Psychological Description about Amir and Its Literary Meaning in The Kite Runner

Psychological Description about Amir and Its Literary Meaning in The Kite Runner

By Zhang Yunjiao

In partial fulfillment of the requirement

For the B.A. degree

Department of English

School of Languages and Cultures

Nanjing University of Information Science amp; Technology

June, 2017

Acknowledgements

After four years of study, I am going to complete my studies. As a graduate’s thesis, it has some incompleteness. Hereby, I would like to express my ignorant gratitude to all who ever helped me.

First of all, I would like to express the most affectionate respect and eternal gratitude to my tutor, professor Zhang Jun, for the meaningful instruction and tireless help. I am deeply influenced by his profound specialized knowledge and rigorous scholarship. I would also like to show my devout thankfulness to the teachers for their professional knowledge in these years and to all my classmates, especially my roommates for their suggestions about my thesis. Lastly, I will express my heartfelt thanks to my beloved family for their selfless love and support.

CONTENTS

Abstract 1

摘要 3

Chapter One. Introduction 4

1.1 Khaled Hosseini and The Kite Runner 4

1.2 Lev Vygotsky and His Culture-history Theory 5

Chapter Two. Psychological Description about Amir in Cultural Level and Its Literary Meanings 7

2.1 Psychological Description about Amir in Cultural Level 7

2.2 Literary Meanings 7

Chapter Three. Psychological Description about Amir in Historical Level and Its Literary Meanings 9

3.1 Psychological Description about Amir in Historical Level 9

3.2 Literary Meanings 9

Chapter Four. Description about Amir’s Psychological Activity Arising from Other Protagonists’ Influence and Its Literary Meanings 12

4.1 Description about Amir’s Psychological Activity Arising from The Influence of Amir’ s Father and Its Literary Meanings 12

4.2 Description about Amir’s Psychological Activity Arising from The Influence of Hassan and Its Literary Meanings 14

Chapter Five. Conclusion 16

References 17

Psychological Description about Amir and Its Literary Meaning in The Kite Runner

Zhang Yunjiao

Department of English

School of Languages and Cultures

Nanjing University of Information Science amp; Technology, Nanjing 210044

Abstract: The Kite Runner is the first English novel which is written by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Owing to its vivid characters as well as profound and moving story line, it has been sought after by extensive readers once published, making it a rare masterwork in the international literary world over the past years.Considering the great international influence of this work, domestic and foreign scholars have explored this novel from many different perspectives, such as growth and salvation, symbolism, religious culture and political identity. However, few scholars has studied it from a standpoint of social psychology to date.Therefore, by holding a perspective of social psychology and adhering to the theory of cultural-historical psychology proposed by famous educational psychologist Vygotsky, this paper is designed to study the psychological development about Amir under the influence of unique social history and culture and further complete an in-depth exploration on the psychological description of the hero and the corresponding literary connotations behind, by which we expect to probe into social concern and teenagers' psychological development. This paper consists of three parts, introduction, main body and conclusion. In introduction, we will have an overview on the author and the work and introduce the theory of cultural-historical psychology, and the theoretical founder Vygotsky. Based on the main points of Vygotsky, the main body—chapters 2 to 4—analyze the psychological description about Amir and its literary meanings from three aspects—psychological description about Amir in cultural level, psychological description about Amir in historical level and description about Amir’s psychological activity arising from other protagonists’ influence. The third part makes a conclusion for this paper.

Key Words: The Kite Runner; Psychological description; Literary meaning

摘要: 《追风筝的人》是美籍阿富汗裔作家卡勒德·胡塞尼创作的第一部英文小说，因作者笔下的角色刻画生动形象，故事情节跌宕感人，小说一经出版，便受到广大读者的争相追捧，成为近年来国际文坛上一部不可多得的佳作。 由于该作品巨大的国际影响力，国内外学者已从许多不同的角度对该小说进行了研究，如成长与救赎、象征主义、宗教文化、政治认同等，但时至今日，鲜有学者从社会心理学角度研究这部小说。因此，该论文从社会心理学角度出发，采用著名教育心理学家维果茨基的文化历史发展理论，来研究阿米尔在独特的社会历史文化影响下的心理发展，从而深入探讨小说对主人公的心理描写以及其背后的文学内涵，并期望通过本文的研究能够唤起全社会对青少年心理变化发展的关注和重视。本文由引言，主体和结论三大部分组成。引言首先介绍了作家及作品，其次介绍本文运用的研究理论——文化历史发展理论以及理论创始人维果茨基；主体部分，即第二章到第四章，基于维果茨基的主要观点分别从文化层面、历史层面以及人物关系层面对小说进行解析；第三部分对全文做出总结。

关键词：《追风筝的人》；心理描写；文学内涵

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