Summary Of Quotes From 'The Kite Runner'

Baba wants Hassan to become his own person by not defending Amir in every situation. On the other hand, he wants Amir to also become a stronger person and standing up for his own problems. He tells both of the boys this because he says that to be successful in life, everyone needs to be their own person and find their own identity.

Although Amir thinks his father, Baba, is angry at him for not living up to his family’s beliefs, Baba does not hate Amir. Baba just wants Amir to be a proud man, so Baba can relate to him and further extend their relationship, but Amir does not live up to his father’s specific expectations. When Baba sees that Amir is not growing up like he did he becomes disappointed in Amir. Baba does not agree with Amir’s love and passion for reading poetry and writing stories, because he believes it shows a lack of courage and this does help their relationship. Amir simply wants to make his father happy and try and live in his footsteps. In the book I believe this relationship is part of the reason why Amir didn’t help Hassan when he was being raped, because he wanted to please his father with the victory kite of the contest. If he were to help Hassan the kite would be taken by Assef, but in actual fact I believe Baba would be happier if he stood up for his friend rather than winning the tournament. Amir could have also left Hassan because he is jealous of his father and Hassan friendship.

Throughout the whole book, Amir has been vying for love from his father, often against Hassan, and feels powerless when he does not get it; this causes him to attempt to assert power in other aspects of his life, usually over Hassan. Amir feels as if Baba does not love him, and feels powerless to fix it; he says, “I always felt like Baba hated me a little, And why not? After all, I had killed his beloved wife, his beautiful princess, hadn’t I? The least I could have done was to have the decency to have turned out a little more like him. But I hadn’t turned out like him. Not at all” (Hosseini 19). He believes there is nothing he can do to make his father love him; after all, he cannot change the past, and he cannot change himself substantially. This feeling of powerlessness affects him in such a way that he feels the need to compensate for this loss of power elsewhere in his life. He would exploit the kindness and forgiveness Hassan always showed him, and would try and prove his superiority and worth in that relationship. Amir once asked if Hassan would eat dirt if he asked him to, and afterwards said, “I knew I was being cruel, like when I’d taunt him if he didn’t know some big word. But there was something fascinating--albeit in a sick way--about teasing Hassan. Kind of like when we used to play insect torture. Except now he was the ant and I was holding the magnifying glass,” (Hosseini 54). Amir is filling the power gap he feels in his life with power over Hassan, and is trying to show Hassan how much control he has over him. Hassan, Amir’s servant and a genuinely kind person, is in a vulnerable position against Amir,

Baba, Amirs father and lifelong inspiration, can be described as witty and courageous. When Baba is confronted with the injustice of a Russian soildier wanting to rape one a passenger he does not back down, even when his own life is on the line. Baba replies in the face of a hostile Russian soldier “He better kill me good with that first shot. Because if I don’t go down, I`m tearing him to pieces!”(Hosseini 99). By standing up to the Russian soldier, Baba is showing that

Amir's first word indicated how much Baba meant to him. Everything Amir did in his childhood was to gain his father's approval. He tried to connect with Baba by playing soccer, which turned out to be unsuccessful. It was very difficult for him to gain acceptance from a man who wanted him to be the complete opposite of himself. Baba wanted carbon copy of himself; a son who was athletic, strong minded and brave, for him to grow up to become a "man's man." Baba noticed how Amir never stood up for himself, it was always Hassan that came to his rescue. He also

This is very hard on Amir because he ends up growing up without a real parental figure in his life and blames himself for his mother’s passing, for she had died giving birth to him. A few days before the day of the kite flying competition, Baba takes Amir and Hassan to buy kites from an old blind man. “If I changed my mind and asked for a bigger and fancier kite, Baba would buy it for me - but then he'd buy it for Hassan too. Sometimes I wished he wouldn't do that. Wished he'd let me be the favorite” (chapter 5). This displays Amir’s jealousy for his father’s interest in Hassan due to the fact that Baba treats Hassan like his own son and not him, leaving Amir feeling neglected and alone. At the kite fighting competition the next day, it came down to Amir and a blue kite, fighting for first place. When Amir wins the competition the blue kite fly’s off; so Hassan, Amir’s loyal best friend offers to go find the blue kite and return it to Amir. In the processes of looking for the kite, Hassan ends up getting cornered in an alley with three vicious bullies. Amir stumbles upon them in the alley but instead of stepping in, he thinks of how badly he wants the kite as well as his father’s approval so he chooses not to step in, as a result he watches his best

Baba was usually aloof and cold when he was around Amir. Since Baba was interested in sports, he felt like Amir wasn’t his son because he was into writing and was weak. In a conversation with Rahim Khan Baba said that something was missing in Amir. He said that a boy who couldn’t stand up for himself would not stand up for anything. They don’t really have a good father and son relationship because Baba expected too much of Amir. It was that winning kite tournament that somehow bonded them together but after a while, it went back to being the “cold” treatment

