Literary Devices In The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner tells the haunting story of a young boy named Amir who grows up in Afghanistan in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The books later advances into the early 2000s and was published in 2003. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde tells the story of troubled young man, Dorian Gray, who is far too caught up in his own beauty and the damage his troubling behavior does too his appearance. The book takes place in London during the 1890s. Although the books take place almost one hundred years apart, they have striking similarities in how they were written and the stories that take place within the books. Both authors use similar literary devices to create their books. Khaled Hosseini and Oscar Wilde use a combination

The flashbacks to his childhood often times included foreshadowing to events that would happen as Amir grows up. Some of the examples are foreshadowing are vague or reference the future of Afghanistan as a whole. However, one example of foreshadowing that specifically references two characters and greatly affects the story is when a young Assef, the neighborhood bully, threatens Amir after a confrontation on the street. Assef says “This isn’t the end for you either, Amir. Someday, I’ll make you face me one on one” (Hosseini, 43). This is foreshadowing the future fight that takes place between Assef and Amir as adults for who gets to “keep” Hassan’s son, Sohrab. While in The Kite Runner the author specifically references an exact event that will take place Oscar Wilde uses foreshadowing to reference an event may take place based on the physical characteristics of the surroundings. The narrator says “He was walking home about eleven o’clock for Lord Henry’s, where he had been dining, and was wrapped in heavy furs, as the night was cold and foggy” (Wilde, 107). The foggy and cold weather sets the tone that soon something bad will happen based foreshadowing what the weather stands for, The narrator was correct too because not long after that Basil Hallward is killed by Dorian Gray. Although the foreshadowing in both books is done in a different style, the foreshadowing