The Unhomeliness of Home: The Representation of Home in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner

• Main Authors: Wai CheeTeh, 鄭維芝
• Other Authors: Shu-Li Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/2m53x9

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系 === 104 === When we think of home, the term is generally associated with the configuration of a place of security, stability and above all, a place that endows one with the sense of belongingness. However, it is imperative to consider the sense of belongingness that one obtains from home is always underscored by a sense of unhomeliness. As a matter in fact, the space we referred to as “home” is built upon the pattern of inclusion and exclusion that dictates our affiliation to home. Therefore, “home” is equally hostile as the sense of belonging we obtain from being at home is always threatened by the possibility of expulsion from home. This thesis reads the problematic representation of home in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner as a rejection to a unitary notion of home while seeking for a reconceptualization of home. Amir’s retrospective narration divulges home as an ideologically constructed discourse where the inhabitants are compelled to conformity. Also, The Kite Runner reveals how the displacement from home unsettles one’s sense of identity and belongingness to home which in turn instills a sense of newness to the reconfiguration of the very of notion of home.