I have incorporated important phrases and visuals onto the chair that fit the theme of the book. Starting from the top of the chair I have the quote, “There is a way to be good again.”(pg.2) On the back of that piece I have another quote saying “Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay. The lamb I had to slay in order to win over Baba.”(pg.82) I put these quotes because they tie each other together well. Amir chose Baba's love over his friendship with Hassan which eventually lead him to be placed into the situation where he chooses to redeem himself. Below this, I have the word redemption because it is the theme of the novel. I painted the quote, “For you, a thousand times over.”(pg.391) on the strip of wood because when Amir said this quote

In these moments he remembers the words his father said, ‘A boy who won’t stand up for himself, becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.” This quote was taken from Baba towards the end of chapter 3. Baba is talking to Rahim Kahn about one of Amir’s major flaws and that is his cowardice. Amir thinks that he has to use Hassan towards the end of chapter 7. He thinks this and says to himself, ‘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.” This quote was taken from Amir towards the end of chapter 7. In this quote the reader will see Amir using Hassan as a scape goat to win over his dads favor, and that he won’t accomplish his own missions because of his cowardice. So Amir Runs away from Hassan while Hassan is getting raped and he pretends that nothing is wrong or that he saw

Amir tries to focus on trying to become the son his father wishes him to be. Baba wished that Amir had a mind for sports, so he “faked interest for as long as possible…but Baba sensed my lack of genuine interest and resigned himself to the bleak fact that his son was never going to either play or watch soccer” (Hosseini 3). His father does not pressure him directly, but Amir still feels the strong urge to undertake and carry out his father’s boundaries. After taking Amir to a Buzkashi tournament, a Central Asian sport, Baba is disappointed that Amir is upset about watching one of the players being trampled to death by horses. Amir eavesdrops on Baba speaking to his good friend, Rahim Khan: “Something about Amir troubles me in a way that I can’t express. It’s like if I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own eyes, I’d never believe he’s my son” (Hosseini 24). This establishes

1. Discrimination is everywhere in the story of the book. From the very first part until to the end. On how the Afghanistan people treated each other if they are not in the same class or religion. The relationship between the Hazara people and the Pashtun where in one is Sunni Muslim and the other is Shia Muslim.

Throughout the book “The Kite Runner” Khaled Hosseini lets the reader see the ups and down of Amir and Baba’s relationship. Baba is a man that holds his son to a very high standard. He has a very strict view on what a man is and how they should act. Amir on the other hand is nowhere near a manly man like his father would like him to be. Amir doesn’t have a lot of strong qualities about himself like most boys in his neighborhood.

When Amir and Baba went to the lake one day when Baba had built the orphanage, Amir exclaimed, “he asked me to fetch Hassan too, but I lied and told him Hassan had the runs” (13). This associates the power Aamir wants in order to impress his father. Furthermore it embellishes the fact that Amirs quench for power over Hassan was growing since the beginning of the book, Hassan was always, “steps in to fend them off” (22), which made Amir feel weak and powerless. This enraged the evil that was brewing inside him, and created a dynamic of always wanting more. The power that came from Baba’s approval always came so easily to Hassan, However for Amir, he always went out of his way to be vengeful towards him. Hosseini depicts this constantly throughout his life, for example when he graduated highschool in California and Baba mentioned how good it would be to have Hassan there with them in the new car they had gotten, Amir said, “a pair of steel hands closed around my windpipe at the sound of Hassan's name” (134). Hosseini wants us to see that Amir is constantly wants that power over his father’s relationship with him, but Hassan always gets in the way of that. Even when Amir was doing an act of good to save Sohrab, he “hadn’t felt happy and [he] hadn’t felt better, not at all” (289). Amir began to laugh during the time that he

Baba’s influence on Amir can be described in two words, tough love. Baba desperately wants Amir to resemble him in everything he does and do things how he would, but Amir struggles to meet these standards. Baba is reminded by Rahim that he does not get to choose the man that Amir will become, “‘Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with favorite colors”’ (21). It hurts Amir that he does not get Baba’s compassion and love but he stays true to himself and does not change for him. Even though Amir stayed true to himself he would still do what he could to earn Baba’s love. When he won the kite flying tournament Baba shows Amir that love because he did something they can both relate to, sports. It seemed Amir would do anything to be recognized by Baba but Baba did not care about Amir’s thoughts on himself. Baba even said to Rahim “If [he] hadn’t seen the doctor pull [Amir] out of [his] wife with [his] own eyes, [he’d] never believe [Amir’s his] son” (23). This obviously would be heart wrenching to hear and hurt Amir deeply, but he did not let that make him stop trying. The two clearly had a rocky relationship.

Throughout The Kite Runner, Baba and Amir have many differences. At the beginning, Amir is constantly trying to gain Baba’s attention, approval and affection; all of which are very important to anyone, especially a child.