Lit Anal: The Kite Runner

Refreshing Sophomore year time! haha(:

 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is about Amir and his struggle to cope with things that happened when he was a boy and his attempts to make them right.  He grew up in Afghanistan with his friend and servant, Hassan.  Amir and Hassan did everything together and Hassan would protect Amir at all costs if it ever came down to it.  That winter, Amir wins the kite fighting tournament and Hassan runs to collect the kite only to be raped by a few other boys.  Slowly Amir and Hassan drift apart and Hassan and his father leave.  Amir and his father flee Kabul when it is invaded by the Soviets and move to California. Here, Amir meets and marries Soraya and they try and fail to have a baby.  Amir goes Pakistan where he learns that Hassan has been killed, but has a son, Sohrab, in an orphanage.  He rescues Sohrab but gets badly hurt in the process. After he recovers, Amir and Soraya try to bring Sohrab back to the U.S. to live with them. Sohrab tries to kill himself and fails. He becomes severely withdrawn and only smiles when he wins a kite battle back in the U.S. And Amir runs the kite for him.

 The theme of this novel is really all about redemption. “There is a way to be good again,” is one of the quotes that seems to haunt Amir throughout the book and what drives him to try to fix everything that happens.  He regrets everything that happened between himself and Hassan and wants to do everything he can to try and make it right.

 The authors tone throughout most of the book is very tragic. While there are uplifting and happy parts, the main tone is one of despair and loss.

 “I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba.”

 “A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”

 “That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.”

Symbolism - 

 The pomegranate tree - The pomegranate tree serves as a symbol of Hassan and Amir’s friendship.  As long as Hassan and Amir’s friendship is strong, the tree blooms, and produces fruit, and is healthy.  But as soon as the boys start to drift apart, the tree withers and dies.

"Amir and Hassan, the sultans of Kabul." "Those words made it formal: the tree was ours."

Irony - 

 Amir wants to be like his father and make his father proud, but instead he ends up possessing the traits of his father that are unwanted.  He, like his father, betrays his best friend.  Amir constantly has to deal with the unintended consequences of his actions that he took when he was a child and almost every action has a negative consequence.

“My body was broken—just how badly I wouldn’t find out until later—but I felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed.”

Foreshadowing - 

 A lot of the major things that take place in Afghanistan, reoccur when Amir is grown up.   He has to deal with the rape of Hassan’s son, realizing that he betrayed his best friend just  like his father did, and the most well known foreshadowing; Amir running Sohrab’s kite  for him.

“For you, a thousand times over.”

CHARACTERIZATION

Hassan's Indirect and Direct characterization

"...even in birth, Hassan was true to his nature: He was incapable of hurting anyone." (p. 10)

This is one line through which Amir indirectly characterizes Hassan as a person. We see through the chapters that Hassan is a very loyal person and could never hurt anyone. Proving to us that this statement is true.

One Direct characterization is in Chapter 1 where we are told that Hassan is harelipped and it is something directly on his character.

Being as one of the characters is the narrator of the story he doesn't really change his tone. He keeps his tone very mono tone due to the story being told in one point of view only.

All the characters in this story are very dynamic characters. As they go through the struggles they now have to face a lot of their mentality changes. The characters are not the same as the story progresses and its easy to follow that they are going through difficult times and that is why they are now struggling. At the beginning of the story however seeing as Amir controls the story I think the story seemed to make the characters flat but as time passed and incidents like the rape and so on, I think the dynamics of the story really changed.

Through the whole story I felt a lot of different connections and emotions. Seeing a close friend go through a hard time, I think we have all felt something like that at one point. I think in the end I some what knew the character but at the same time I don't think it was realistic, or as realistic as it could have been. Yes there were many parts that were related to situations somewhat like I have been through but the setting and the way of thinking these characters had did not match my sense of reality. I think the biggest effect would be the geographical aspect. However I did like the emotion portrayed in this story.