Literature Analysis: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Lit. Analysis: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

1. The story begins (exposition) with Amir talking about his childhood.  He says that he became what he is today on the day he turned twelve which cues us that he his looking back on his life and foreshadowing something bad to happen.

He starts off by talking about his family and close friends.  Baba, his father, was his idol.  Amir put his father on so much of a pedestal that he envied anyone who was close with him or took away his own time with him.  Amir would beat himself up because he wasn't the child Baba wanted.  Baba admired athletics and soccer but Amir couldn't ever bring himself to like sports as hard as he tried to.  Baba constantly would get frustrated with Amir because they didn't have anything in common.   Amir however would take it personally and hate himself for it.  He wished he could be like Hassan who was exactly the child Baba wanted...

Rahim Khan was the adult in Amir's life that he looked up to and actually had a connection with.  Rahim Khan was the one who took interest in Amir and his activities.  He gave him feedback on the first story he had ever written rather than Amir's father giving him feedback.  Khan would actually feed Amir's interest in writing so much so he would choose to become a writer when he moves to America.

Hassan, Amir's best friend and servant, would always ask Amir to read to him since he was a Hazara and they are illiterate. Amir would take advantage of Hassan and stray from the actually story or teach him words with false meanings.  He would make fun of Hassan even if he was Amir's greatest friend.  Hassan would do anything for Amir and Amir knew it.  Somehow, though, despite Hassan's loyalty, Amir didn't ever call him a friend.  Amir thought of himself above Hassan.  He thought Hassan was foolish and stupid but he envied Hassan more than anyone else.  Baba always invited Hassan on their trips into town and remembered his birthday.  He could talk to Hassan in a way he could never talk to Amir.  Amir was always jealous of the "fool".

The rising action begins with the Afghanistan revolution.  The boys start to hear about talk of a republic and sounds of "thunder"or of "men shooting ducks"...  The day after, they run into the neighborhood bully, Assef.  Assef was known by his peers as the "Ear Eater".  He was vicious to anyone who crossed him and would take his brass knuckles out and beat boys senselessly.  The boys stood their ground against Assef and Hassan took out his slingshot and aimed it at Assef's eye in order to escape.  Assef let them leave but told them that he wouldn't forget this moment and vowed them to pay for it...

Winter comes and the boys begin to look forward to the kite fighting tournament that Amir and Hassan enter yearly.  The day of the tournament Amir gets nervous but Hassan talks him into it.  Amir was thankful Hassan did because they made their way through the hundreds of battles to win it!  The boys were so excited!  Hassan went out to get the last kite they had dropped and vowed to return but when Hassan doesn't come back immediately, Amir gets worried.  Amir went looking for him in the market and finds him in an alley with Assef and his cronies.  Amir is too scared to intervene in the fight, fearing for his own life as he watches on.  Assef's cronies don't want to do whatever Assef is asking them to do so Assef just has them hold down Hassan.  Then Assef begins to rape him.

Amir just cries and looks away.  He is so shocked and afraid that he cannot move or do anything but cry.  He wishes he could but he can't.  Amir walks away and meets up with Hassan when the boys have left him finally and they pretend like nothing happened until they get home.

As soon as they get home, their friendship has changed.  Amir doesn't want to talk to Hassan at all out of guilt and being ashamed that his friend didn't stand up for himself.  Hassan does his chores and just stays inside his hut on the property.  He doesn't smile or laugh the way he used to.  When Hassan asks to mend their friendship, Amir doesn't feel like they can.  Every time he looks at Hassan, he just is consumed by guilt and is ashamed of him despite the week that has past.  He and Hassan go to their pomegranate tree to try to start their friendship over again.  Amir begins to throw pomegranates at Hassan and yells at him to do something about it.  Hassan responds by crushing a pomegranate on his head and asking him if he was happy.  Amir sits atop the hill and cries as Hassan runs home...

Amir tries to get rid of Hassan and Ali, Hassan's father, despite Baba saying that they are family and that they wouldn't ever throw them out to the street.  Amir then puts money under Hassan's bed in order to frame him for thievery. Baba forgives Hassan but Ali insists they must leave.  Hassan doesn't protest or deny anything so Amir doesn't get caught.  Baba pleads for them to stay but Ali refuses to.  He cries and cries but Ali and Hassan leave with their head down, saying they have made up their mind. 

Life goes on...

By the time Amir turns 18, the country is taken over by the Russians and they have to flee the country.  It takes a good amount of time and Baba has to stand up to a Russian soldier who threatened a stranger's life.  Amir questions his father but he cannot believe that Amir would talk back to him.

