The Shared Study of Paired Texts

1. The Shared Study of Paired Texts Atonement and The Kite Runner: reading the Other to recover the self– Part 1

2. What does the pairing of these texts reveal? • The pairing of Atonement with The Kite Runner enables us to focus on the themes of guilt and redemption, conflict, coming of age, prejudice, loyalty, forgiveness, love and the resilience of the human spirit.

3. What does the pairing of these texts reveal? • But while both texts address issues of ’difference’ and otherness in their narrative construction, especially through a self conscious story telling, conventions of characterisation and genre lead The Kite Runner to fail in this respect, while meta-fiction and a more complex use of point-of-view enable Atonement to succeed.

4. The key assessment criterion for the paired texts study is • How effectively does the student compare and contrast texts to evaluate the role of sociocultural and situational contexts? • The sociocultural context of Atonement would account for the influence of the British class system and English literary history on Ian McEwan’s writing of the novel.

5. The key assessment criterion for the paired texts study is • How effectively does the student compare and contrast texts to evaluate the role of sociocultural and situational contexts? • The situational context of The Kite Runner would account for its incredible success as a post-9/11 bestseller in the U.S.A., when its sociocultural context seemed to offer a “bridge of understanding“ between American and Afghan cultures.

6. The options for establishing links between these paired texts could be: • common themes, ideas, or topics • guilt, • redemption, • war, • love, etc. • historical or literary periods • both early 21st C. post-modern texts – one avant-garde, the other ’multicultural’ in literary approach • using different cultural settings of a nostalgic 20th C. Britain and a traumatic Middle Eastern diaspora

7. The options for establishing a link between these paired texts could be: • the same genre or different genres • family saga • bildungsroman • historical romance • social realist novel vs. hero tale • similar or contrasting cultural perspectives • English vs. American authors • European vs. Middle Eastern contexts

8. At some moments chilling, at others desperately sad, the play told a tale of the heart whose message, conveyed in a rhyming prologue, was that love which did not build a foundation on good sense was doomed. Ian McEwan, Atonement

10. ’Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? …what ideas have you been admitting?’ Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

11. Atonement: a tragicomedy of failed remarriage ’…the genre of remarriage is an inheritor of the preoccupations and discoveries of Shakespearian romantic comedy.’ Stanley Cavell • Settings • Part One: Hottest day of 1935 • Part Two: World War 2 – Dunkirk, 1940 • Part Three: World War 2 – London, 1940 • Epilogue: London, 1999 • Literary models • Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, 1817); Clarissa (Samuel Richardson, 1748); What Maisie Knew (Henry James, 1897); The Go-Between (L. P. Hartley, 1953); The French Lieutenant’s Woman (John Fowles, 1969) • Literary allusions • Twelfth Night (William Shakespeare, 1601); Lady Chatterly’s Lover (D. H. Lawrence, 1928); “In Memory of W. B. Yeats“ (W. H. Auden, 1940)

12. anachrony [an-ak-rôni] • A term used in modern narratology to denote a discrepancy between the order in which events of the story occur and the order in which they are presented to us in the plot. Anachronies take two basic forms: ’flashback’ or analepsis and ’flashforward’ or prolepsis.

13. Adjective: anachronic • The Kite Runner onlyuses an anachronic narrative in the more conventional sense of a ’framing device – the ’December 2001’ moment when its protagonist receives a phone call that throws him into his past. After this prolepsis or ’flash-forward’,we are quickly taken back to 1975 and the novel then follows a conventional narrative arc back to June 2001 in chapter 14.

14. focalization • The term used in modern narratology for ’point of view’; that is, for the kind of perspective from which the events of a story are witnessed. Events observed by a traditional omniscient narrator are said to be non-focalized, whereas events witnessed within the story’s world from the constrained perspective of a single character are ’internally focalized’.

15. focalization • The nature of a given narrative’s focalization is to be distinguished from its narrative ’voice’, as seeing is from speaking. • The events of Atonementare ’internally focalized’ in incredibly subtle ways through the many narrative voices of its characters, particularly Briony, Robbie and Cecilia.

16. Paired narrative techniques • McEwan’s use of focalization complicates the authorial partiality of a Jane Austen novel, when the ’omniscient narrator’ of the older Briony-as-author, compromised by her need for atonement, can no longer be seen as non-focalized. • While the focalization inAtonement has a surface equivalent to The Kite Runner in Rahim Kahn’s account of the missing years of Hassan’s life, Hosseini’s novel is resolutely told from Amir’s point of view.

