Authorial Choices and Textual Features (DP IB English A: Language and Literature: HL): Revision Note

Across assessments in English A Language and Literature, you are required to demonstrate the ability to analyse and evaluate how a writer constructs meaning, communicates ideas, and develops themes. This means that a secure understanding of authorial choices and textual features, combined with precise textual references and clear explanation of their effects, is essential for achieving strong results.

Literary methods

There are a number of literary methods used in The Kite Runner:

• Structural techniques

• Setting

• Characterisation

• Symbolism and motifs

Structural techniques

Frame story

A frame story is a literary technique where an introductory or main narrative is used to set the stage for another story or changing narrative to be used within the work. It often acts as a way to add context to the narrative to come, such as beginning with a scene in the present, before the main narrative begins a story of the past. 

• The Kite Runner starts like this, with Amir talking about a phone call he has received in 2001, which reminds Amir of his past:

  • He sets up a dramatic event in the past, talking about becoming the man he is today at the age of 12

• The narrative returns to Amir and his call with Rahim to begin the second part of the narrative

• There are two narratives within The Kite Runner:

  • The flashbacks of Amir growing up in Afghanistan and leading up to his time in America by 2001

  • The second part takes us from where we are in the introduction and through to events in the climax, as Amir rescues Sohrab

• Hosseini starts the story in medias res, with Amir as an adult:

  • We know that Rahim Khan is in Pakistan, and that Amir is in America

  • This tells us where some parts of the early story are going, as we know it must lead to the phone call

• By shaping the introduction around an idea of something dramatic, a moment that changed Amir and made him who he is today, the author is building tension and intrigue

• Another reason Hosseini may have chosen a frame story is that it allows for reflective narration:

  • This means Amir can reflect on the past and tell us the story with his reflections on how and why things happened

  • This can create an unreliable narrator, as it comes through the prism of memory and possible misinterpretation to fit the narrator’s current opinion or view

Non-linear narrative structure

The novel uses a non-linear narrative that opens in medias res, shifts into an extended analepsis, and then progresses chronologically towards the present. This is because it opens in 2001, then goes back to the 1970s and progresses forward in a chronological fashion from there.

• Hosseini uses the flashback structure to offer us an explanation as to why Amir becomes who he is and what will lead him to saving Sohrab in the climax

• Jumping back in time also allows Amir to narrate as an adult and build the facets of bildungsroman, showing him learning from his past and coming of age

• In this use, the author has used the introduction and then the narrative from the past to build tension towards the climax:

  • It engages the reader to find out what happened to him when he was 12

  • As the novel takes the reader through his early life, the journey of Amir builds tension towards the climax:

    • In the first chapter, he is offered the chance to “be good again”

Elliptical narration

Elliptical narration is the omission of a span of time in a narrative, allowing the story to jump forward and focus on significant events while the reader infers the missing details. The Kite Runner has many notable jumps in time, pushing the narrative from the 1970s to the ’80s, and then again to the 2000s.

• By doing this, Hosseini omits details that he believes are not essential to the story:

  • It may also be that the author believes these are some details we can infer ourselves:

    • The reader is not told explicitly about the details that cause Amir and Baba to flee, but we can infer from what we are told and the context that they feared for their safety and chose to flee

• A time jump can also help the author to show character development:

  • The significant jumps are likely to make the development stand out more, with a more stark contrast

• In The Kite Runner, ellipsis emphasises the selective memory of Amir:

  • These are the things he has decided are important

  • The moments he chooses to revisit are those that carry the most emotional weight

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is a device used by writers to provide a hint about something that will occur later in the text.

• Amir reflects in the early chapters that nothing was going to change the differences between him and Hassan:

  • This suggests that their bond was doomed to fail, which it ultimately does

• Referring to Assef as “like a Khan” presents an idea of who he will become:

  • To describe him as such would suggest a commanding and authoritative person, and often one who is ruthless and uncompromising

  • Assef later becomes a violent member of the Taliban, responsible for the murders of many

• Baba’s desperate desire to see Amir as someone who will stand up for himself, and not believing he can, foreshadows the events that mean he does not save Hassan:

  • Amir remembers times Baba worries aloud that Amir does not stand up for himself or show courage

  • Amir then fails to stand up for Hassan

• Baba’s care for Hassan and how he tells Amir the importance of honesty foreshadow what is revealed about Baba after his death, and Amir’s fate:

  • He shows care for Hassan because he is his son

  • He stresses the importance of honesty to Amir because he holds guilt for his dishonesty

  • Equally, we see that Baba’s actions guide Amir’s fate

  • By living his life with the pain of guilt, he also influences Amir to hold onto guilt and make the same mistakes he did

• The discussion of Hassan and Amir being so close, almost as if they are brothers, foreshadows the truth of their relationship:

  • They fed from the same breast as children, took their first steps in the same home, and Hassan’s first word is “Amir”:

    • All of these things sound like truths that brothers would share

• The story Amir reads to Hassan about the warrior Sohrab subtly foreshadows both the hidden truth of Hassan’s lineage and the later significance of his son:

