A Comparative Study Of Biblical Archetypes In The Kite Runner And In Atonement

The Kite Runner is the debut work of the Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini.It was a great success after its publication in 2003 and won various newcomer awards.Atonement is the most popular masterpiece of contemporary British writer Ian McEwan,published in 2001 and nominated for the Man Booker Prize in the same year.Both novels narrate the growth story of the protagonist's atonement after his or her fall.There are abundant researches into the two works from various perspectives at present,such as the thematic research,narrative research,sociological research,ethics,reader-response criticism,psychoanalysis,existentialism,post-colonialism and new historicism,but few scholars compare the two initiation novels from the perspective of archetypal criticism.In literature,an archetype is an original model in storytelling which is mimicked and echoed again and again in literary works.An archetype can be a character,a plot or a theme.The Bible is full of archetypes.Built on archetypal theories and biblical stories,this thesis makes a comparative study of biblical archetypes recurring in the character,plot and theme of the two novels in order to deepen readers' understanding of the two novels.By comparing The Kite Runner and Atonement,the thesis discusses similar biblical archetypes in characterization and plot development found in the two novels.The similar characters in the two novels are modeled on the archetypes of Adam or Eve,Cain or Judas,scapegoat and Satan in the Bible.Among them,the protagonists modeled after Adam and Cain as well as Eve and Judas respectively depict their change from innocence to a sinful state to reveal the growth experience and personality change of individuals.Furthermore,some similar plot structures in the two books are shown to parallel biblical archetypes of the fall of man,the suffering of Job and the return of the prodigal son.The three plot archetypes join together in each of the two fictions to form a journey of life from the protagonist's fall,to sufferings and finally to atonement.Apart from the similar archetypes,the thesis also explores different biblical archetypes used in the two novels.The different archetypes are mainly those ofthemes.Binary opposition and atonement are the themes embodied in the biblical archetypes to show differences between the two books.Binary opposition is an umbrella theme covering many different sub-themes.The sub-themes embodied in the biblical archetypes of Egyptians vs.Israelites and Isaac vs.Ishmael are dealt with in The Kite Runner to show the ambiguity of racial opposition and brotherly opposition between Amir and Hassan.On the other hand,the sub-theme embodied in the biblical archetype of God vs.his people is dramatized in Atonement.The sub-theme is master-servant opposition in social stratification,which helps show how Robbie,a man from a lower social class,could be prejudiced against by Briony,an upper-middle class girl.Although both fictions present archetypes to address the theme of binary opposition,different archetypes are used in the two novels because each has its own sub-themes to tackle.As for the theme of atonement,archetypes from different religious scriptures appear in the two different novels because the two fictions try to put across different messages on the same issue of atonement.Amir in The Kite Runner is modeled on Jesus Christ in the New Testament whereas Briony in Atonement is created out of the archetype of Messiah in the Old Testament.Thus,the message conveyed by the former book is that Amir has attained his atonement in day-to-day life of this world while the message put across by the latter novel is that Briony has attained her atonement in the spiritual world of literature.One author seems to emphasize the tangible reality of life whereas the other the spiritual reality of it.Based on the above analysis,the thesis finds that similarities between the two novels show the universal aspects of human culture whereas differences between them highlight the culture-specific aspects of ethnic cultures.This thesis project hammers at two novels written by two Anglo-American writers.Future critics can apply the archetypal approach to critique and comparison of books written by non-western writers,which will definitely widen the horizon of archetypal analysis.