The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini

People are different in many ways. Ranging from colour of their skin to their ethnic backgrounds. How society copes with these differences is what defines prejudice and discrimination. Racism, social class and ethnicity have become a never ending cycle that begins to shape the opinions of how people treat one another. The novel The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini revolves around a society constructed around two socially diverse ethnic groups the Pashtuns who practice Sunni Islam and the Hazaras who follow Shia Islam. Throughout the novel The Kite Runner, a variety of characters have made decisions that affect the overall outcome of the novel which base around ethnicity, race and social class.

The novel The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, is the story of a young, upper class boy by the name of Amir and his friend, a lower class boy named Hassan. While Amir is a Pashtun and a Sunni Muslim, Hassan is a Hazara and a Shi’a muslim, which causes the main conflict between the two. Amir and Hassan learn more and more about their social status, as well as their personal friendships and problems as they grow up in Afghanistan.

According to the new data from UNICEF, fifty seven percent of marriages in Afghanistan involve girls that are under sixteen. In Afghanistan, located in the southern Helmand province, as many as 144 forced marriages were reported. In particular, farmers have been forced to abandon their daughters to the creditor as pay off for his debts. After the daughter is sold, she would be forced into marriage with anyone the creditor chose. This pertained to girls that were six years old or some even younger. These types of marriages were deemed valid in Afghan society and were quite frequent as well. In the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, a man named Amir has an arduous time trying to deal with his past as he moves from Afghanistan to America. The text cites several examples of how some types of marriages were forbidden in Afghanistan. Common marriages are comprised of forced marriages, arranged marriages and love marriages in Afghan society.

sin and forget about it. Amir then faced the long bumpy road to redemption. Khaled Hosseini’s

“The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, is the complex story about a father and a son who struggle to find common ground. They are from Kabul during a time where danger was everywhere. Amir was a conflicted boy trying to find his place and purpose. He believed his father; Baba disliked him because his birth was the reason his mother passed. While Amir’s father favored the son of their family servant, Hassan. Amir’s friendship with Hassan was genuine until a tragic event Amir witnessed of Hassan and Amir did not step into help. Amir’s father once told him he needed to learn to stand up to people. That crime against Hassan changed Amir for the worse, something he could never let go of throughout his life. These are the main characters of the

Throughout life, everyone experiences some sort of regret from past encounters and usually feel guilty and bitter about the situation. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, revolves around the theme of redemption. Redemption can be used as a cure for guilt. Throughout the novel, the author shows that redemption requires some sort of sacrifice and the only way that is possible is if you can forgive yourself from the mistakes you have made in the past. Khaled Hosseini effectively portrays redemption through motifs such as rape, irony and flashbacks, symbolism, and the development of Amir throughout the story.

The human body is built to attack infections, cuts, bruises, or bacterial cells as a way to repair the damages caused. The human mind, will not repair the damages by itself; it usually needs an outside source to heal. One outside source that could heal a mind is the act of forgiveness. In the novel, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Amir’s body could fix itself after the physical injuries Assef caused, but his mind took years to heal from guilt, if it ever did. It can put a guilty conscience at peace. Amir wished for his absolution, but it took decades to find it. “...it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws it’s way out...I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years” (1). Amir mishandled finding forgiveness in his childhood by treating Hassan and Ali badly, attempting to remove them from his house, demanding Hassan to throw a pomegranate at him and then as an adult, he found relief by being beaten by Assef and a sudden realization of tranquility.

The novel “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini describes the life of a boy, Amir. Amir’s best friend and brother (although that part isn’t known until towards the end), Hassan, plays a major role in Amir’s life and how he grows up. Hosseini portrays many sacrifices that are made by Hassan and Amir. Additionally, Amir seeks redemption throughout much of the novel. By using first person point of view, readers are able to connect with Amir and understand his pain and yearning for a way to be redeemed. By using symbols, Hosseini is able to connect events within the book and with historical events that provide a deeper meaning to the book’s events. Finally, by using selection of detail, Hosseini makes important things stand out and helps

Feeling small, as if you can’t breathe as you lie awake at night, in the comfort of your bed that once gave you so many nights of sleep, the sheets tangle around you and trap you, meanwhile your mind drifts to thoughts of what would happen if you had done something different, kept quiet, did what was right. All of this turmoil because of one act you had done earlier that same day. For some, the feeling never goes away; guilt eats away at their conscience and they find themselves deprived of energy or sleep until they make things right. It’s a feeling we have all felt though the severity may differ from person to person and from sin to sin. Guilt is the main internal conflict that occurs in the novel. Guilt is what keeps our protagonist restless. Guilt is the driving plot of the story. In the novel “The Kite Runner”, the narrator Amir feels much this way. In “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, the author uses the protagonist Amir’s arc of redemption as an example to show that redemption can lead to self acceptance for a past grievance and peace of mind.

