Preview

Kite Runner Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1020 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Kite Runner Essay
KITE RUNNER ESSAY

By: Julianna Procyshen

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini takes the reader on a haunting journey of Amir and Hassan's friendship and displays the hardships that the two boys are faced with as a result of this friendship. Although they have many similarities, such as growing up together, feeding from the same breast and sharing many of the same experiences, Amir is a Pashtun, meaning he is favored and has a high status in society and Hassan, on the other hand, is a Hazara and Amir's servant, which means he is treated differently in society than Amir. This book focuses on the theme of kindness and how individuals can attempt to determine their own destiny by the way that they act towards others. Throughout the Kite Runner there are many events that occur where the characters are faced with difficult situations and often the outcome of the situation is a result of the action they chose to take or not take, and other times the result of their destiny is out of their control. The book begins with Amir and Hassan playing together. The book shows that as they begin to grow up, their friendship also becomes complicated. The role of kindness does play a large role when individuals attempt to determine their own destiny. Karma, what goes around comes around, is an apparent theme throughout this novel and throughout every day life. The idea of karma is the idea that how you act towards someone will catch up to you. For example, if you treat someone with respect and you are positive, then the world will return the respect and positivity to you.

The first time it is evident that kindness plays a role in determining destiny is when Amir finds Hassan in the alley being raped by Assef and his friends. Amir is faced with two choices, the first one being to intervene and save Hassan, or to run away and protect himself. He chooses the second option. Once he chose to respond to the situation in this way, his relationship with Hassan was completely changed. Amir

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Kite Runner Summary

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The story opens in pre-Taliban Kabul, Afghanistan. The protagonist, Amir, is recalling events from his childhood. He lived a lavish life with his father, Baba, and their servant, Ali and his son Hassan. Hassan and Amir grew up together and were almost like brothers, however Ali and Hassan belonged to the religious minority group, the Shias, and Baba and Amir, Sunni Muslims, superior. The different religious sects made it difficult for the boys to be real friends, despite their many character similarities and personal connection to one another. Hassan and Amir had a lot in common, such as the fact that they both grew up without a mother. Though they were raised with different beliefs, they were brought up together, and spent their entire childhoods making memories with each other.…

    • 601 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Review and think about the section titled "Contemporary Postmodern Understandings of Culture and Variation in Human Behavior" found in Chapter 8 of your text.…

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    When you read two great stories you always notice that they have things in common and some things different. From what I read “The Bean Trees” and “The Kite Runner”, their meaning had the most in common.…

    • 836 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    From the start and through his death, Hassan remains the same: loyal, forgiving, and good-natured. Hassan grew up with a very particular role in life. He prepares Amir’s breakfast and collects his books while Amir gets ready for school. Rather than going to school as well, Hassan stays and helps his father, Ali, get groceries and complete their chores. Instead of receiving his education, he stays home and lives as a servant to those richer than he. Hassan learns early on in life that it is his duty to sacrifice himself for others. As a result of growing up this way, Hassan is not prone to envy and is even happy with the way he lives; the life he has. Even after a traumatic, violent past, he remains innocent from the beginning and to the end of his life. There is no way for Hassan to become ‘good again’ because he had never been bad. Hassan’s ability to suffer without becoming bitter, his integrity, and what his character truly shows us that there is no way for him…

    • 783 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Amir was desperate in getting rid of Hassan; he thought by betraying him the weight of the secret would be lifted. This action getting rid of Hassan and his father, changes the future for everyone involved. Amir and his father lose loyal friends, servants, and ultimately a son and half-brother. It doesn’t really hit Amir the capacity of it all, till when he is older and vising Rahim Khan, which he learns, he is related to Hassan.…

    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Kite Runner Themes

    • 2157 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Saw the resignation in it. It was a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb. (Hosseini, 133)” Betrayal is the one of the more obvious themes in the novel because it occurs multiple times. Hassan’s persistent resistance to give the kite to Assef results in rape. Amir purposely let his best friend get raped, he believed that kite would redeem his relationship with Baba. It displayed how self centered he was; it displayed how much of a coward he was; and it displayed how much of a mediocre “friend” he was. A major problem was that Amir had a lack of independence. He was afraid to stand up for himself. Assef and his gang of friends would pick on him all the time, in retrospect Hassan would stand up and fight for him. He never turned his back on Amir one time not even when Amir framed him for being a thief. That is not what a real friend would do. In today’s society the word friend is misused a great deal. While growing up I recognized everybody as my friend, whether I talked to them or not. If they were in my class I called them a friend. What defines a true friend? A person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations, is the formal definition. In…

    • 2157 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Redemption. People can work their whole lives for it. When someone does something bad, sometimes their initial reaction is to try and redeem it. To others it takes a long time, almost forever, and for some, it never comes. For some people redemption is only important to them because their trying to change how everyone else sees them. And to others all that’s important is that they themselves feel redeemed. The best part of redemption, is that it’s in the eye of the beholder.…