In America, Amir and Baba start out small.  Baba works at a gas station and has broken English while Amir goes to school and graduates at 20.  Baba buys him a car for his graduation, its not much but it runs.  The one thing they can bond over is the swap meets every Sunday.  They don't make that much on the meets but it is a place to see other refugees from Afghanistan.  There, Amir sees Soraya and becomes immediately smitten with her.  He knows that he can't talk to her so he makes excuses to visit her stall and talk to her father, the General.

After several months, Baba gets very sick.  He goes to to hospital and finds out he has cancer but he refuses any treatment.  Amir insists but Baba just gets more angry with him.  They continue to do their weekly routines and ignore Baba's condition until it gets so bad they admit him into the hospital.  While in the hospital, the General and Soraya visit Baba.  Soraya and Amir finally get to talk alone outside his room and then he decides he loves her.  Right after Baba gets home, Amir tells Baba that he wants to marry Soraya.  Baba immediately calls the General and he gives them his blessing.  Soraya and Amir don't go through all the proper rituals and traditions a normal Afghani couple would go through to get married in order to let Baba see them get married...  Baba lives about a month after their wedding with Soraya taking care of him... Everyone comes to Baba's wedding and speaks so highly of him.  Amir realizes that he has always been known as Baba's son but now he has to make a name for himself.

Fifteen years of marriage Amir and Soraya are unable to get pregnant.  The General refuses to let them adopt and Soraya is against it too...

Rahim Khan writes to Amir telling him that he is sick.  Amir then goes to Afghanistan to visit his dying mentor and friend... When he finally gets there, he realizes that the memories he has of his home is much more different than what Afghanistan is now.  Rahim Khan is now a shell of what he used to be. He tells Amir about Hassan and everything that has happened since they fled to America.  Hassan got married and had a child named Sohrab, who is now in an orphanage.  Hassan has taught Sohrab to read and how to shoot a slingshot.  Hassan wished that he could have seen Amir, he wrote that he told Sohrab all about him, his best friend.  The Taliban, for taking care of Amir’s property he had left when he fled Afghanistan, however, executed Hassan and his wife.  Hassan told Rahim Khan what had happened that day in the alley and what had happened the day they left the house.  Rahim Khan also tells Amir that Hassan and Amir were half-brothers.  Amir realizes this explains why Baba always loved Hassan like a son.  Rahim Khan says that Amir can do well again though by taking Sohrab to an American couple running a charity orphanage. 

So, Amir sets out to find Sohrab but when he reaches the orphanage he was at, the man says the Taliban has taken him and they can find the man in charge at a soccer game wearing sunglasses.  After looking through his hometown some more, Amir goes to the game and sees the man leading a stoning on the soccer field.  He is terrified but continues to set an appointment with the man in sunglasses.  In order to talk to the man, he has to be blindfolded and taken to his headquarters.  

When the man finally takes his sunglasses off, the man is actually Assef.  Assef brings the boy forward and asks why he wants him.  Amir says it is none of is business.  Assef alludes that Amir wants Sohrab so he can rape him, just as Assef has been doing.  Sohrab cringes but Assef says Amir can have the boy if he can beat Assef.  The man who comes out alive shall be free to take the boy.

Assef takes out his famous brass knuckles and beats Amir senselessly.  Amir is in excruciating pain but he realizes he deserves it after not standing up for Hassan all those years ago.  Amir starts to laugh at Assef and Assef gets angry.  Just then Sohrab shoots his slingshot at Assef's eye, and takes it out.  Then they race out of the mansion and Amir blacks out.

Amir wakes up at the hospital and finds that he has multiple broken ribs and his jaw is wired shut.  Amir starts to build on his relationship with Sohrab bit by bit.  He promises to take him home to America and adopt him.  His wife agrees to it and they start his visa process.  They have two options, make him a political refugee or send him back to an orphanage in order to claim that he is an orphan and can be adopted, which would be faster.  When he tells Sohrab this, Sohrab cries and cries not wanting to go back.  Amir gets on the phone with his wife and tells her that they need a different way and she exclaims the luck that she can get him a refugee visa a.s.a.p.  When Amir goes to tell Sohrab the news, he finds him in the bathtub filled with blood stained water...

Sohrab gets admitted to the hospital for attempted suicide and doesn't talk to Amir anymore.  He doesn't want to live at all...

Months later in the U.S., Sohrab still is silent to everyone, almost as if he wants to be invisible.  But one day, Amir finds a kite and puts it up the air.  Sohrab looks interested and Amir takes his chance.  He asks Sohrab if he wants to run the kite just as Hassan did for him when he was young and he nods.  Just for a moment, Amir sees a glimmer of hope and sees Hassan live through Sohrab, his nephew.