  • The heroic figure of Sohrab, drawn from Afghan legend, reflects a noble bloodline and a legacy that is not immediately visible

  • This mirrors how Hassan’s true identity is concealed, and anticipates the importance of his son, suggesting that what is hidden in the past will inevitably resurface in the future

Setting

Multiple settings

• The settings in the story can be used as structural markers of time and identity:

  • Kabul in the 1970s is Amir’s childhood, a period of innocence and how that innocence comes to an end

  • His move to Pakistan shows the displacement of many Afghans and the violence in the country:

    • This is also Amir’s journey from an Afghan to more of a dual national:

    • As he escapes Afghanistan on his way to America, he could also be seen as escaping his past

  • In America, Amir goes from an exile to reinventing himself, and appreciating the freedoms of America, but freedoms his people in Afghanistan are not allowed

• The author also settings to present the specifics of Amir’s moral journey:

  • Kabul represents moral failure and denial

  • America is escape from his pain, but also avoidance

  • The return to Kabul symbolises confrontation with his past and redemption

• The settings become a representation of diaspora, with the shift from Afghanistan to the US constructing a diasporic narrative:

  • Amir lives between cultures, never fully belonging to either:

    • America offers opportunity, but cultural dislocation

    • Afghanistan becomes both an idealised memory and a site of unresolved trauma

  • The split reflects the core condition of diaspora:

    • Physical relocation and psychological fragmentation

• Having Amir leave and return to Kabul offers Hosseini the chance to critique Afghan society:

  • Amir has a hybrid perspective, as both insider and outsider

  • That perspective also allows Hosseini to critique the idealisation of the past

Characterisation

• perspective of his past make him a somewhat an unreliable narrator:

  • His view on himself differs wildly to how others see him

  • He mostly hates himself, but good people like Hassan, Soraya and Rahim Khan all respect and love him

• The dual perspective as an outsider and insider to Afghanistan is explored in more than just Amir’s experience as an Afghan and then living in America:

  • In reality, Amir does not realise that his privileged position means he has not experienced Afghanistan as most of his countrymen have

  • Farid is the first to bring this to his attention, reckoning him to be a privileged and rich child who wouldn’t understand Afghanistan how he does

Symbolism and motifs

Kites

• Kites are the most important symbol in The Kite Runner:

  • While they often connote freedom, fate and prophecy, the kite has much more meaning in Hosseini’s novel

• They can be easily linked to Amir’s desire to fly high and feel free:

  • Kites soar high and often float with a quiet beauty, and Amir desires to feel relaxed and free

  • The kite also represents Amir’s desire to be freed from the guilt he feels from his father and to repair their relationship

  • The kites can also be seen to represent the good times of Afghanistan before the fall of the monarchy, and kite-flying is later banned by the Taliban

• Kites could also be a symbol of Amir and Hassan’s relationship:

  • The soaring heights and success of the kite-fighting tournament could be the peak of their relationship, while Hassan going for the downed blue kite is the lowest point

• The glass strings of the kite show the contrast of the beauty and violence of the tournament:

  • Afghanistan holds both of these places in the book, Amir’s home and where he was raised as a happy child

  • Then the violence that follows, both political and the assault of Hassan, attaches violence to his home country

• At the end, the kite becomes a symbol of hope once more:

  • Not only does the kite bring life out of Sohrab, it represents the chance for Amir to feel free and happy again

  • Before this, the last time Amir flies a kite may be the last time he is truly happy, and he is happy again once he finally flies a kite once more

The cleft lip and Amir’s scar

• Hassan’s cleft lip can be seen as a defining physical difference with Amir, but also a symbol of Baba’s secret:

  • When he pays for the surgery to fix Hassan’s lip, he is showing a paternal level of care for Hassan that Amir does not understand

• When Amir has his lip split and gets a scar like Hassan’s, he finally feels some peace and a connection with his lost friend and brother:

  • Getting this in the moment where he shows bravery, courage, and stands up for Sohrab even though he doesn’t have to, the scar symbolises how he has finally done right by Hassan and shown the bravery his father feared he would never have

  • For Amir, it is a reminder and symbol of redemption, and may make him feel he always has Hassan with him

The pomegranate tree

• The pomegranate tree that Amir and Hassan carve their names into as children becomes a symbol of their relationship:

  • At this time, it is a healthy tree that bears fruit

• When Amir returns decades later, the tree is there, but it can no longer bear fruit:

  • Hassan is dead, and while Amir’s memories of him exist, they can no longer be together and share the friendship they had as children, much like how the fruit cannot grow

  • Both the barely living tree and the memories are still there, but no longer can they grow and recapture when they were at their best

• Much like how the tree has been ruined by the decimation of Kabul, the friendship was broken by Amir’s actions:

  • Indeed, the moment when their relationship breaks irreparably could be seen as when Hassan breaks a pomegranate on his own head

Sources

Hosseini, K. (2003), The Kite Runner, Riverhead Books