The Kite Runner Analysis

When Khaled Hosseini wrote The Kite Runner, he made several important choices involving narration. He chose to write the story in first person from a limited point of view. This is a very fitting decision because, writing in the first person adds a sense of intimacy that is crucial to this story; writing from a limited perspective allows the reader to make their own conclusions about what the characters are thinking. The way Hosseini writes The Kite Runner makes it very intimate, and feels like a person telling their life story. If The Kite Runner had been written in third person, or omnisciently, the story would not have impacted readers as much, and would have been too cold and impersonal to create emotional connections with the reader.

What Amir learns while visiting his friend, Rahim Khan, would lead him to what he considered redemption. Amir discovers Hassan had been killed, but his son is still alive, and the shocker is that Hassan and Amir are half-brothers. With the original idea of giving his son to a placement organization, Amir sets out to save him from the orphanage to provide him a better home. Amir finally decides to stand up for himself, unlike his childhood self, and knew that he had to find this child. He was not going to be the same coward that was back as a child. Along his journey to find his nephew, he stays at a house with a family in a poor financial state, and decides to leave them money under their mattress. This action truly shows how he has changed to be more similar to Hassan. As recalled from the beginning of the novel, Amir puts money under a mattress to hurt someone, but now later in his life, he redeems himself by doing it for good. Amir is adopting the caring traits that Hassan had throughout his childhood when Amir struggled to be thoughtful of others. During Amir’s trip back to Afghanistan, his personality starts to transform and soon after, he completes his transformation into Hassan.

The Kite Runner is the first novel of Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. It tells the story of Amir, a boy from Kabul, Afghanistan, whose closest friend is Hassan, a young Hazara servant. Novel turns around these two characters and Baba, Amir’s father, by telling their tragic stories, guilt and redemption that are woven throughout the novel. Even in the difficult moments, characters build up to their guilt and later on to their redemption. Their sins and faults alter the lives of innocent people. First, Amir and Baba fail to take action on the path to justice for Ali and Hassan. Moreover, Amir and Baba continue to build up their guilt due to their decisions and actions. Although Amir builds up more guilt than Baba throughout the novel, he eventually succeeds in the road to redemption unlike his father. After all, Amir and Baba have many chances to fix their atonements but Baba chooses not to and Amir does. Baba uses his wealth to cover up his sins but never atone himself while Amir decides to stand up and save Sohrab and finally finds peace. Amir and Baba’s reaction to sins essentially indicate their peace of mind and how they react to guilt and injustice.

One major theme that is evident in The Kite Runner is that scars are reminders of life’s pain and regret, and, though you can ease the regret and the scars will fade, neither will completely go away. We all have regrets and always will, but though it will be a long hard process we can lessen them through redemption. The majority of The Kite Runner is about the narrator and protagonist, Amir. Almost all of the characters in The Kite Runner have scars, whether they are physical or emotional. Baba has scars all down his back from fighting a bear, but he also has emotional scars from not being able to admit that Hassan was also his son. Hassan is born with a cleft lip, but for his birthday Baba pays for it to be fixed, which left a small scar above his mouth. Hassan also has emotional scars from being raped. The reader is probably shown the emotional scars of Amir the most. Amir has emotional scars because he feels that he killed his mother, and also because his father emotionally neglects him. In the end of the novel, Amir receives many physical scars from getting beaten up by Assef, when rescuing Sohrab. Though scars will never go away and are a reminder of the past, not all scars are bad.

Amir’s mother, Sofia, dies in childbirth; Amir inherits her love of literature and probably her looks to some extent, but, her being dead, never receives any motherly love or guidance, which could have helped him out of the cowardly hole he later digs himself into. Amir’s father’s best friend and business partner, Rahim Khan, tries to give Amir the motherly love he clearly needs, fostering Amir’s love of writing and steadfastly standing up for him when Amir’s father, Baba, criticizes him, but Rahim Khan does not do enough to instill honesty, courage, and strength of conviction in young Amir. Amir’s best friend, Hassan, a servant a year younger than Amir, is everything Amir is not: athletic, brave, loyal, honest, and kind, inciting jealousy in Amir. Assef, a local bully, poses a real threat to Amir, hating Amir for the crime of befriending a Hazara (oppressed ethnic minority), but Amir is protected by Hassan, allowing young Amir to freeze and not stand up for himself in Assef’s presence. Last, but most importantly, is Amir’s father, Baba, and his views on Amir: he blames Amir for Sofia’s death,

He fails to fully embrace his friend as an equal in many instances which eventually drives Hassan and his father, Ali, out of their life for good. One of his most significant sins he committed was when he was still a boy, his desperation for attention from Baba, impacted his daily life and decisions. All of his life, Amir found it to be was a series of Baba showing Hassan more attention than himself, his actual son. As he realizes this, he becomes fooled in his cowardice ways and continues to treat his “best friend” poorly who is far from deserving that type of treatment. This deception is not shown through his personality, but

As young boys, Hassan and Amir would do everything together. However, Amir had always been the envious one and Hassan, the loyal one. As they grew older, Amir grew more and more envious of Hassan. Hassan would always receive Baba’s attention, which was Amir’s greatest desire.