2. A major theme in this book is that you can never escape the past.  No matter how hard Amir runs from what happened in that alley with Hassan, it always finds a way back to him.  Whether it is Assef continually raping Hassan, then Hassan's son Sohrab, or him not finding the courage to do what is right.

3.  The tone in The Kite Runner is serious, gentle, and ironic.  

"But he is not my friend!  I almost blurted.  He is my servant!" p. 36

The irony in this is that Hassan is actually his brother, and he doesn't even consider Hassan his friend.

"And maybe, just maybe, I would be pardoned for killing my mother." p. 43

Amir never forgave himself for taking away his father's princess.  He thought that by winning the festival, somehow he would get closer to Baba and he might forgive him.

“One time, when I was really little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot. Mother said that if I’d just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn't have become sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said about the apples.” p. 340

Sohrab explains to Amir that waiting is sometimes the best thing to do.  He says it with such innocence that despite all of his experiences in life, he still manages to have an innocent outlook on life.

4.     1. Metaphor- “Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.” – Rahim Khan p. 21 Rahim is explaining to Baba that he can’t change the way Amir is.  This begins to show their rocky father/son relationship that is reoccurring throughout the book.

2. Inversion- “For you, a thousand times over!” p. 67 Hassan was so loyal to Amir, he would tell him this whenever Amir asked him for something.

3. Interior Monologue- “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.” P. 77 Amir contemplates what he could do in the next few moments of Hassan being raped.

4.  Rhetorical Questions- ”It’s done, then. I’m eighteen and alone. I have no one left in the world. Baba’s dead and now I have to bury him. Where do I bury him? Where do I go after that?” P. 116 Despite their rocky relationship, Amir still feels helpless without him.

5.  Internal Conflict- “Nothing was free in this world, Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba. Was it a fair price?” p. 77 Amir struggles with his decision of not intervening with Assef raping Hassan in order to bring back the kite he had won in order to show Baba he was worth something.

6.  Narrator- “And if Baba could forgive that, then why couldn’t he forgive me for not being the son he’d always wanted? Why?” P. 106 In this quote, you really get a sense of all of Amir’s struggles to try to please his father.  You really feel how desperate he is for his father’s approval.

7.  Irony- “You´re a coward!” I said. “Nothing but a goddam coward!” p. 92 Amir tells this to Hassan when he doesn’t throw a pomegranate back at him but in reality, Amir is actually a coward because he didn’t stand up for his friend when he was being raped.

8.  Allusion- “I could recite dozens of verses from Khayyam, Hafez, or Rumi’s famous Masnawi.” P. 38 Amir is referring to great poets that he had read from.  He loved reading so much, his father couldn’t ever relate to that.

9.  Foreshadow- “I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.” P. 1 This shows that Amir is going to have something happen in an alley sometime in the story that has changed his life forever and will be a major plot twist.  This was in fact, referring to Hassan being raped by Assef.

10.  Fallacy- “A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.” P.  11 This isn’t exactly the case for everyone.  You can stand up for yourself when you become an adult but not when you are a child.  Unfortunately this is Baba’s take on courage, which hurts Amir when he couldn’t stand up for Hassan.

Characterization:

1.  Indirect Characterization- "’You don't know the meaning of the word 'liberating' until you've done that, stood in a roomful of targets, let the bullets fly, free of guilt and remorse, know you are virtuous, good, and decent. Knowing you're doing God's work. It's breathtaking.’" He kissed his prayer beads, tilted his head.” P. 224 Assef says this to Amir when they meet after all those years.  He had become an Islamic extremist who felt as though the Taliban needed to cleanse Afghanistan of the Hazaras like Hitler did with the Jewish. 

Direct Characterization- “Sanaubar had taken one glance at the baby in Ali's arms, seen the cleft lip, and barked a bitter laughter.” P. 16 Hassan grew up with a cleft lip and was mocked for it since his birth.

2.  When Khaled Hosseini describes characters, he will often use “Agha” or “sahib” for a character that is looked up to in a way.  Hassan always calls Amir, Amir Agha, which shows that he is socially below Amir and that he thinks of him as a friend or lord  Amir however doesn’t use that with Hassan.

3.  The protagonist is dynamic and round.  Amir grows and learns throughout the book from his mistakes and regrets with Hassan.  He changes in order to save his nephew, Sohrab, even when Baba isn’t there to see his accomplishment.

4.  “But I hope you will heed this: A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.” Rahim Khan p.301 I think that Rahim Khan was my favorite character in this book.  He was so wise and could always be an adult to look to for guidance.  He is someone I wish I had in my life.