Literary Analysis #3
Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The plot in the Kite Runner is lengthy and a bit complicated
so bear with me while I try to detail it. The first portion of the book is Amir
is recalling his childhood living in Afghanistan. Amir mentions the deep friendship
him and his servant’s son Hassan have. Although he loves Hassan very dearly he
is jealous of the close relationship Hassan and Amir’s father have. Amir struggles
to get his father’s approval many times as a boy and this often times makes him
angry and frustrated. The inciting incident in the first part of the novel is
when Amir witnesses Hassan being raped by the bully Assef. Amir watches
helplessly and does nothing to stand up for his friend. Later, Amir pretends
like he never saw anything but the guilt begins to get to him. He then sets up
a ploy to make Hassan leave so he would not have to deal with his conscious every
time he sees his face. Amir hides money under Hassan’s bed and reports to his
father that Hassan is stealing. Reluctantly Amir’s father fires his servant and
his son. Amir and his father are forced to leave Afghanistan and move to the
United States due to dangerous government shifts in the area. While in Afghanistan
Amir gets married and his father dies of cancer. (The stories pace skips years
here and there so that is why he goes from being a boy to getting married to
quickly) While living with his wife Soraya in the United Sates, Amir gets a
call from his father’s old friend Rahim Khan. Rahim Khan explains that he is
sick and asks Amir to travel to Pakistan to see him. While there Rahim Khan
tells Amir that Hassan and his wife have been shot by the government and their
son Sohrab was sent to an orphanage. He asks Amir to go to the orphanage to
retrieve the boy and bring him to an adoptive family. Amir agrees to doing the
favor and sets out to find the boy with little success at first. However,
eventually he finds Sohrab. He meets with an official and realizes that the boy
is sort of a sex slave for various government workers. He then realizes that one
of the government leaders is Assef (the bully from his childhood days). Assef
begins beating Amir badly until Sohrab steps up and slingshots him in the eye.
The pair runs away and find shelter and begins to bond. Amir decides to adopt
the boy but the adoption process poses many obstacles which makes Sohrab so
frustrated he tries to commit suicide. After Sohrab’s narrow scrape with death
he changes drastically and becomes mute. Eventually the adoption is cleared and
Amir brings a quiet Sohrab to America to live with him and Soraya. The family
relationship is still strained and problematic as the story draws to a close
(Sohrab is still severely reserved) but the very last page details Sohrab and
Amir bonding over kite flying.
The theme of the novel is battling your conscience. The
whole book describes Amir’s journey of making things right again. Although at
times he did not even know this was the path he was on it was the one destined
for him. It is arguable that some wrongs can never be righted and that might
even be true in the case of Amir and Hassan but Amir and Sohrab’s story still
holds value and is admirable.
The tone in this book is one of distain, distaste and
regret. Amir’s depictions of the Taliban are spiteful and full of anger. He
blames the new government for uprooting him and his father and throwing them
into much less favorable conditions. He is horrified to hear and see how this
violent government treats even the most innocent bystanders. Obviously there
are threads of regret throughout the story because of some of the poor choices
Amir made as a boy. He is ashamed of leaving Hassan and struggles to forgive
himself throughout the length of the novel.
I had one last chance
to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. I
could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan—the way he’d stepped up for me
all those times in the past—and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could
run.