There is an almost imperceptible line between friend and enemy. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “[T]rue friendship is never serene" (Brainy Quote). In fact, the more entwined two individuals become, the greater the possibility that complications such as insecurity, jealousy and competition can arise. Friendship fulfills man’s basic need for love and security; however, it also can involve an unequal balance of needs and wants. In Khaled Hosseini’s seminal work, The Kite Runner, the two main characters, Amir and Hassan, grow up in pre-Taliban era Kabul, Afghanistan in the 1960-70s. The Afghanistan of the 1970’s is a vastly different country than the war-ravaged nation it is today. As the Taliban rises to power, our main characters mature and grow into young men who are defined by their social class. Amir, a Pashtun, grows up the son of a wealthy merchant - with all of the privilege and access that comes with it, while Hassan, a Hazara grows up in relative poverty, as a servant to Amir. The boys are half brothers but are unaware of this biological connection until it is too late. Despite their differences, the two boys develop a complicated friendship that sees them through their lives. Hassan’s second-class status in Kabul and Amir’s selfish drive to compete for Baba’s love blinds Amir to Hassan’s love and loyalty, restricting Amir’s ability to display mutual feelings toward Hassan; however, Amir’s attempts to achieve redemption, by adopting Sohrab, ultimately prove

In The Kite Runner, a novel by Khaled Hosseini, the main character Amir is a non-athletic intellectual boy who enjoys stories and flying kites. His servant and friend Hassan has an uncanny gift for knowing where downed kites have fallen and therefore can fetch a kite quite quickly and efficiently. In the beginning of the novel, Amir thinks back on how he became such a troubled adult. Reflecting on his childhood, he contemplates how he had been scared to stand up for others. He had been the child of a wealthy man and taken what he had for granted. He had a Hazara boy that served as his best friend, figuratively and literally, yet he still delineated between the classes. One day Amir witnesses Hassan being taken advantage of in an alley following a kite flying competition. He has the opportunity to stop it, but does not. He could not accept a Hazara as his true friend, or get over the fear of embarrassment of helping a Hazara. Over the course of the novel, Amir’s Character matures greatly because of the subsequent effects of witnessing Hassan’s rape .

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 4th 1965. Hosseini 's homeland was the inspiration for his novel, The Kite Runner, which gave his readers a taste of what Afghanistan was before the brutal invasions of the Taliban. He spent his early childhood living in Tehran, Iran, where he befriended his family 's cook. The unexpected friendship between a young Afghan and a member of the Hazara ethnic group exposed Hosseini to the acts of injustice against minority groups in Afghanistan, a major theme in his writing (Bloom).

The Kite Runner is a story about two friends, Amir and Hassan, growing up in Kabul, Afghanistan. Amir, who is also the narrator, grows up in a nice home with Ali and Hassan as his family’s servants. The story begins with Amir talking about “an event” that changed his life and made him the person he is today.

Khaled Hosseini once said: “there are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.” Rape in Afghanistan is said to be an “epidemic,” but according to the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of the term is “a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time.” Rape in this country is viewed as something that is inevitable and cannot be stopped. Usually, rape also involves domestic violence, hence the reason they’re paired together. Contrary to common misconception, men are raped as well as women, especially children of both genders. In the Kite Runner, rape is a topic that is prevalent in and throughout the book. Bacha Bazi is even a part of the Kite Runner.

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, follows the maturation of Amir, a boy from Afghanistan, as he discovers what it means to stand up for what he believes in. His quest to redeem himself after betraying his friend and brother, Hassan, makes up the heart of the novel. When Amir hears that his father’s old business partner, Rahim Khan, is sick and dying, he travels to Pakistan to say his goodbyes. Rahim Khan tells Amir about Hassan’s life and eventual death; the Taliban murdered Hassan while he was living in Amir’s childhood home. As his dying wish, Rahim Khan asks Amir to rescue Hassan’s son, Sohrab, from an orphanage in Afghanistan. Although Amir refuses at first, he thinks about what Rahim Khan had always told him: “There is a way to be