This explores how form, structure and language is used in The Kite Runner

2. Form
Structure
Language
Narrative
Structure
Point of
View

3. FORM
Bildungsroman
Novel
AKA „coming of age‟ novel.

5. Bildungsroman tell limited,
uneventful stories in which
weak but flexible heroes reach
their maturity.

6. EVIDENCE
Willow Tree-symbolises new beginnings and
redemption.
First Person Intradiegetic narrator
Willow Tree-symbolises new good
Rahim Khan: There is a way to be beginnings and
redemption.
again.
Willow Tree-symbolises way out.
Metaphor: The past claws it’s new beginnings and
Willow Tree-symbolises new beginnings and
redemption.
redemption.
Everyday meaningful events: Then I saw a
pair of kites
Retrospective: I became what I am today at
the age of 12.

7. STRUCTURE: USE OF SYMBOLS
Harelip“Hassan
Kites- “I looked
the
up at those twin harelipped
kites”
Kite
Language:
Runner”.
“For you a
Does Amir
thousand times
still see
over”
Hassan as
inferior?
Redemption/
Death: Willow
Tree.
Weather.
Foreshadowing
and analepsis

8. LANGUAGE
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Anthropomorphism: Because the past claws it‟s
way out.
Metaphor: I have been peeking into that deserted
alley for the past 26 years.
Use of simple sentences: “Because the past
claws it‟s way out… One day last summer my
friend Rahim Khan called from Pakistan…It was
my past of unatoned sins.
Minor Sentences: “Ali. Kabul.”
Simile: “Like a pair of eyes looking down on San
Francisco the place I now called home.”
Repetition of “thought”.
Connotations of frigid.
Semantic Field of the park-associations with the
park (setting).

9. Loosely
Circular
Retrospective
Episodic?
Narrative
Structure
Use of
setting
Hints at
climax and
catharsis
Begins with a
crisis

10. • Unreliable?
• Pathetic
Fallacy.
• Adult
• There is a
way to be
good
again
First
Person
Who is
Amir
addressing
•
•
•
•
Rahim
Khan
Bildung
sroman
Novel
Hasan
His Conscience
Soraya
His father
• I realize I
have been
peeking
into that
deserted
alley…

11. IS AMIR MANIPULATING THE READER?
 It
is this honesty from Amir right from the start
that allows real emotional connection with the
reader which keeps them interested-narrative
voice/characterisation.
 When he talks about remembering „the
precise moment‟ the foreshadowing makes
the reader want to continue to find out the
event that is the catalyst for the novelnarrative voice.

12. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
 Settings:
The Kite Runner is about Afghanistan
but is opens in San Francisco.
 Shifts in Time-links to chapter 2. Amir begins
narrating his childhood.
 Is Chapter 1 the exposition?
 Characterisation of Rahim Khan: He is the
catalyst to make Amir proactive. Suggests he is
wise.
 Characterisation of Amir: Rich, educated and
reflective.
 Hasan-precious and vulnerable.
 Amir as villain/anti-hero