Introduction
Primal conflicts between fathers and sons mark great drama and fiction from the earliest literature on, and are explored in virtually all cultures. The urgency of the subject is both urgent and complex, involving deep needs to connect clashing with masculine impulses to rebel and assert dominance. Then, both needs and impulses are greatly influenced by the cultures themselves, as the roles of all men are largely defined by how they function in the world. This aspect of cultural influence is powerfully in place in both Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and in Su’s I Love Yous Are for White People, as the circumstances of these fathers and sons seem to dictate the tortured relationships between them. At the same time, the effects of culture only reinforce the universality of the father/son conflict itself. In emphasizing specific cultural circumstances, The Kite Runner and I Love Yous Are for White People actually reveal more clearly the basic antagonism at the heart of the father/son relationship in all cultures.
Comparison and Contrast
Despite the vast cultural differences between the fathers and sons in these two novels, and no matter the intense issues dividing the relationships, it is interesting to note that there is in both an early and profound connection. This is evident, not unexpectedly, before the changes of living create changes in the relationships, and goes to a primal father/son bond.
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In The Kite Runner, Amir manifests a regard for his father understandable to many sons, in that the boy is instinctively drawn to the man’s standing and authority as it relates to himself. When Baba, the father, needs his hat held for him while delivering a speech, the task is meaningful to Amir: “I was glad to, because then everybody would see he was my father, my Baba” (Hosseini 16). In Su’s memoir, Lac by no means so directly indicates a regard for his father’s stature in their world of South Vietnam. He refers to being embarrassed as street vendors would baby him, yet there is some degree of satisfaction even in this: “I had an embarrassingly proud father” (Su 3).
What becomes clear here, then, is both a similarity and a contrast. Both sons evince an awareness of their fathers as men of the world, and this has meaning for the boys in terms of their own identities. With Lac, however, there is distance even here. He seems to perceive himself as apart from his father, despite the man’s pride in his son. It is a distance which Amir will also come to know, as the circumstances of life and culture underscore the innate tensions between both sets of fathers and sons. Early on, there is more the impact of social pride from Amir based on his father’s status in their Afghani world, and the prematurely adult and objective view of Lac likely fostered by the roughly urban Vietnamese environment.
Culture as highlighting the imminent and primal conflicts in the relationships occurs soon after, acting again as influence, but more as backdrop. Amir develops Lac’s distanced view of his own father shortly, assessing him as hard and beginning to feel stirrings of a son’s rebellion: “You can’t love a man like that without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little” (Hosseini 16). He can appreciate his father’s achievements in defying custom in their society, but he is also beginning to judge. The son is then reflecting the traditional quality of challenge. This occurs in a more pragmatic form when Lac and his family are new to America, and in the battle over the used condom that Lac believes is a toy balloon. It does not matter that Pa may be correct; what matters is that a thing valued by the son is being taken by the father, and this is a moment of critical challenge: “His face is as furious as mine is indignant” (Su 24). That this conflict concludes with Pa striking the boy for the first time only reinforces the significance of the moment. It is rooted in cultural factors, as in the strangeness of the environment and the fascination of the filthy object itself to the Vietnamese boy, but these factors are also only extraneous to the real issue. More exactly, and as occurs when many sons first defy the authority of the father, violence erupts because a primal line is being crossed.
Then, the shared element of emigration, with the vast challenges of the new cultural environments, dramatically alters the father/son relationships, and in a way encouraging the sons’ defiance of the fathers. In Su’s memoir, America is known as “Heaven,” just as Baba entertains a similar vision: “Baba loved the idea of America” (Hosseini 132). Both fathers encounter realities more grim, as Baba is reduced to pumping gas for a living and Pa desperately searches for work while trying to protect his family from the dangers of “Heaven”: “Pa forbids Ma, Quy, and me from going out without him” (Su 25). As tragic as these realities are, and as both reveal the same and immense disappointment in the new land, they also serve to give the sons new identities. These are also identities continually at war with those of the fathers, and the element of environment amplifies them radically as the grown Lac dare not tell his father of his imminent trip to Vietnam. The decision to go is Lac’s but, as it defies his father’s ideas, even the adult son cannot “My world still revolves around a tiny man, and he has a way of bringing me back into orbit when I stray too far” (Su 233). The “way” is that bond both requiring resistance and demanding loyalty, common to fathers and sons in all circumstances, and emphasized here by the son’s knowledge of his father’s understandable disgust at the idea of returning “home”. In The Kite Runner, there is a less dramatic, but equally important, cultural influence. Amir, like Lac, is simply better enabled to navigate life in the new environment. When his father fails in this in a simple grocery store episode, the son’s role as becoming dominant in the relationship becomes clear: “That made me angry at Baba, his causing an old woman’s hands to shake” (Hosseini 135). In both tales, then, the sheer realities of different environments amplify traditional father/son conflicts, as the sons are able to exercise a power denied to their fathers.
Conclusion
Both The Kite Runner and I Love Yous Are for White People are rich with incidents profoundly shaping the father/son relationships at the heart of them, and these incidents necessarily reflects the cultures, and shared shift in culture, within the novels. It is then easy to see the former as a story reliant on the Afghani background of the characters, and the latter as very much a memoir of specifically Asian issues. The reality, however, is that each remains essentially a tale of father/son conflict, and the cultural elements, while clearly important, only highlight and accelerate the relationships, rather than define them. In employing specific cultural circumstances, The Kite Runner and I Love Yous Are for White People actually present more clearly the basic antagonism at the heart of the father/son relationship in all cultures.
- Hosseini, K. The Kite Runner. New York: Random House, 2009. Print.
