Literary Analysis #3

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.