When Amir picks up the phone in June 2001, he does not expect to hear Rahim Khan utter these words to him -- "There's a way to be good again" (Hosseini 1). From these cryptic words, he understands from the call that it "wasn't just Rahim Khan on the line[, but] [i]t was [his] past of unatoned sins" (Hosseini 1). These sins that Amir refers to are the actions he selfishly made when he was a young boy living in Afghanistan. In order to earn his father's love, he allowed his friend Hassan to be beaten and raped, then framed for theft; Hassan for the subsequent years has been haunted by the actions he chose. Seeing it as "one last chance of redemption" (Hosseini 231), Amir departs to meet Rahim Khan in Pakistan to here what he has to say. Beginning with his reunion with an old friend in Peshawar, the protagonist of The Kite Runner has set off on a quest, with a goal to relieve his guilt and earn his redemption.

The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, was such an inspiring and powerful book that it was turned into an extraordinary movie. Both the book and movie was able to capture the storyboard of these two young boys, Amir and Hassan, growing up in Afghanistan, one Pakistan and one Hazara, that are friends until they were separated because of jealously. The Pakistan boy, Amir, moved to America due to the war and came back to Afghanistan for a Hazara boy. This allowed him to evolve as a person, different from his childish self in the past. However, there are instances where there are differences between the film and novel that loses some unforgettable scenes and feelings that readers felt in the book.

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, follows the psychological declination and inclination of a guilty man. Hosseini uses characterization and setting in order to better convey the dynamic change of the protagonist, Amir, among other characters. The setting and characterization of The Kite Runner correlate to hint to the reader how the main characters are feeling.

The Kite Runner is an Afghan American fiction novel written by Khaled Hosseini. In the text readers are told the story of a young boy, named Amir’s, life. In continuation, a reader of the novel may get the impression, at the beginning of the book, that Amir is just an ungrateful child that gets everything he wants, but in reality that is not the case. Throughout his life he dealt with various hardships that inflicted drastic alterations on it. As readers take a journey down memory lane with Amir many themes are presented through the challenges that Amir faces. Ultimately, the obstacles that people face in life help mold them into who they are.

“When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.” - Avatar Aang.

Amir, a character in The Kite Runner, overcomes challenging moments in his life that ultimately influence the character he becomes towards the end of the novel. Amir’s mindset in the beginning of the novel is immature and selfish. Amir views life as a terrible thing, because he finds himself constantly attempting to gain Baba’s approval, but he still manages to come up short, especially when compared to Hassan. During Amir’s childhood he developed a best friend, which at first he took for granted named Hassan. Up until Amir’s life changing moment he wanted to forget his past, but now he claims he does not want to forget anymore. When describing his past to Farid’s loquacious family, Amir was ashamed, but after his eye opening incident he is willing to share his story with anyone. He even mentions, “My instinct was to say yes, as if, on some deep level, I too wanted to protect Baba’s secret. But there had been enough lies already”, and eventually decides to admit the true story (Hosseini 237).

Fatherhood in this novel is seen by different shade of colour, not knowing what the true shade really is. There are many turning points which show various stages in being a true father. Therefore, being a father is very difficult, having to overcome obstacles and being strong for each other. A well-known saying “like father, like son” is evident in this novel by the different ties of relationship each character had. In the novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini proves that there is need of a fatherly figure when growing up. Having a father-son bond helps the child differentiate right from wrong. The relationship which demonstrates the need of a father figure is depicted by Baba and Amir, Hassan and Sohrab as well as Amir and Sohrab.

On account of his wealthy family, Amir has a privileged upbringing and he always can possess what he wants. In Amir’s mind, Baba believed he was responsible for killing his mother who was Baba’s beloved, because his mother died during Amir’s birth. On that basis, his father’s discount and overlook rankle in Amir’s mind. In addition, he was jealous of Hassan when he gets Baba’s attention. Before he knew that Hassan was his brother, he had subconscious thought that Hassan is not his friend. “But in none of his stories did Baba ever refer to Ali as his friend. The curious thing was, I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either.” When Assef was furious about their relationship, what in Amir’s mind