Object Relations : Insights of Eros and Thanatos in the Selected Novels of Khaled Hosseini

Abstract

Discourse of human instincts is an ever challenging notion in psychology. These challenges paved a way for new exploration. One of the significant endeavour on Object Relation Theory is Melanie Kleinian model of psychical development, is the infant seen as coming into the world with life and death instincts. Phantasy, Projection,Introjection, Sadism, Epistemophilia, Reparation, Symbolism in which Klein sees life and death instincts in the human condition. Literature provides a rich platform to explore human psyche since ancient times. Khaled Hosseini’s works are one of such entity to explore human instincts. His two novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns’s characters Mariam, Amir, Hassan, Sorob, Soroya , and Ali had experienced bitter childhood days in their past. The characters of Hosseini’s have suffered from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which haunts them throughout. The present study focuses on how the Eros and Thanatos frame the personality of selected characters with the fear of their past and to constrain their purpose in life.