摘 要

卡勒德·胡塞尼的小说《追风筝的人》和《灿烂千阳》描述了两位生于20世纪50和60年代主人公各自的成长历程，同时描述了阿富汗在20世纪70年代至90年代的战乱和变动。这两部小说都可以归类为成长小说。作为西方近代文学中颇为常见的一种小说类型，成长小说大多描绘的是关于主人公从幼年至成年，从天真无邪到成熟世故的过程，注重人物的心理变化。根据成长小说的相关理论，本文从社会背景、宗教文化、家庭背景、性格等方面深入比较两部小说主人公的异同点。本文将两部成长小说作对比，旨在全面分析影响人物成长的外界和內界因素。

关键词：成长小说，《追风筝的人》，《灿烂千阳》，人物性格

Abstract

The novels The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini both describe the growth of the two protesters who were born in the 1950s and 1960s, and it also describes the wars and changes of Afghanistan in the 1970s to the 1990s. These two novels can be classified as initiation story. As a kind of novel type which is quite common in western modern literature, most of initiation stories tell the process of the protagonist from juvenile to adult, from innocence to maturation, and they pay attention to the psychological change of the protagonists. According to the relevant theories of initiation story, this paper compares the similarities and differences between the two novels from factors of social background, religious culture, family background, character and so on. The paper will compare the two initiation novels, to give a comprehensive analysis of the outside and internal factors that impact on the growth of protagonists.

Keywords: initiation story, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, character

Contents

Contents 5

1 Introduction 6

1.1 Khaled Hosseini and His Works 6

1.2 The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns 6

2 Initiation Story 7

2.1 Definitions and Characteristics of Initiation Story 7

2.2 Origin and Development of Initiation Story 8

3 Growth of the Protagonists in Two Initiation Novels 9

3.1 From Childhood to Youth 9

3.1.1 Amir in The Kite Runner 9

3.1.2 Mariam in A Thousand Splendid Suns 9

3.2 From Youth to Maturity 10

3.2.1 Amir in The Kite Runner 10

3.2.2 Mariam in A Thousand Splendid Sun 11

4Comparative study of the Protagonists in the Novels. 12

4.1 Similarities 12

4.1.1 Social Background 12

4.1.2 Culture and Religion 13

4.1.3 Guides in Life: Positive and Negative 13

4.2 Differences 16

4.2.1 Gender Identity 16

4.2.2 Family Environment 16

4.2.3 Personality 17

5 Conclusion 17

Reference 18

Acknowledgements 19

1 Introduction

1.1 Khaled Hosseini and His Works

Khaled Hossein is an Afghan-born American novelist and physician. He was born on March 4, 1965 in Kabul, Afghanistan and was the eldest of five children. His father, Nasser, was a moderate Muslim who worked as a diplomat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul while his mother worked as a Persian language teacher at a girls high school. When Hosseini was 11 years old, the family moved to France; four years later, they applied for asylum in the United States, where he later became a citizen. Hosseini did not return to Afghanistan until 2001 at the age of 36, where he "felt like a tourist in his own country". After graduating from college, he worked as a doctor in California, an occupation that he likened to "an arranged marriage." He practiced medicine for over ten years, until a year and a half after the release of The Kite Runner.He has published three novels, all of which are at least partially set in Afghanistan and feature an Afghan as the protagonist. His first novel The Kite Runner gained a great success in recent years and became the largest dark horse in international literary world. It spent 101 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, four of them at number one. He won the new award and sold 6 million books around the world. A Thousand Splendid Suns is the second novel after four years. It raised a great concern before the publication and won the critics praise on May 22, 2007 in the United States, being a Times Best Seller for 103 weeks, 15 at number one. And the third novel the Mountains Echoed which was published in 2013 debuted near the top of the Times list and remained on it for 33 weeks until January 2014.

1.2 The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

The Kite Runner was Hosseini’s first novel. The novel tells the story of Amir from the perspective of the first person. Amir was born in a rich family of Kabul in 1963. His father is a Pashtun man, a successful carpenter businessman. Hassan is the son of the servant of the Amir’s family and he was born as a Hazara. They are great companion in their childhood. Hassan is a particularly faithful and upright boy who thinks only for the sake of master Amir. In a game of flying kites, Hassan refused to give the kites to Assef, a Pashtun child who admired of the Nazi in the community. Then Assef and his friends raped Hassan. It was all seen by Amir. However, because of his cowardice and timidity, he did not go to rescue Hassan. Since he was ashamed to face Hassan, Amir lied that Hassan had stolen his birthday present. To protect Amir, Hassan and his father Ali chose to leave. In 1979, Soviet invaded Afghanistan and in 1981 Amir fled to Pakistan with his father, leaving Rahim Khan(Amir’s father’s friend) to take care of the house. Then they settled in the United States. After the Taliban occupied the Kabul in 1996, the house was occupied. Hassan and his wife were killed in the street because of racial discrimination, leaving the only son of Sola. Racine wanted Amir to go to the orphanage to rescue Sola and told him that Hassan was the illegitimate son of his father. Thinking for a long time, Amir began his redemption journey.

A Thousand Splendid Suns was his second novel four years later. It is even praised by many critics as the great works that go beyond the The Kite Runner. This time Hosseini focuses on the Afghan women. The novel tells the story of two unfortunate stories of Afghan women, who are patient with hunger and sickness. The family is going to bear the trauma of war and the displacement of refugees. The state must endure the war in the former Soviet Union, the Taliban and the United States. This is a history of patience in Afghanistan. Mariam (the main protagonists in this paper) is one of the two unfortunate women. As an illegitimate daughter, she and her mother lived in a dilapidated mud house. Her wealthy father, Jalil, will come to see her once a week. At the day of her 15 birthday, she left the mud house went to the front of his father regardless of her mother’s retention. Then, she realized the idea of the mother and identified the father's illusion. When she came back home, she found her mother suicide and was forced to marry the middle-aged shoemaker Rashid. She did not feel the warm in the life until she met Leila and sacrificed herself in the end to help Leila.

2 Initiation Story

2.1 Definitions and Characteristics of Initiation Story

Initiation Story is also known as novel of initiation. It is quite a common type in the western modern literature. In short, this kind of novel tells the story of the protagonist (from childhood or juvenile to adulthood, from naive to mature). The protagonist perhaps suffer from the hardships of community and gradually understand the dangerous of the people or he makes some changes after a series of experiences and in the occasion, the story is also coming to an end.