17. Paired narrative techniques • McEwan employs this particular ’modal determination’ for two reasons: • to distinguish his narrative from the classic realist novel’s association with an omniscient narrator (Briony’s lie came from positioning herself as such a narrator in her fictionalized scenario of events) • to demonstrate Briony’s, the adult narrator’s, attempt to project herself into the thoughts and feelings of her characters, an act crucial to her search for forgiveness.

18. Metafiction: self-reflexive texts • Fiction about fiction; or more especially a kind of fiction that openly comments on its own fictional status. • Atonement draws attention to its own construction as a fictional narrative because such an awareness is crucial to its ’truths’ about the human condition.

19. Paired narrative scenes • Atonement Part Three (p.312): • ’We found Two Figures…’ to ’Development is required.’ • The Kite Runner (pp.28-30): • ’I enjoyed your story very much.’ to ’How dare he criticize you?’

20. Paired narrative scenes • Atonement Part Three (p.312): • Cyril Connolly’s letter is an odd interpolation in the narrative – the first time the novel turns on itself, creating a sense of dislocation that makes us pause to reflect on the process of writing and the whole artificial construct: a product of drafting and redrafting, criticism and adaptation. His recommendation for an ‘underlying pull of simple narrative’ is already there in the vase episode, because Briony’s observation of it does now lead somewhere.

21. Paired narrative scenes • The Kite Runner (pp.28-30): • Rahim Kahn’s letter is not an odd interpolation in the narrative, but gives the emerging child writer Amir the praise he craves from his father. Kahn identifies Amir’s gift of ‘irony’ just as the actual author uses the episode to establish the seed of his protagonist’s adult guilt by having Hassan deliver an unintentionally harsher critique, inspiring Amir’s resentment. While certainly layering his irony, Hosseini avoids metafiction in favour of traditional plot and character.

22. Worksheet for Comparative Analysis of Paired Texts

23. Against Oblivion • No late twentieth century text can subscribe to the simplified wish fulfilments of classic realist fiction. ’The development of nuclear weapons,’ McEwan has said, ’shows the dissociation of science from feelings,’ of outer and inner worlds we inhabit. • Interview with John Haffenden (1985), quoted in Brian Finney’s essay “Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement“ (2002)

24. Against Oblivion – Atonement • World War Two, that introduced the world to mass ethnic cleansing, the Cold War and the permanent threat of nuclear deterrence, appears to have brought forth mainly aesthetic structures that reflect the complexity and horror of life in the second half of that century. It is a time in history when the Marshalls, who, equally guilty, lack Briony’s conscience, use the War to make their fortune and are then treated as public benefactors. Compared to Briony, they “have no remorse, no need for atonement“ (McEwan, 2002 interview). • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

25. Against Oblivion – Atonement • Atonement ends not just with the revelation of the deaths of Robbie and Cecilia, but with the diagnosis of Briony’s vascular dementia and her refusal to have the lovers forgive her even in her fictional account of their survival - proof that in her literary act of atonement Briony has finally learned how to imagine herself into the feelings of others. Responding to the criticism that his endings are too pessimistic, McEwan has said, “I never did trust those novels where, for all their dark insights, or that they ended in a funeral, there was always someone walking away and bending to pick up a flower“ (2001 interview). • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

26. Yet, as McEwan admits, Part Three “has about it both an act of cowardice [. . .] but also it’s her stand against oblivion ­ she’s seventy seven years old, her tide is running out very fast [. . .] She does not have the courage of her pessimism. [. . .] She knows that when this novel is finally published [. . .] she herself will only become a character“ (McEwan, Silverblatt). • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

27. Is Briony’s work of fiction an evasion or an act of atonement or both? What exactly does she mean when she says that atonement “was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point” (351)? Is she implicitly recognizing the contradiction at the heart of her narrative – the impossibility of avoiding constructing false fictions around others at the same time as one is required to enter imaginatively into their lives? • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

28. Or is McEwan suggesting that the attempt is all we can ask for, an attempt that is bound to fail, but that can come closer to or stray further from the reality of others? Robbie’s and Cecilia’s happiness cannot be restored to them by an act of corrective fiction. • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

29. Nevertheless the attempt to imagine the feelings of others is perhaps the one corrective that we can make in the face of continuing human suffering. The novel ends on a note of ambiguity. Yet an appreciation of ambiguity is just what would have prevented Briony from indicting Robbie in her first fictionalized narration of these events. • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

30. What is really wrong with the classic realist novel? • In classic realist fiction the events seem to narrate themselves, thus removing any sense of the literary work as a product of a controlling voice. • Discourse – language that draws attention to its production – assumes a speaker and a hearer, thus opening itself to resistance, dispute, critical questioning.

