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The Kite Runner

Decent Essays

A story of friendship, rape, betrayal and redemption, but there is one question that persists… is it true? The book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, is about an Afghan boy named Amir and his servant Hassan. Hassan comes from an ethnic group known as the Hazara that is, according to the book, generally mistreated and at a disadvantage from birth. Hassan is always a loyal friend to Amir, while Amir only hangs out with Hassan when nobody else is around. Amir realizes this when Assef, a bully that hates the Hazara, threatens to beat Amir up for being friends with a Hazara and Amir’s response is almost to reject him to save himself. Amir later allows Assef to rape Hassan so he could impress his father with a prize kite that Hassan had caught …show more content…

Amir is on a mission to save Hassan’s son, Sohrab, after he finds out Hassan is dead. Assef is the Taliban man who is holding Sohrab captive. Assef beats up, Amir almost to death until Sohrab shoots him in the eye with a ball bearing. The book shows the hatred and discrimination of the Hazara in an almost unbelievable fashion. The Kite Runner is mainly set in Kabul, Afghanistan, from 1975 through 2002. This book shows the struggle of the Hazara people who are discriminated against and who everyone treats like garbage. They received the short end of the stick in the book but the question that needs to be answered is how accurate are the struggles in this book to real life. Although fictional books are primarily to entertain, Hosseini skillfully weaves accurate information into The Kite Runner to provide not only a story but informs the reader of the hardship the Hazara …show more content…

The author of The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini, uses his subjective experiences to create a more lifelike novel. The Academy of Achievement wrote Khaled Hosseini, M.D. a biography on Khaled Hosseini due to the success of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Hosseini was born in Afghanistan around the year 1965, which would mean he is about the same age as Amir was in the story. Like Amir, Hosseini also grew up in a wealthy family in Kabul, which allowed him to create an accurate depiction of what it was like to be a kid in Kabul around the 1970s. The Academy of achievement stated that Hosseini was an avid kite fighter and when the Taliban took over they banned kite flying, this inspired Hosseini to write The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini, M.D.). Hosseini befriended their Hazara cook and taught him how to read right and threw this realized how unfair society was to the Hazara. Hosseini left Kabul after the government was overturned, just like Amir. When they came to America Khaled and his family lost all their wealth and lived on welfare and thrift shop profits. Khaled went on to become a doctor and eventually wrote The Kite Runner so he could inform people of what Afghanistan used to be like before the Taliban. After writing the book Khaled returned to Afghanistan and was pleased that the Afghan spirit of hospitality and generosity was unchanged even though the war destroyed the country (Khaled

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