We stayed huddled that
way until the early hours of the morning. The shootings and explosions had
lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us
had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The
generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of
bombs and gunfire was not yet born. Huddled together in the dining room and
waiting for the sun to rise, none of us had any notion that a way of life had
ended. Our way of life. If not quite yet, then at least it was the beginning of
the end. The end, the official end, would come first in April 1978 with the
communist coup d'état, and then in December 1979, when Russian tanks would roll
into the very same streets where Hassan and I played, bringing the death of the
Afghanistan I knew and marking the start of a still ongoing era of
bloodletting. (5.5)
You couldn't trust
anyone in Kabul any more – for a fee or under threat, people told on each
other, neighbor on neighbor, child on parent, brother on brother, servant on
master, friend on friend. [...]. The rafiqs, the comrades, were everywhere and
they'd split Kabul into two groups: those who eavesdropped and those who
didn't. The tricky part was that no one knew who belonged to which. A casual
remark to the tailor while getting fitted for a suit might land you in the
dungeons of Poleh-charkhi. Complain about the curfew to the butcher and next
thing you knew, you were behind bars staring at the muzzle end of a
Kalashnikov. Even at the dinner table, in the privacy of their home, people had
to speak in a calculated manner – the rafiqs were in the classrooms too; they'd
taught children to spy on their parents, what to listen for, whom to tell.
(10.8)
Foreshadowing: Foreshadowing is used in the novel when Assef is set up as a villain in the very
beginning of story and he comes back in the end as an antagonist.
“Fine,” Assef snapped.
“All I want you weaklings to do is hold him down. Can you manage that?”…..
Assef knelt behind Hassan,…..
Flashbacks: Amir uses flashbacks to set the stage of the
story and establish the tone and setting early on in the book. His childhood
encounters set a precedent for the event to come.
“There is only one
sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the
truth.”
Symbolism: There is symbolism in the characters because
Assef represents all things bad and evil while Hassan represents everything
good and pure.
First person point of view: The first person point of view
makes the story more personal and the experiences more realistic.
"I became what I
am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.
I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking
into the alley near the frozen creek. 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."
Figurative language: Figurative language is used in the
novel to make points clear and highlight important concepts in the story.
"Children aren't
coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors."
Juxtaposition: Amir’s surroundings in Afghanistan and the United
States are so different they create a sort of juxtaposition and offset each
other.
Irony: It is ironic that Amir is so suspicious and jealous
of Hassan’s relationship with Amir’s dad and then it turns out that Hassan is
actually his son.
Historical References: The book relies on real life
government problems in Afghanistan/ Pakistan to move the stories plot along.
I overheard him
telling Baba how he and his brother knew the Russian and Afghan soldiers who
worked the checkpoints, how they had set up a "mutually profitable"
arrangement. This was no dream. As if on cue, a MiG suddenly screamed past
overhead. Karim tossed his cigarette and produced a handgun from his waist.
Pointing it to the sky and making shooting gestures, he spat and cursed at the
MiG.
Characterization
Indirect characterization is the primary way we see Amir’s
personality play out. His actions show us who he is on the inside. When he runs
away and does not stick up for Hassan we see he is a selfish coward. Later on
in the novel, his decision to help Sohrab shows he does have compassion in his
heart.
Direct characterization is seldom used in this story except
when Amir describes his hard and disapproving father. Amir flat out says that
his father has high almost reachable expectations.
Since the story remains in first person the whole time the
diction remains relatively the same except when it comes to dialogue. When
detailing his surroundings or feelings Amir gives long, in depth, drawn out depictions
that often are in paragraph form. However, the dialogue portions of the novel
are a bit chopier and not as lengthy.
The protagonist Amir is definitely a dynamic character. The
whole novel revolves around his journey and his internal and external
struggles. He goes through many experiences that change him like betraying
Hassan, moving to America and losing his father. We watch as he struggles to
come to terms with the fact that Afghanistan is not his home anymore and that
Hassan and him will never have the relationship they had as boys. The biggest change
I can see in Amir from beginning to end is his selfishness. As a boy, Amir
looked out only for himself and was determined to have all of his father’s
attention. However, by the end of the novel he commits a truly selfless act by
adopting the troubled Sohrab. Amir recognizes that he has made poor choices in
the past and spends much of the story figuring out where to take his life from
there.
By the end of this novel I felt like I had endured Amir’s
battles with him. The story was so turbulent and dramatic I could not help but
feel connected and compassionate towards him. I felt the pain of the decisions
he made as well as the regret he had to deal with. I felt proud of Amir for ultimately
stepping up to the plate and taking Sohrab home.
