Ethnic conflicts in Khaled Hosseini’s the kite runner

The Kite Runner is Hosseini’s debut novel about Afghanistan. The kite plays a center role in this novel though this novel tells about Afghanistan. Hosseini tries to picture us about the conflict among ethnic groups in Afghanistan through its traditional game, Kite dueling, in which we can see different colors of kites as different ethnic groups in the society that are competing to take power of Afghanistan which results the emergence of ethnic conflict. The story of The Kite Runner is fictional, history, social issue, and conflict which Afghan faced in different kinds of situations during 1970s until 2000s. Ethnic conflict has been one of the social issue that Hosseini builds in this novel. Ethnic conflict in Afghanistan that is described by Hosseini through out the novel portrays the reader how a conflict can effect in someone’s life. That is why this study is aimed to find Ethnic Conflict in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite runner.

This study is trying to answer two research questions which are in the forms of ethnic conflict in Afghan that are described in the novel manifested and what causes the conflict to emerge. The researcher uses sociological literary approach to analyze the novel. Since the novel has historical connection in Afghanistan, using sociological approach will be more beneficial to enterprise the events in the novel.

The result of analyzing the data is classified into two points based on the research problems. First point is the forms of ethnic conflict manifested in the novel. It is found that there are three forms of ethnic conflicts in the novel. Rivalry opens up the finding of ethnic conflict forms. It is rivalry between Pashtun and Hazara ethnics which results in oppression of Hazara ethnic in Afghan society. The next form of ethnic conflict is hostility between Pashtun and Hazara ethnics which results in hostile action and violation toward Hazara ethnic. Here, the racial identity of Hazara people who have Mongoloid face has been used a lot in referring them such as slant eye and flat nose. The last form of ethnic conflict manifested is Hazara struggle against Pashtun. Even though Hazara people have received so many haters and oppression, they still manage to struggle against Pashtun. They use their loyalty and kindness to fight against Pashtun, in which it effects in their psychological condition. The second point of analysis is the cause of ethnic conflict which results in different ideology that each Pashtun and Hazara believe which are Sunni and Shi’a. In the name of religion and ethnicity, Pashtun people planning to rule the whole
Afghanistan by oppressing Hazara people and destroy their home land.

This research has only taken very little part of the novel and sociological literary literature. There are still many aspects that can be studied from The Kite Runner. For the next researchers, especially literary researchers, analyzing this novel using different literary theory will result different view of the novel since this research is only analyzing from sociological literary view.