CONTENTS
Acknowledgments    i
Abstract    ii摘要    iii
1 Introduction    1
2 The Kite Runner: A Typical Bildungsroman    3
2.1 The Origin of the Bildungsroman    3
2.2 The Definition of the Bildungsroman    3
2.3 The Characteristics of the Bildungsroman    4
2.4 The Kite Runner as a Bildungsroman    5
3 Spiritual Guides and Companions in Amir’s Initiation    6
3.1 Positive Spiritual Guides    6
3.2 Negative Spiritual and behavioral Guides    8
3.3 Initiation Companions    9
4 The Kite: A Symbol for Initiation and Reconciliation    10
4.1 The Kite as the Symbol for Friendship and Naive Childhood    10
4.2 The First Kite Runner as the Symbol for Growing Pains    11
4.3 The Second Kite Runner as the Symbol for Maturity    12
5 Redemption as a Spiritual Journey    13
6 Conclusion    15
Bibliography    17
 
1    Introduction
Growth covers activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitate employability, enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations. Not limited to self-help, the concept involves formal and informal activities for developing others in roles such as teacher, guide, counselor, manager, life coach or mentor. When growth takes place in the context of institutions, it refers to the methods, programs, tools, techniques, and assessment systems that support human growth at the inpidual level in organizations.

Personal growth can also include making other people grow. This may take place through roles such as those of a teacher or mentor, either through a personal competency (such as the skill of certain managers in developing the potential of employees) or through a professional service (such as providing training, assessment or coaching)

Beyond improving oneself and developing others,“personal growth” labels a field of practice and research. As a field of practice it includes personal growth methods, learning programs, assessment system, tools and techniques. As a field of research, personal growth topics increasingly appear in scientific journals, higher education reviews, management journals and business books. Any sort of growth---whether economic, political, biological, organizational or personal---requires a framework if one wishes to know whether change has actually occurred. In the case of personal growth, an inpidual often functions as the primary judge of improvement or of regression, but validation of objective improvement requires assessment using standard criteria. Personal-growth frameworks may include goals or benchmarks that define the end-points, strategies or plans for reaching goals, measurement and assessment of progress, levels or stages that define milestones along a growth path, and a feedback system to provide information on changes.

Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-born American novelist and physician. After graduating from college, he worked as doctor in California, an occupation that he likened to “an arranged marriage”. Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. His father worked as a diplomat, and when Hosseini was 11 years old, the family moved to France; four years later, they applied for asylum in the United States, where he later became a citizen. Hosseini did not return to Afghanistan until 2001 at the age of 36,where he “felt like a tourist in his own country”. In the interviews about the experience, he admitted to sometimes feeling survivor’s guilt for having been able to leave the country before the Soviet invasion and subsequent wars. 论《追风筝的人》主人公的成长(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_41015.html