The Kite Runner

Kite Runner is written by Khaled Hossaini in March 2001. The novel itself was published in 2015. When this novel was published, Afghanistan at that time is embroiled in a war with United States, but, still this novel receive great reactions and was sold in millions copies. Since Khaled Hossaini himself is an Afghan, he admitted that his childhood and his experience in United States do influence him in his writings. This can be seen in the characters’ favorites like playing with kites, the dispute between ethnicities, and especially the difficulties experienced by Khaled Hossaini in adjusting at United States when he first came to United States. His experience in the flea market, conducting business with his father also semeed to be included in the market with the context of Amir and Baba (Amir’s father)

Kite Runner is a heartbreaking story. The story is set as Amir is the narrator of the story and all the details of his childhood with Hassan is retold on his reminiscence about the past. Amir is now a grown man married to Soraya but has no child. On his journey back to Kabul, Afghanistan, he recalled a lot of his experiences. Amir returned back to Kabul upon a call from Rahim Khan, his father figure, his father’s business partner. Rahim Khan told him to come back, visiting him who is now sick with cancer and asked for his help in looking for Sohrab, a child of Hassan and his wife, Farzana. Rahim Khan also told him of Baba’s secret and told him that Hasssan is actually his half brother.

Amir was born to a wealthy and respected well known man called as Baba in the story. Amir’s mother die after three weeks of Amir’s birth. All the domestic needs in the house are catered by Ali and his son, Hassan. Hassan and Ali grow to be a close friend since both of them have lost mothers at the young age, Hassan’s mother ran away, recreating the friendship history of Ali and Baba. From Amir’s perspective, Baba is distant from him and did not shower him with love. Instead, he saw Baba to favour Hassan more than him. However, the truth is, Baba resents himself because he cant shower his love for Hassan directly because of Hassan’s status of Pashtun and because of Hassan is known to the public as Ali’s son. Because of this also, Baba cant shower Amir with love as it will be unfair to both of his sons.

On top of this, Amir and Baba come from a class who is considered to be a higher class, Pashtun whereas Ali and Hassan come from a lower class, Hazara. Besides, both Ali and Hassan are Shiah Muslim while Baba and Amir are Sunni Muslim.Consequently, this later creates an inner conflict in Amir, Amir sometimes treats Hassan as a servant. This is because at that time, Afgan view Hazara people as lower people and any associations and relations between Hazara and Pahtun are condemnable. In order to win Baba’s love, Amir is determined to win the kite race, as this is the only similarity found between Baba and him. Even Amir’s interest towards writing does not impress Baba. Amir did won the contest, and in order to gain the falling kite back. Hassan offered himself to take it for him. Unfortunately, an event happened that changed Amir forever. He saw Hassan getting raped by Assef, their nemesis and stood there cowardly, did not offer any help. Ripping by guilt, Amir framed Hassan and Ali by putting watch and money inside their hut.

Even though Hassan did not steal the money, Hasan willingly admit that. Suprisingly, Baba did not kick them out of the house, instead Baba forgives them. Probably because at this time, Baba is still feeling guilty towards Ali and Hassan and the thought of seeing them away breaks his heart.

Nevertheless, Ali and Hassan are adamant with their decision to go away, crying and still sobbing, Baba allowed them to go. Few years later, Amir and Baba moved to United States as the war is getting worse and lost contact with Ali and Hassan. Later, Baba died because of cancer and Amir got called from Rahim Khan who acts as the intermediator of Amir’s past and present. Amir still feels guilty with that incident and decided that, by retrieving Sohrab will atone his and his father’s sins.

From the summary itself, it is clear that the characters in the novel posit themselves with their own binary oppositions and with religion is the center. This is aligned within Derrida’s theory of Deconstruction. The binary oppositions themselves are in the sense of ethnicities between Pashtun and Hazara among the characters. They derived from the center themselves which in this context is Islam.To make situation more complicated, both of these ethnicities denote different sects of religion. For Pashtun, their sect is usually Sunni Islam and Hazara dominates the sect of Shia Muslim. In addition, Pashtun is considered to be from higher class and Hazara comes from lower class. This later proven to be a significant part of the binary opposition since Pashtun is seen as the positive one and is given a cultural value. This is because Pashtun and Sunni Muslim is marked as the order or systematic part in the society whereas Hazara and Shia Muslim is viewed as the corruptive part of the society.

