Literary value can be defined as a plot that follows the guideline that Joseph Campbell set before his theory of “monomyth,” inferring from the two videos and Foster’s ideas. Understanding this concept allows us to confirm that the book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, contains an ample amount of literary value. Amir’s journey to Afghanistan serves as the prototype that Campbell constructed when producing his hypothesis. The two videos and Foster’s book lays out the conditions of a book containing literary value through Campbell’s ideas. The first video describes the path a hero takes during his journey in the story.
This path contains 11 stages: four occurring in the ordinary world, two in the transitional phase, and five in the special world. These stages are as follows: call to adventure, assistance, departure, trials, approach, crisis, treasure, result, return, new life, and resolution. Toward the end of the book, The Kite Runner enters this type of pattern once Amir receives a call, a call to adventure, from his sickly friend, Rahim, to return to Afghanistan. Once he arrives, Rahim provides him with instructions to retrieve a boy named Sohrab with the help of a taxi driver named Farid (assistance). They traveled countless hours, visiting childhood memories and meeting the Taliban (trials), to finally encounter Sohrab with Assef. Amir challenges Assef, the approach, and later wins the fight in order to retrieve Sohrab (treasure).
In order to legally adopt Sohrab, he must be put in another orphanage for a couple months, a decision that triggered him to nearly kill himself (crisis). Once he recovered from this suicidal attempt, Amir was finally able to adopt him through the help of Sharif, Soraya’s uncle (result). They re. .n to go there. Once again, we see that the plot of this novel accurately correlates to the outline of other common stories.
Although the item “challenges and trials en route” was not present in this book, the main objective of realizing the true purpose of the quest was effectively met. This leads to the conclusion that the structure of The Kite Runner contains literary value. This simple outline Joseph Campbell constructed effectively corresponds to the plot of thousands of other stories, including The Kite Runner. From the evidence above, we can conclude that the plot, the characters, and the structure of the novel resemble the monomyth that Campbell created. The Kite Runner not only followed the guideline of the Hero’s Journey, but it also taught valuable morals that may impact the lives of countless readers, adding on to the credibility of the literary value.
