Exploitation of Existentialism in Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner”

Abstract

Existentialism is a movement within continental philosophy that developed in the late 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th centuries. Existentialism is believed to be organised with Soren Kierkegaard. He said that each individual- not society or religion is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately, sincerely and authentically. Existentialism defines as the act of living based on beliefs and experiences. Soren Kierkegaard formulated the existentialism, but he never used the existentialism theory in any of his works. It is developed by Friedrich Nietzsche. The other existentialism philosophers are Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simon de Beauvoir, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel and Franz Kafka. Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. In 1980, when the soviet War in Afghanistan began, Hosseini’s family sought political asylum in the United States and they become the residence of San Jose, California. He practised medicine for over ten years. After the success of his debut novel, The Kite Runner (2003), he retired from medicine to write full time. His novels are set in Afghanistan and feature an Afghan as the protagonist. He wrote three famous novels The Kite Runner (2003), A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007) and Mountains Echoed (2013).