This paper examines the coming-of-age theme across three internationally recognized works — Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, Euzhan Palcy's film Sugar Cane Alley, and Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being — drawing comparisons between their portrayals of youth, identity, and self-discovery. The analysis argues that in each work, the young protagonist's transition from innocence to awareness is inseparable from the social, political, and class structures surrounding them. From the class divisions of Afghanistan to the colonial exploitation of Martinique to the political repression of Soviet-era Czechoslovakia, the paper demonstrates how coming-of-age narratives across cultures consistently function as critiques of the social orders in which young people must find themselves.
The theme of coming of age is common in literature and drama of all sorts, depicting either how an adolescent moves from childhood into adulthood or how a young person gains awareness of themselves and of their relationship to the world in which they live. Such a theme can be found in all cultures, and the way it is expressed in both the developed and the developing world reveals certain commonalities. An analysis of several works from different countries shows how this theme is consistently tied to a critique of the social order in which young people live.
Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner tells the story of the coming of age of two friends raised in the same household who then go their separate ways. Though raised together, they come from different social strata. They are bound to each other even as they pursue very different lives, and one element holding them together is the guilt arising from an incident in childhood, when one friend fails the other at a crucial moment. Amir and Hassan are the two friends: Amir is the son of a wealthy family, and Hassan is the son of a servant in that household. The two boys are in many ways alike, but there is always an invisible separation between them — a division by social class that transcends many of the bonds that might otherwise hold them together.
Amir would like to view their friendship as having no barriers. The novel is told from his point of view, so what he thinks about these issues is quite clear. Hassan is seen more from a distance, yet some of his ideas are evident in the odd way he agrees with Amir while also seeming to shrink into his own world — a world with a different, if hidden, point of view. This behavior marks him as the son of a servant, as one who simply cannot feel free to express himself as an equal. While Amir might believe he accepts Hassan as an equal, in fact he does not. This becomes clear when he fails to help Hassan as the latter is attacked by older boys from Amir's social class — Amir does not step forward to defend his friend.
This moment of failure becomes the keystone for the rest of the novel, contributing to the moves Amir makes — first to California, to escape his shame, and then back to Afghanistan, when he finds he cannot escape it and instead seeks to atone for it. Hassan, for his part, reacts to the slight by changing his view of the world, immersing himself in the social and religious beliefs of the Taliban, becoming an official in that regime and, for Amir, an enemy of the Afghan people and of himself.
Throughout the novel, the social divisions of Afghanistan play a strong role in defining each character and setting the course each must follow. The boys come from different classes, and this defining element overcomes even their friendship and affection for one another. Amir may wish such divisions did not keep them apart, but they do. These divisions are solidified in different ways under each regime in Afghanistan — the royal period, the Soviet invasion, and the Taliban era — with the ruling Taliban imposing their will and punishing all who seem different in any way. Amir's own social class may have believed itself superior, but it functioned in much the same way, without the overt violence and religious fervor of the Taliban. In both cases, the primary result was separation and conflict.
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The political and social structure in each of these works informs the personal development of the young characters in different ways, and what links these works is the sense that young people come of age in a context — a context formed by the society in which they live. How they react to that society helps shape the transition they make from adolescence to adulthood, and from childhood to an awareness of themselves and their world.
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