GUILTY

GUILTY

~Blog Post #4~

Topic H

May 14, 2015

Elizabeth Erickson

One of the most evident underlying themes in The Swallows of Kabul was of guilt. This reminded me a lot of the novel Crime and Punishment which we read this year; specifically in terms of the shared sense of guilt between the characters Atiq and Raskolnikov. It is clear from the beginning of The Swallows of Kabul that Atiq struggles with the guilt that he subconsciously feels for being an all-around terrible guy, and treating his loving, sick wife in an abusive and disgusting way. This guilt eats away at him and drives him crazy, so that he reflects it onto the people around him (especially Mussarat) and by the end, is actually psychotic. We see a similar pattern in the story of Raskolnikov, who, after the murder of two women, is driven to (deeper) insanity by his own guilt. In addition to both of these characters being motivated by guilt, there is a similarity in another driving factor of their violent actions. In both novels it seems as if the characters are in need of an outlet; there is a desire for change that they feel should be met no matter what the change is, good or bad. This is a power-thirsty attitude that I believe drives these characters to perform violent acts on people that are "lesser" than them, as a method of taking out their feelings on people that are more accessible than the actual problem (like the Taliban).