Withins this structure, both ethnicities act accordingly to their purposes. Hazara serve as servants in the society like Hassan and Ali whereas Pashtun is to be the wealthy people in the society, for example, Amir, Baba and Assef. This is aligned with Sunni status in Muslim who is deemed to be the right way of practicing religion. However, when this structure is shaken, the characters’ status are shifted. Baba who practices Sunni and is a wealthy person turns out to have committed fornication. The result is, Baba has an illegitimate child whom he can’t publicly acknowledge as the child is Hazara descendant. In contrast with Hazara, it is Ali, a Hazara, who takes care of Baba’s son. Now, the centre is shaken up and Pashtun is no longer the right sect anymore. Assef who is also a Pashtun now is a member of Taliban, who practices the killing and is violent towards innocent person. In the end, Pashtun and Hazara criteria got mixed up and the structure is messed up. In regards to this, when the structure got shaken, the only way is to reject the whole scenario or build a new one, but according to Derrida this is worthless as the structure did is to go back at the square one.

SILENCED

Silenced is inspired by real life events happened in boarding school for deaf in Korea. In the early 2000s, children in Gwangju Inhwa School were sexually violated and were physically abused by the teachers there. This created brouhaha among the Korean residents at that time. Despite the heavy crimes, the offenders only receive light punishment for their crimes and were only prisoned for less than a year. This leads the best selling novelist and author, Gong Ji Young to write a novel inspired from it. This novel later proves to be a huge success because in 2011, the film version is released directed by Hwang Dong Hyuk. The film manages to attract the public attention again. The case was reopened and the law known as “Dogani Bill” was passed. As for the school, Gwangju city which the school was based on, officially shut down the school only after two months the release of the film. Some of the offenders plead guilty and one of them was sentenced to 12 years prison.

This film started with Kang Ho In appointed as an art teacher at Benevolence Academy, a deaf school for children in the fictional city of Mujin, North Jeolla Province. Having a daughter with the same age to most of the children in school. He tries relentlessly to being friendly to the children. However, most of the children seem distant from him and seems to avoid him a lot. That changes when one day he saved a girl from being drowned by a female staff. The girl later confessed how the headmaster in the school sexually abused her and her friend. Later on, a boy also came forward. Each one of them told how they were abused verbally and their confession was recorded on tape. Kang Ho In later notified his friend who he bumped earlier in the story. Together, they try to bring the perpetrator to jail and give the kids justice.

The Crucible or widely known as Silenced can be categorized as a mystery-horror movie which revolves around the dark experiences of the innocent students. This movie is full with suspense elements added with plot twist which absolutely left the viewers with compelling satisfaction. The major theme exhibited in the movie is mainly focusing on the mental and physical struggles that being faced by the victim, the students. Parallel to the genre type, this movie is entirely being set up in a very gloomy and dark environment. The atmosphere of the scenes insist the viewer in giving a realistic mood similar to the events experienced by the victims. Dark, black and lightless scene of the film is kind of a symbolism to the dark experience faced by the students which they need to go through many complications throughout their stay in the school. The students have being physically and sexually abused without any definite reasons. They are being treated like a slave to most of the fiendish and merciless school stuff and are consider as an object to fulfill their sexual desire and a place to release their anger.

Based on the film, the characters can be said to be derived from a huge gap whereby most of the main characters are all villainous and cruel. Only the students and minor characters are consider as having a righteous behavior. If to be looked at the context of post structuralism theory, this situation is alike to the concept of binary oppositions. Here, the Centre which being ruled by the concept of God (or human mind or unconscious) is being surround with the structures that always opposed to each other. The structures refer to the concept of binary pairs or opposition. Meaning to say, the characters portray in the film in a way can be related to what the poststructuralist believes which opposing characters are surely to be existed in one particular structure and the pair would definitely denote different values. Those who stay near to the Centre is believed to be stable and well mannered (as in the good characters of the film) whereas the villainous characters incline to be opposed to the prior character which poststructuralist thinks that they “move” and “play”. In this sense, Kang Ho In and his friend are grouped in the binary opposition of “good” while the headmaster or perpetrator is belong to the “bad” side.

However, there is a possibility for the structure to be diminished and shaken up which leads to the existence of Deconstruction by Derrida’s term. In this situation, the structures break down and ambiguity takes over. This event can be seen when the “good” characters begin to swirl and incline to be “bad”. For example, the victims’ family changed their decision to put the perpetrator in the prison once they had received the money from the perpetrator. This is a classic example of how the rich people have an influence to the society and the poor people. In conclusion, this film can be interpreted from the light of Derrida’s theory of Post Structuralism and Deconstruction.

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