From Narrative Voice to Stylistic Form: Mapping Betrayal and Redemption in The Kite Runner

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between the narrative voice, stylistic form and reader cognition in the construction of betrayal and redemption in The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. The study is based on an integrated approach which draws on the classical narratology of Gérard Genette, post-classical cognitive narratology, and stylistic linguistics, and examines how moral meaning and emotional involvement are not only created by the events in the narratives but also by the way the events are narrated and linguistically realized. The analysis is qualitative, text-based, and focused on three major narrative moments: Amir's betrayal of Hassan, Amir's psychological (emotional) exile in America, and Amir's act of redemption through Sohrab. The study discusses how the narration of moral development is narrated as a retroactive with the burden of new knowledge through the use of homodiegetic narration and internal focalization. On the stylistic level, deixis, modality, discourse markers, and transitivity are demonstrated to maintain the sense of immersion in the narrative, to mark moral uncertainty, and to allocate agency. The findings show how within a cognitive framework these narrative and linguistic structures produce reader sympathy by evoking the moral simulation of Amir, rather than moral validation, and place readers inside Amir's moral confusion and partial ethical repair. The study makes a significant contribution in the field of narratology and stylistics by providing a model of analysis that accounts for the interaction of narrative form, language and cognition in the production of ethical and emotional experience in postcolonial fiction.