Good morning and thank you. These particular few pages of my novel, The Kite Runner, hold some of the most important parts regarding character and theme set up. One of the first apparent themes is the book is the tension and delicate relationship that exists between father and son. In the excerpt I show the reader that Baba is unimpressed with Amir. He feels that there is something wrong with Amir; he infers that Amir is a coward. This is revealed when Amir overhears the conversation between Rahim Khan and Baba. They are discussing Baba’s disillusion with his son, Baba says “A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who won’t stand up to anything.” At this moment Baba is keeping his true feelings hidden, which only serves to heighten Amir’s feeling of inadequacy. This theme runs throughout the book and causes a lot of complication.…
Amir’s father, Baba, sees the cowardice that Amir possesses and the constant need he has for his father’s approval. As the story progresses, Amir witnesses an act of evil in the aftermath of the kite running festival. He sees Hassan, his only friend, being raped by Assef, the town bully. Overwhelmed with horror and fear, Amir flees the scene, leaving his faithful friend behind. As a young boy, he seeks redemption for having abandoned his friend by seeking out physical pain as punishment. Amir narrates, “I hit him with another pomegranate, in the shoulder this time...‘Hit me back, goddamn you!’ I wished he would. I wished he'd give me the punishment I craved, so maybe I'd finally sleep at night. Maybe then things could return to how they used to be between us”(Hosseini, pg 92). Amir longs for forgiveness and to share the bond they once had. This incident serves as a lesson to Amir that redemption requires much more than encouraging Hassan to throw a pomegranate at his chest. While Hassan is a loyal friend, who might have recognized Amir’s attempt at redemption, Hassan refuses to participate. This failure at redemption leads to Amir distancing himself from Hassan, and the two continue to grow farther apart. The theme of redemption re-appears when Amir receives a phone call from his old friend, Rahim Khan. As Rahim finishes his conversation with Amir, he says, “Come. There is a way to be good again” (Hosseini, pg ). Without the prodding from Rahim, Amir may have never overcome the regret of his cowardly mistake. Even though he has grown and matured into adulthood, he realizes that his past is still a heavy burden. It is not until Amir returns to Afghanistan that he succeeds in finally securing atonement. After hearing the news of Hassan’s death and the fate of…
Although Hassan’s death is foreshadowed however in chapter 16, ‘God help the Hazaras now’, Hosseini creates suspense and dramatic tension towards Hassan’s death by giving Amir the letter first before revealing his death, giving Amir hope and making the reader assume his journey to redemption would soon be over. ‘I dream that someday you will return to Kabul and re-visit the land of our childhood. If you do, you…
After Amir wins the competition, Hassan goes to retrieve his kite, when he then gets into a brawl with Assef and his two other boys. When Amir goes to find Hassan, he sees how he is getting abused by Assef and decides not to do anything about. He thought to himself, “I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan- the way he’d stood up for me all those times in the past- and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run” (Hosseini 77). In the end, Amir decided to run because he was a coward and only thought of the best for himself, not Hassan. Readers uncover irony within this section of the novel. In order for Hassan not to be raped, he had to give Assef Amir’s kite, which Hassan knew would help boost Amir and Baba’s relationship. So Hassan, being a great friend, sacrifices himself, just so that Baba can be proud of Amir for once. After the rape, Amir and Hassan become distant from one another. When the two are face-to-face, Amir wishes Hassan would punish him. For instance, he pelts Hassan with the pomegranates, because he wants Hassan to hit him back. Punishment, Amir feels, would at least begin to make up for the way he wronged Hassan. Hassan, however, will not retaliate, and that became the greatest torment for Amir. Since Amir is still filled with the guilt of leaving Hassan to be raped in the alleyway, he decided he has to put an end to this. Seeing Hassan everyday was a constant reminder of his wronged actions. So, Amir went into Hassan’s living quarters, lifted his “mattress and planted [his] new watch and a handful of Afghani bills under it”, which made Baba believe Hassan stole all those items (Hosseini 104). Baba begs for Ali and Hassan to stay with them, but Ali makes the final decision that it would be best if they…
As I read pages 77-78, even though I didn’t like it, I found out why Amir didn’t do anything to help Hassan. All his life, he wanted to make his father proud, and he knew with the blue kite he would accomplish that. This part of the book is similar to a window. I was looking into Amir’s hardest decision in life and why he did what he did. Through Amir’s eyes, Baba’s praise was more important than Hassan’s safety. It gave me a view of hardships I never (and hope to never) experience. Hassan was put into a situation just because his job is to serve and protect Amir. It also showed me the ending of an amazing friendship. Therefore, because of Amir’s cowardliness and selfishness, his relationship with Hassan designagrated.…
Through the use of parallel events along with themes, such as the journey towards adulthood and the search for redemption, Khaled Hosseini portrays a guilty Amir in search of redeeming himself and paints a story of "friendship, fathers, sons, betrayal, tribute and redemption" ("Novels which explore the struggle for modern identity"). Throughout the novel there are many parallel events that show Amir's quest to redeem himself, from his desire for acceptance in Baba's eyes to his guilt about Hassan's rape. These events put the novel in motion as it sets up Amir's want for redemption early in the book.…
