Social Class in Corrupted Countries

Mrs. Lucas

May 6th, 2014

ENG4U

Rosie Kallio-Gibbons

The Importance of Social Class in Corrupted Countries

In countries like our own, the idea of social class is not of great importance. The position taken by our country is that people are equal, and everyone deserves an equal chance. In countries such Afghanistan, a nation with a corrupt fundamentalist government, social class means everything; power is the most valuable asset, and the importance placed upon wealth in these cultures causes an ever-widening the gap between rich and poor. These corrupt leaders and their ways of ruling also has a massive influence upon the opportunities a citizen has to leave or escape the country. In nations ruled by corrupt fundamentalism, a citizen's position in the social hierarchy determines their opportunities to escape, as is shown inYasmina Khadras' The Swallows of Kabul, and Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, through differentiation in setting, contrasting themes, and opposing characters.

Godspeed Mohsen

Taliban use mosque to hide weapons cache

Khaled Hosseini, author

Within each novel, social class plays the role of main influence upon a character's eventual fate, as the novel's setting determines a character's ranking in the hierarchy. The settings of the two novels differ greatly, as one emphasizes a new beginning and hope for a better life, whereas the other enforces the theme of being trapped without hope of escape. In Yasmina Khadra's The Swallows of Kabul, the main setting is constantly negatively described, as the city is horrifically dilapidated, and the characters see no conceivable hope of a better life.

"For Kabul has a horror of memory. She has put her history to death in the public square, sacrificed the names of her streets in horrific bonfires, dynamited her monuments into smithereens, and canceled the oaths her founders signed in their enemies' blood. Today, Kabul's enemies are her own offspring. They have disowned...