too. For example, one recurring enemy in young Amir's childhood is a sociopathic bully named Assif, an avowed Hitler-fanatic. As a young teen, Assif raves about how he would like to lead a Hitler-like revolt someday in Afghanistan. Many decades later, as an adult, we see the same Assif as a leading religious fanatic leading Taliban excesses in 2001 Kabul, Afghanistan. (This only occurs after Assif joins the opposition to the Soviet occupation of both Assif and Amir's homeland in the 1980s.) In short, the narration of modern Afghanistan is that of a proxy for 20th Century's major "isms"--fascism, communism, and fanatic End-time Islamism.
Of course, there is also racism and the shia/sunni conflict at the center of intra-personal conflicts. This racism is embedded in the blood relationships of kin and status of individuals and tribes over generations among those who make up the modern Afghani world--both in exile and at home. It was thus poignant for me that I had read this Afghani tale in the Bavarian hill country, near Nuremberg, where Hitler had found so many faithful followers on-and-off the farms just over 7 decades ago. Hitler was not only a fascist and too often a role model Islamic jihadists, but he was believer in blood kinships.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/battle_of_stalingrad.htm
This blood based racism led to tribal Germania viciously taking on most of the rest of the continent before his dreams died in the snowy and cold winter of 1942 in Stalingrad and in the ice and snow of 1944-1945, called in Germany history as the Hunger Winter.
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