Babas lack of love and affection towards Amir has proven to change Amir into a boy that is constantly in search for his fathers love. Amirs best friend,” Hassan” is always there to protect him when he gets into fights because he is too timid to stand up for himself. Baba is reluctant to praise Amir because he feels as Amir lacks courage and is a coward in many situations. For example; when Assef was disturbing Amir, Hassan had to take out his slingshot and threaten Assef to leave at once because Amir was too scared to do anything about it in that situation. “A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”…
At the beginning of the novel, Amir is a young selfish child who cares about himself and only himself, which is evident by the choices he makes. His obsession to please Baba, his father, causes him to betray his best friend, later known to be his half-brother, Hassan. Hassan was raped by Assef, the novel’s antagonist, because he was protecting the kite Amir yearned for to satisfy Baba. Amir later confesses, “Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” (Hosseini 7). As a consequence, Amir lives with an abundant amount of guilt, in which he tries to avoid, but as the years crawl by, he is unable to find tranquility. His guilty conscious troubles…
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…
Firstly, throughout the whole novel, the story is always linked with the relationship between Amir and Hassan who is the servant of Amir. Hassan is a person who has brave and positive character, but Amir’s character stand on the opposite side of Hassan, which is cowardice. Amir shows the feeling that he is jealous of Hassan…
The opening paragraph of Khaled Hosseini’s novel "The Kite Runner" immediately expresses one of the central themes, guilt. Amir, the main character, is continuously antagonized by guilt. While on the surface, Amir seems to be a lighthearted child of a rich and popular father, he harbors the guiltiness of his sins deep within his heart. These guilts come back to haunt him throughout his whole life, resurfacing as vivid recollections in which he re-experiences his sins. While he tries to suppress his past and overlook these tragic moments, he feels remorse is persuaded him to take action. His father, who he fondly calls Baba, likewise harbors the guilt of his sins. To Amir, as well as to the rest of the world, Baba is seen as a strong and authoritative man, strong willed in both actions and heart. Yet under these fallacies lies a guilt that is so strong that all of his actions are based upon it. Both Amir and Baba are driven by these feelings of guilt, and every action they take and every decision they make is an attempt to reach redemption. Baba expresses his explanation behind that all sins are a variation of theft. “If you kill someone, you steal a man’s right to life and his family’s right to a father…
Sex, it can be an act of love or even a way to demonstrate passion, but can it also be used as a way to show dominance? In the play “A Streetcar Named Desire” Sex represents power. Stanley rapes Blanche in order to demonstrate his superiority over her.…
On that day Amir chose Baba over Hassan in an unforgivable way. After he won the kite racing contest, Hassan is supposed to chase after the second best kite and bring it to Amir. That happens eventually, but the day was not happy and good like it was before the race. Hassan was missing so Amir decides to look for him and what he sees changes their relationship forever. Amir watches Hassan get raped, and does nothing. As Hosseini explains “I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan- the way he’d stood up for me all those times in the past- and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run. In the end, I ran” (Hosseini 77), he changes Hassan and Amir’s relationship forever. In this moment, Amir shows where his loyalties lie, and it is not with Hassan. In the past, Amir would always try and make it up to Hassan when he messed with him, but this event shows how he never cared at all for Hassan. To make matters worse, the reason why he did not help Hassan was because he wanted to see Baba and have his father be proud of him. He “ran” because he never cared about Hassan at all. This event was the turning point in their relationship because after this happened, Amir wanted nothing to do with Hassan. He describes his feelings as “Everywhere I turned, I saw signs of his loyalty, his goddamn unwavering loyalty” (Hosseini 89). Amir was guilty, and sick of how Hassan would do anything for him, so he…
In this book, the main character Amir represents the stereotype of being the privileged son. Throughout the novel, he has repeatedly taken advantage of his status to get himself out of situations. For example, when his friend Hassan got raped. “I was a liar, a cheat, and a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon" (Hosseini 105). Instead of telling the truth about Hassan getting raped, Amir did everything but that so he didn’t get in trouble. He told Baba, when he asked why Hassan hadn’t been around, told him that Hassan was sick. Amir asked Baba about getting rid of Ali and Hassan, but when he asked his father was ashamed that he wanted to get rid of their family and told him no. SInce this wasn’t what Amir wanted to hear, he decided to take matters into his…
Amir made the choices that he made because now he's older and how he knows what to do. Amir is no longer a coward and would do anything to stand up to things that are right. As you read this book you would recognize the different themes that appear. Themes of sacrifice, honor and redemption. These three themes illustrate different things. For example, the theme of sacrifice illustrates Amir and Hassan relationship. I say this because Hassan would do anything for Amir, just to make sure he's safe and feels protected by his best friend. Hassan would make sure that Amir is good before himself and that shows a lot of sacrifice. The theme of honor is illustrated when Baba treats Ali and Hassan as if they were immediate family. Even when knowing that Hassan is actually Amir’s half brother, Baba still treats them with honor and respect. And lastly for redemption, Amir tries to redeem himself with Baba by receiving the losing kite. While Amir changed throughout the years, he obviously made some mistakes. That is the way life works no one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes and they learn from the mistakes eventually in their…