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, Amir was the son of a wealthy social worker. He was brought up with the son of his servant, and perhaps his only best friend, Hassan. Amir had a rocky relation with his father. At times, it seemed as his father loved him but those moments didn’t lasted forever. He thinks Baba (his father) wishes Amir were more like him, and that Baba holds him responsible for killing his mother, who died during his birth. Despite being best friends, Amir thinks that Hassan is beneath him because he belonged to an inferior cast. He used to mock him jokingly or tried to outsmart him. In all fairness, it was Amir’s cowardly nature that sets up the guilt he carries for the rest of his life. He saw a couple of bullies sexually assaulting Hassan but he didn’t help him. His betrayal and the sense of losing pride killed their relation and it wasn’t to be amended. After the hard years of war, Amir moved to the United States where he started a new life, married his lover, became a writer and everything was going well until an old family friend, Rahim Khan asked him to come to Pakistan and redeem the sins he did in his childhood. Now a mature Amir returns to Kabul, his homeland, and is shocked to see the destruction the Talibans have left behind them. He tries to find Hassan’s son, Sohrab to get him back to a better life until he meets an on foe in Aasef, the guy who raped Hassan. After a grueling fight, a courageous escape, visits to hospitals and try to find a way to get out, Amir finally reached home in California, free from the guilt he carried all his life as he brought along Hassan’s son and his nephew Sohrab to give him a better life.…

    • 1395 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It’s a hot and stuffy afternoon which didn’t help with the disgusted and hurt feeling I felt inside. I never thought that I would be betrayed by my best friend Amir maybe he was scared of being hurt by Assef- I don’t blame him for being afraid but I wish that he helped me that day. I was hanging up the washing when I heard a voice say, “Come with me.” To my surprise I turned to see Amir and I was so happy to see him, but at the back of my mind I was also curious about what he wanted to show me. I followed him to the hillside where he used to read all his stories to me. He was a talented writer and I enjoyed listening to his stories all the time.…

    • 619 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    feelings and just get to the point that he wants to eat and he just…

    • 360 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Inequality

    • 1839 Words
    • 8 Pages

    In many societies, differences in religion and history can cause a social rift and create a structure of classes. This separation between people can affect the circumstances they are subject to and essentially how they live their life. However an individual’s outlook on life and the positive and negative thoughts he or she acquires are dependant solely on his or her decisions and outside forces. In the novel, The Kite Runner, the author Khaled Hosseini tells the story of an Afgan boy who struggles with the emotional consequences of a childhood decision that set him on a search for redemption. The author shows that classism determines the quality of one’s lifestyle but not the emotional state of mind one possesses. This is established through the social setting in the novel which enforces classist ideals that rigidly cast individuals into certain roles and determine the way they are treated. Next, the character of Amir’s childhood friend and servant, Hassan, undergoes a grim change as a result of a traumatic incident rather then a consequence of his social standing and material worth. Finally, Amir consistently battles with an internal conflict and guilt after betraying Hassan despite living a privileged and financially-comfortable life.…

    • 1839 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The whole glade was even more silent than usual. It was so weird. Normally all of the gladers would sit by the fire, talk and laugh and joke about their day. They would eat and drink a little bit but tonight everything was different. Thomas – the new greenie – ran into the maze to help one of the runners – Minho – to get Alby who was stung out of the maze. But he was too late. The doors closed just a second after the greenie entered the maze. They were dead and everybody knew it.…

    • 540 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I often mind myself in the awestruck sight of my friends when I pass by them, running during my practices. They watch me as if they were seeing Mo Farah himself, with his long elegant strides that gracefully propel him forward, past his rivals, past roaring crowds, and right over the thin white line, telling him he’s won it all. To them, they know no one else who runs, and thus in my almighty five foot ten, lanky limbed runner's body type stature, I must be the new, slightly more milky white Mo Farah. They all almost hold the same idea that I’m a gifted runner, and there’s no way they could be good themselves. What i don’t think they’ve noticed is the fact that I started off from the same place that they are all at ,and I’ve only been slowly improving each year.…

    • 645 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Kite Runner Essay Example

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages

    " Then he would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who feed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time could break.…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    the kite runner essay

    • 577 Words
    • 3 Pages

    One of the central themes of the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, is whether Amir truly redeemed himself for what he did. First of all, I think what he did to Hassan was terrible. Not helping his friend, and half brother, which he would find out later, when he is getting raped, is a terrible and cowardice act. He should have at least told someone what had happened, or had fought back, rather than avoiding the situation all together. Did he honestly think that this event would not hurt his conscience greatly? Anyway, before I rant on too much about Amir's mistakes as a young kid, let's get back on topic. Did Amir really redeem himself? In the beginning, Amir continued to make further mistakes, pushing away his problems by putting his money under Hassan's bed, making it seem like he stole the money. He then moves to America with Baba. He thinks moving will help him erase his past; he can make a new life for himself. He becomes a writer and then gets married, but he cannot have a child and is still haunted by the incident. The two main issues in his life are the fact that he cannot have a kid and he is still remorseful for what he did to Hassan. Then, he gets a call from Rahim Khan, Baba's friend, and he says that there is an oppotunity for him to redeem himself. He then tells him that Hassan has been killed, because he is a Hazara, but there still is an opportunity for Amir to redeem himself. This means that Amir can never directly apologize to Hassan for what he did to him. But there is still an opportunity for him. He can save Hassan's son, Sohrab, from being abused as a orphan. Amir then learns how terrible Afghanistan has become. He displayed a lot of courage by going into a dangerous Kabul to find Sohrab. Amir confronts the official who has Sohrab, and it happens to be Assef. This means that he can fight back against the culprit of the previous act and save Sohrab. He fights Assef and Sohrab saves him by shooting a slingshot at Assef.…

    • 577 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays