Final reflection for The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini was a really enjoyable book. It was one of the most well-written books that I’ve read in a long time. I would recommend this book to anyone, as it is full of well developed characters, has a story that is exciting and compelling, and is full of themes that are relevant to our everyday life. One such theme is that often times we treat those who love us the most with a great amount of disrespect. I realized this to be true by analyzing many of the relationships in the book. Amir as a child wants only to be loved by his father, he wants his father to be proud of him. Yet his father continually denies him, saying that he doesn’t feel comfortable around him, and that Amir isn’t like him. This hurts Amir. However, Amir is not innocent in this cycle. His family has servants, Hassan and Ali. Hassan is the same age as Amir. The two boys grew up together, doing everything together, never apart from each other. Hassan will do anything for Amir. He says that if Amir told him to, he would eat dirt without protest. All that he wants is to be with Amir and to always be his best friend. When Hassan is cornered by three boys who want to beat him up, all he has to do is give up the kite that he has run down and he won’t be harmed. Yet he refuses to do that because it’s Amir’s kite. Yet for all Hassan’s loyalty, Amir upholds the theme of poorly treating those who love him as evidenced by his treatment of Hassan. One of their favorite things to do is read together. Amir reads to the illiterate Hassan, this seems like a good thing to do, yet his reason for doing so is malevolent. He says, “My favorite part of reading to Hassan was when we came across a big word he didn’t know. I’d tease him, expose his ignorance” (28). Despite the fact that he is rich and Hassan is poor, and that Hassan is technically his servant, he still needs to remind himself and Hassan that he is better. In fact, he even says “I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either” (25). Clearly, Amir is not worthy of the love and loyalty that Hassan shows him every single day. Thus, a recurring theme in the novel is the mistreatment of those who love oneself.

In a previous post, I attempted to analyze Amir’s father. I said that he was uncomfortable around Amir because he represented his weaknesses. I believed that his father was centered only around being successful. However, as the book continued, more and more became clear about Amir’s father. When they move to America, Amir and his father become very close, and Amir’s father even shows that he is proud of his son. It is not until Amir goes back to Afghanistan as a grown man, long after his father is dead, that he learns the full truth about his father. Rahim Khan tells him that his father, not Ali, was the father of Hassan. This means that  Amir and his father were more alike than he could have ever guessed. Amir betrayed his half-brother Hassan by not stopping his rape and then driving him away in guilt, just as Amir’s father betrayed his best friend Ali by sleeping with his wife and getting her pregnant with Hassan. Amir is told that his father was hard on him and showed him little love because his other son, Hassan was made to suffer as the apparent son of a servant. So, Amir concludes, his father grew closer to him in America because they had to struggle to get by, and Hassan was nowhere to be seen. The irony is that only by ruining the life of Hassan, his father’s other beloved son, does Amir finally get the love and respect that he so desired.

There were a lot of ways that I improved as a close reader throughout the reading of the novel. I think I noticed many things that Foster talked about. His work definitely influenced me the most in terms of close reading this novel. For exame one of the most important acts in The Kite Runner is a sexual act, when Hassan is raped. Foster said that usually scenes describing sex are actually alluding to something else. Obviously Hassan being raped is important to the plot, but more important is what it represents. It not only exposes Amir's cowardice, but symbolizes the generations of hatred between the rich Afghans and the Hazaras. The Hazaras are time and time again mistreated and persecuted. Hassan is a Hazara, and Assef, his attacker is a rich Afghan. Finally, the rape is a foreshadowing of the Afghanistan that will come. The Taliban takes over and massacres the peaceful people, like Hassan and his family. Assef goes on to become a Taliban member, and it is he who takes Hassan's son and sexually abuses him until Amir finally stands up for himself and takes Hassan's son. I think I also improved as a close reader through my recognition of symbolism. There were many things throughout the book that were repeated over and over again, such as Amir's car-sickness and the pomegranate tree in which Hassan and Amir carved their names. I was able to recognize that these were potentially symbols, and I came up with possible thoughts as to what they might signify, but I still struggle at interpreting them fully. One of the ways I could have improved as a close reader I guess is by heeding Nabokov's advice and not becoming attached to the characters. I found myself fully invested in their every move, wanting them to succeed. Nabokov said not to do that. That being said, I think that's a stupid way to read. I mean, why read a book other than to get pulled into its world? I want to enjoy the book, and the best way to do that is to care about what happens. If I hadn't cared about the characters and had not allowed myself to be transported to Amir's Afghanistan, I wouldn't have enjoyed the book as much. I don't see the point of reading a book other than for enjoyment.

Intertexuality between The Kite Runner and Atonement

One thing that struck me about Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner was its sometimes uncanny resemblance to Atonement. The Kite Runner's main character is a priveliged young boy, Amir who grows up in 1970's Afghanistan. His closest companion is his servant Hassan, also a boy of his age. Amir, shares many similarities with everyone's favorite character, young Briony Tallis from Atonment. On the surface they are both young teenagers largely ignored and underappreciated by their parents. They both aspire to be writers of fiction. Amir and Briony both write stories in their youth. That is not enough however, to say that the two texts are similar. But when you dig deeper you start to see all the similarites between the novels. Briony is writing a piece of literature nearly eighty years later to make up for a sin that she was too cowardice to make up for. Amir is telling the story of his actions twenty some years after a similarly awful sin in an attempt to atone for his sin. Their stories are connected by a desire to finally atone for a mistake made in the cowardice of youth that ruined the lives of everyone around them. Briony saw a rape and blamed an innocent man because she believed that man to be a predator due to his love for her sister. Despite her almost immediate doubts she continues to assert that she SAW Robbie rape the girl. Robbie ends up being killed because of this, and Briony can never bring herself to apologize to him and Cecilia. Amir sees Hassan being raped by three boys, and doesn't step in to help Hassan. He is guilt ridden by his mistake, but it too scared to admit it to anyone, and it is not until twenty years later and Hassan's death-again, similar to Atonement in that it was caused through Amir being too scared to admit his mistake-that he finally tries to make up for it. What is the significance of Hosseini's allusion to Atonment? I'm not sure that I know for sure. Several of the same themes are in both novels. The stories of Amir and Briony certainly convey the theme of the human race's inability to atone for our mistakes. Perhaps he was trying to tell us that a young Amir struggled with the same immaturity issues that Briony had. In a larger sense, is the allusion to Atonement and its narrator a clue that Amir's act of atonment may not be all it's made out to be? If Briony can lie to the reader about her attempts to atone with Robbie and Cecilia, could Hosseini be saying that despite what his narator said happened, Amir wasn't able to rescue Hassan's son from the clutches of Assef? Or even worse, he could be saying that Amir never went into Kabul to rescue Sobhar. Whatever the case may be, the similarities between the two texts is striking and creates interesting parralells and possibilities

The Kite Runner blog post; why I enjoyed it

I really enjoyed The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I found myself engrossed by it, and even though it's cliché, found it hard to put the book down. I think what appealed to me so much was the way he developed the characters.

It was clear early on that Amir, the main character, wanted nothing more than his father's affection and pride. As a child he was driven by the pursuit of gaining that love, a task that he always seemed to fail at. As a reader, because of Hosseini's character development, I wanted Amir's father to be proud of him just as much as Amir himself wanted it. So when Amir won the kite fighting contest and sees  him “standing on the edge..pumping both fists...And right there was the single greatest moment of my...life” (66). I was happy because I had been emotionally invested in Amir. Then when Amir sees Hassan being raped and does nothing, he could have stepped “into that alley, stand up for Hassan-the way he’d stood up for me all those times in the past… Or I could run” (77). Amir chose to run and forsake Hassan. I was upset at Amir and literally couldn't keep reading the book for a little while, it was just so disappointing to see. As the story, and Amir’s life goes on, he grows up, moves to America, seemingly repairs his relationship with his father. He gets married, and has established a healthy life for himself. Hosseini has developed his character into a man with little turmoil or trouble inside. But, his past never left him. When he’s summoned back to Afghanistan at the request of a dying friend, he realizes he has to confront his demons that held him back from saving Hassan all those years ago. He overcomes his fear by confronting the Taliban in Kabul and rescuing Hassan’s orphaned son. I really enjoyed both the atonement aspect of what he did, and the way Hosseini brought his character back to a situation where he had to fully develop, he had to face his fears and stand up for himself.

The other character that really drew me into The Kite Runner was Hassan. Hosseini does a wonderful job of having the reader establish an emotional connection with Hassan. It’s impossible to not become connected with this innocent boy who would do anything for his best friend. But through the first person narration, we know that Amir doesn’t really feel the same way for Hassan. Knowing that devotion is one sided made me feel more attached to Hassan. He was a perfect person who was treated terribly. I think Hosseini made a conscious decision to make it impossible to not become emotionally connected to his characters through the way he developed them. I certainly was attached to them, and really enjoyed the book because of it.

Character Dissection of Baba

In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the main character Amir lives in Afghanistan with his father Baba. Amir's father is one of the wealthiest, most well respected men in Kabul. He was not born wealthy, but through hard work and persistence, made a large fortune. It's said the he killed a black bear with his bare hands. He gives back to his community by building an orphanage. This was an impressive feat in its own right as he designed the entire orphanage himself with no prior architectural experience. He married one of the most beautiful women in Kabul, with whom he had a son; Amir. His wife however, died while giving birth to Amir. For all his good works in the community, he is not a great father. He is distant from his son, never having time for him. When a young Amir wants to spend time with his father and his father's friends, Baba sends Amir away saying "Go on, now...This is grown-ups' time. Why don't you go read one of those books of yours?" Amir is always trying to make his father proud, yet can never seem to succeed in this wish. At one point, he overhears his father saying of his son "I wasn't like that at all, and neither were any of the kids I grew up with...There is something missing in that boy...A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up for anything." In the same scene, he goes on to say that Amir "needs someone who understands him, because God knows I don't. Something about Amir troubles me in a way that I can't express." These sentiments are a clear indication of the way Amir's father feels about him. Later, when Amir goes to much trouble to write a story, a work that he is very proud of, his father doesn't even read it. Obviously Baba is not very close with his son, and feels a level of discomfort around him, but what is it about Amir and his father that causes this vast divide?

The fault lies not in Amir but in Baba himself. He is a man who was doubted his whole life, yet through sheer will and determination, he became one of the most successful men in Afghanistan. Now he has a son who will not have to face the same difficulties that he did. People will not doubt his son, after all, he is the son of “Toophan agha” as his father is called. I think the reason that Amir makes his father so uncomfortable is because he embodies his own insecurities. He is a man who is shrewd, but has little time for books or words. He’d rather use his physicality to get something done. His son is a well-educated, thoughtful young man, the opposite of the man his father appears to be. Amir in a way, represents all of the faults that his father has. This bothers his father, because he’s built up an image of perfection. This is a man who built an orphanage by himself, married a princess, and wrestled a bear. Yet everyday, he sees his son, and is reminded of everything that he is not. Amir actually makes his father insecure.
All that being said, I'm only about 50 pages into the book. Will Amir's father change? I suspect Amir will do something to try to make his father proud of him, but at what cost? Is his father really all that people make him out to be? These are just a few questions that I have early on in the book.