Peace In The Kite Runner

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Power and peace are opposing goals of characters in Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 novel, The Kite Runner. The novel describes people’s attitudes when the Taliban came to Afghanistan after years of Russian occupation. Rahim Khan, a major character and a voice of reason in the story, says, “When the Taliban rolled in and kicked the Alliance out of Kabul, I actually danced on that street.” This quote can be compared to what Pakistani Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai says about the Taliban in her autobiography, I Am Malala. She describes the radio station, Mullah FM, ran by a militant who went by the name “Fazlullah”, as propaganda, drawing people in and providing them a sense of comfort, only to stab them in the back later.

In both The Kite Runner and I Am Malala, peace is hard to find under an oppressive fundamentalist religious regime. “Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at what price?” comments Rahim Khan from The Kite Runner. He is describing how under the Taliban there was a price to pay for “peace”, which was obedience to the radical fundamentalist group. “We felt like the Taliban saw us as like little dolls to control, telling us what to do and how to dress. I thought if God wanted us to be like that, …show more content…

These events in Afghanistan and Pakistan can also be compared to the events in

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