31. What is really wrong with the classic realist novel? • From his earliest collections of short stories Ian McEwan has consistently drawn attention to the status of his fiction as discourse by alluding to or parodying traditional literary genres, thereby forcing the reader to take note of the presence of a self conscious narrator. • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

32. Intertextuality as antidote to the classic realist novel • McEwan consciously modelled Atonement on the work of “Elizabeth Bowen of The Heat of the Day, with a dash of Rosamund Lehmann of Dusty Answer, and, in [Briony’s] first attempts, a sprinkling of Virginia Woolf” (McEwan, Begley 56). At least one reviewer has seen a parallel between Atonement and Bowen’s The Last September (1929) “with its restive teenage girl in the big house” (Lee 16). • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

33. Intertextuality as antidote to the classic realist novel • Elizabeth Bowen also directly influences the form the final novel takes. After reading Briony’s first neo-modernist attempt to give fictional shape to the events of 1935 submitted to Cyril Connolly at Horizon, Bowen reacts by first thinking the prose “ ‘too full, too cloying,’” but with “‘redeeming shades of Dusty Answer’” (Rosamund Lehmann’s first novel of 1927 about a young girl’s growing up). Cyril Connolly voices Bowen’s final criticism of the modernist obsession with consciousness at the expense of plot by reminding Briony that even her most sophisticated readers “retain a childlike desire to be told a story” (296). Briony’s rewritten Part One owes its mounting tension to Bowen’s criticism passed on to Cyril Connolly and the example offered by Bowen’s earlier novel. • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

34. Intertextuality as antidote to the classic realist novel • The numerous allusions to other texts warn the reader not to treat Atonement as a classic realist text. … Atonement offers particularly clear instances of … the different ways in which a text, in relating to other texts, becomes productive of further meanings, ways such as rereading and displacement. McEwan’s novel is most obviously a rereading of the classic realist novel of the nineteenth century, just as it is a displacement of the modernist novel, particularly as instanced in the fiction of Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

35. Intertextuality as antidote to the classic realist novel: Clarissa • Atonement makes an ironic literary allusion to the early English epistolary novel Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson. Arabella, the melodramatic heroine of the thirteen-year-old Briony’s playlet, shares Clarissa’s sister’s name and thereby places “The Trials of Arabella“ within a literary tradition of sentimentality and sensationalism, while inevitably lacking the psychological complexity of the original. Cecilia is spending the vacation after graduating at Cambridge by reading Clarissa, which Robbie considers psychologically subtle and she boring. Their disagreement over this text helps determine the reader’s response to the rape which takes place later the same day and which is sprung on the reader with none of the lengthy preparation that Richardson provides. • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

36. Intertextuality as antidote to the classic realist novel: Clarissa • This example appears to incorporate the two kinds of intertextual productivity – rereading and displacement. Seen in the perspective of the novel as a whole, Lola’s rape, unlike that of Clarissa, which leads to her death and Lovelace’s damnation, is the prelude to a long and socially successful marriage cemented by Lola’s and Marshall’s determination to keep the identity of the rapist a secret while either of them is alive. Lola’s worldly manipulation of the advantage the rape has given her over her rapist acts as a form of social intertextuality, anticipating the laxer sexual morality of the later twentieth century. An additional effect that such ironic references to other literary texts have in McEwan’s novel is to act as a continuous reminder that the entire book is the final literary artifact of Briony, a professional author. • Briony’s Stand Against Oblivion: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Brian Finney (2002) • http://www.csulb.edu/~bhfinney/McEwan.html

37. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Wonder and Hero Tales • The classic Persian legend Rostam and Sohrab, which plays a prominent role in the novel, is immortalized in the Persian poet Abu’l-Qasem Ferdowsi’s Shahnamah (“Book of Kings“). • While Ferdowsi was a 10th C. member of the landed gentry who transcribed this mythic history of Iran, centred around the reigns of its kings, its roots are in the ancient Indo-Iranian oral tradition. • The following ideas are abridged from Amanda Bird’s thesis “Heroism and Tale Telling in Contemporary Afghan Literature” for Dr. Dianne Dugaw’s English 507 (University of Oregon, 2004).

38. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Rostam and Sohrab • The renowned warrior Rostam loses his horse to thieves when out hunting and is lured into a Turkish city in pursuit of him. The king offers him hospitality, and in the night the king’s daughter, Tahmineh, is drawn irresistibly to his room. Rostam and Tahmineh appeal to the king for permission to wed, and the ceremony, it seems, is performed on the spot. The next day, however, Rostam’s horse is found, and Rostam is on his way. Nine months later, Tahmineh bears a son, Sohrab, whose stature and strength rival Rostam’s, even in childhood. His reputation spreads although his ancestry remains a secret.

39. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Rostam and Sohrab • Knowing himself to be the son of Rostam, Sohrab sets off for Iran with an army in search of his father. When they meet the army of Iran, Sohrab challenges the shah to one-on-one combat. The shah sends Rostam, and before commencing Sohrab demands to know Rostam’s identity. However, Rostam refuses to disclose his name, reasoning that if this enemy does not know he is Rostam, the challenger will be cowed by the thought that another yet stronger and mightier than he exists in the Iranian camp.

40. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Rostam and Sohrab • On the third day, having elicited divine help, Rostam deals the death blow to Sohrab, who declares as he expires: “My father [will] draw thee forth from thy hiding-place, and avenge my death upon thee when he shall learn that the earth is become my bed. For my father is Rustem the Pahliva [champion], and it shall be told unto him how that Sohrab his son perished in the quest after his face.“[*] Rostam, of course, is devastated and bitterly mourns his loss, burning his tent, armor, saddle and all his royal trappings before giving Sohrab a royal burial. Rostam’s pride leads to his demise in the end, perishing at the hands of his treacherous brother, who tells him: “Thou hast caused many to perish by the sword; it is meet that thou shouldst perish by it thyself.“ [*] Ferdowsi, Rostam and Sohrab.

41. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Rostam and Sohrab in The Kite Runner • Hosseini draws our attention to the Shahnamah by referring to it repeatedly throughout the novel. It is Hassan’s favorite book, and the story of Rostam and Sohrab his favorite story. Baba is the very image of the Persian hero: vigorous, competitive, valiant, generous and charismatic. A champion soccer player in his youth, he loves hunting, cars and throws a big party nearly every weekend. Rumored that he once wrestled a bear with his bare hands, he gives loans and refuses repayment; and builds an orphanage from his own funds, insisting on designing it himself, even though he has no experience as an architect.

42. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Rostam and Sohrab in The Kite Runner • However, Baba also sacrifices his son to his glory, denying Amir his affection, at least in part because Amir is nothing like him. He prefers books to soccer and doesn’t stand up for himself when the neighbors bully him. Baba laments to Rahim Khan, “There is something missing in that boy.“[p.20] • Hosseini underlines this during their flight from the country when the truck carrying Baba and Amir is stopped by a Russian soldier, who demands a half hour with a young wife as his price for letting the vehicle pass. Baba stands and defies the soldier, but Amir internally protests, “Do you always have to be the hero?“ What he says is, “Baba, sit down, please. … I think he really means to shoot you.“ Baba turns on him. “Haven’t I taught you anything?“[20]

43. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Rostam and Sohrab in The Kite Runner • On the other hand, Baba expresses unusual affection for Hassan, inspiring jealousy in Amir, who does not know that Hassan is his half brother, born to Ali’s wife who ran off with a troupe of dancers soon after Hassan’s birth. In some ways, Hassan is more like Baba than Amir. In spite of his slight build, he stands up for Amir in street fights, where Amir merely hangs his head. He runs faster, is more coordinated, can shoot a slingshot with deadly accuracy. When he and Amir fly their kite in the yearly kite flying contest, Hassan is always first among the “kite runners“ who chase after the kites that have been cut down, identifying the kite’s point of descent with almost supernatural foreknowledge.

44. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Rostam and Sohrab in The Kite Runner • As it turns out, Hassan is the real hero of the story (its “kite runner“). The rape occurs while Hassan is protecting the kite he has “run“ for Amir. It is both Amir’s champion kite and his prize, the last kite to fall in the yearly contest, representing the triumph by which he hopes to win Baba’s favor. Amir’s failure to intervene on Hassan’s behalf is in part due to cowardice, but more because he is afraid of losing the prize that will win the coveted affection Baba has always denied him.

45. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Rostam and Sohrab in The Kite Runner • Hassan plays the heroic warrior in Amir’s service, whose name means “king“ (we are even told that Amir’s mother came from royal lineage; Baba called her his princess). When Amir charges Hassan to “Come back with it!“ as he chases after the fallen kite, Hassan stops to deliver the unforgettable line: “For you, a thousand times over!“[59] He sacrifices himself for Amir’s sake, proving he possesses the requisite quality of loyalty. • However, Amir fails not only to show equal loyalty, but also to avenge his fallen comrade until his final battle with Assef twenty-six years later. A Persian hero was bound by honor to avenge his kin or comrade, illustrated by Sohrab’s declaration to Rostam that Sohrab’s father will avenge his death.

46. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Rostam and Sohrab in The Kite Runner • Aside from thematic parallels, Hosseini makes many overt references to the Shahnamah in the novel: • Amir imagines himself making “a grand entrance“ to deliver the prize kite to his father, as “a hero, prized trophy in [his] bloodied hands. Heads would turn and eyes would lock. Rostam and Sohrab sizing each other up.“[59] • Hassan and Ali give Amir a new illustrated copy of the Shahnamah for his 13th birthday, after the kite-flying incident and just before the accusation of theft. • When Amir first meets Soraya, his future wife, he compares her to Tahmineh, the Turkish princess who becomes Sohrab’s mother. • We learn that Hassan read to Sohrab from the Shahnamah and that Sohrab’s favorite part was of course the story of his namesake. Later, Amir too reads to Sohrab from the Shahnamah in the hospital when he is recovering from his suicide attempt.

47. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Ironic twists in the Heroic Ideal • Just as McEwan uses Briony’s self-reflexive narrative to critique the classic realist novel, Hosseini twists The Kite Runner’s traditional sources with an ironic purpose. • Like Amir’s first short story, Hosseini achieves irony in his first novel by exploiting the traditional Persian hero’s flaws and reapportioning the villainy in the wonder tale formula.

48. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Ironic twists in the Heroic Ideal • One of the primary sources of tragedy in the Shahnamah is the increasing penetration of evil into the hearts and minds of the Iranian kings and heroes. Rostam’s demise results from his own pride and determination to win at all costs; one price he must pay is his son, the other is his own life. • However, given the primary aim of the Persian hero is a good name, to have a protagonist who commits serious breeches of conduct and openly confess them, as Amir does, is essentially un-Afghan. Hassan’s dream about a monster in the lake before the kite flying contest has Amir swim out to prove to everyone that there is no monster. But on the night Amir grasps the dismal truth that he is going to get away with his deception, Amir tells himself Hassan was wrong. “There was a monster in the lake. It had grabbed Hassan by the ankles, dragged him to the murky bottom. I was that monster.“[75]

49. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Ironic twists in the Heroic Ideal • While Hassan displays the virtues of a true hero (loyalty, truthfulness, valor), he does not appear concerned about obtaining a good name, even confessing to thievery in order to protect Amir. Amir tells us that everyone knows Hassan never lies, and if Hassan had denied the charge, Baba would have believed Hassan over Amir. Hassan never tries to assert himself, and Amir even suspects him of intentionally losing at cards. He seems to possess a selfless devotion that desires nothing for himself but Amir’s friendship, and he is heartbroken, not so much by Amir’s failure to defend him, as by Amir’s subsequent alienation of him. Years later, shortly before his death, in a letter delivered to Amir by Rahim, Hassan writes: “I dream that someday you will return to Kabul to revisit the land of our childhood. If you do, you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you.“[191]

50. Intertextuality as assimilation of the ‘multicultural epic’: The Kite Runner • Ironic twists in the Heroic Ideal • Furthermore, Hosseini makes a hero in Hassan of a Hazara of illegitimate birth who seems to possess an untouchable manliness that transcends race, class, circumstances and the regard of others. In “Sex Role Reversals, Sex Changes, and Transvestite Disguise in the Oral Tradition of a Conservative Muslim Community in Afghanistan,“ Margaret Mills tells us that in the folk stories she encountered, homosexual rape seemed to equate with emasculation.