The Kite Runner Quotes Analysis

The first sentence of the quote foreshadows Amir’s struggle to forget the past throughout the rest of the book. He claims that no matter how hard you try or how far you bury it, the past will always “claw its way out”. Also in this sentence, Amir implies an occurrence of a tragic event without actually telling the readers what it was. In the last sentence Amir speaks of peering into an alley later revealed as the alley where his childhood friend, Hassan, was raped. By saying this he is telling the readers that the alley and the events that occurred in the alley are constantly on his mind and have been on his mind for the past twenty-six years. The fact that it has been twenty-six years also verifies the importance of the event.

The love and disputes between father and son. The relationship that Amir has with Baba is quite complicated. Amir constantly tries to earn Baba’s love and respect while Baba has a hard time accepting how Amir is and compares him to Hassan. While travelling to Pakistan in the back of the truck Amir felt sick quite often by which Baba was quite annoyed. “I saw it on his embarrassed face the couple of times my stomach had clenched so badly I had moaned. When the blurly guy with the beads-the praying woman’s husband-asked if I was going to get sick, I said I might. Baba looked away.”In addition to this when Amir throws up, Baba apologizes to the fellow passengers to which Amir feels guilty and annoyed that he is just 18 and the way Baba is behaving is as if car sickness is a crime. This suggests that Baba was expecting Amir to be more self controlled and strong so that he didn’t feel sick showing us the conflicts he has with Amir as he expects a lot from him.

Guilt is a strong emotion that haunts us all, others hide it deep within themselves, some try to fix the wrong, and few people do good from it. The Kite Runner is the story of a boy named Amir, he struggles to find his place in the world, reason being of the all of the traumatic childhood events. He sends most of his time and life just sulking in guilt about the decisions he has made. Khaled Hosseini has given the idea that guilt can make you do good things, but all relies on what you're guilty about. The way this is portrayed is through the novel is through rhetorical strategies and imagery.

Both “Mohammad Ahmadi’s Story: A Personal Story of a Hazara Boy Who fled Afghanistan and the Story of a Generation,” a nonfiction article written by Marina Mogli, and The Kite Runner, a novel written by Khaled Hosseini, tell the stories of Afghani refugees that fled from the war-torn country in the late 20th century. [context] In both works the authors use [lit devices] to demonstrate how fear leads people to turn to desperate measures in avoiding that which causes them fear. The Kite Runner employs a combination of mood, stream of consciousness and point of view to illustrate what lengths and suffering the characters were willing to go through to be free from terrible situations. In “Mohammad Amadi’s Story: A Personal Story of a Hazara Boy

The circumstances in which this passage takes place is obviously the time after Hassan's rape, in which the guilt is killing is torturing Amir and he is has realized that the choices that he made that day has truly hurt more people than he could've ever imagined. A metaphor that I found that led me to believe this would be him saying, ". . . the monster in the lake". I think that this metaphor represents the moment in which Amir has begun to acknowledge that he is the person that unintentionally is causing the ones around him to suffer with his selfish actions, the monster. Another metaphor that I found would be, "I was the snake in the grass". This metaphor represents Amir seeing that the people who are around him get hurt by him unexpectedly. Think of Amir as obviously the snake hiding within the grass and he's the predator. Hassan would be the prey

betrayed Hassan by not telling him that he was his real father, which subjected him to a life of bullying and poverty. Baba’s main concern was his “ honor, his name” (223), by not revealing his secret he was to keep him prestige status because that was “ All that a man has back then, all that he was” (223). By not telling Hassan that he was his father, he became a hypocrite. He referred to theft as “ the only sin’ and when you tell a lie “ you steal someone’s right to the truth” (225) but his betrayals for Hassan contradicts all his upheld morals, since “he committed the biggest theft because: the things he had stolen had been sacred: [...] from Hassan his identity” (225). Due to Baba’s Hassan is subjected a life of poverty and inferiority because he is not able to know his real identity as half Pashtun, but instead he is subjected to his identity as a full Hazara, which is looked down upon on society. Baba spends the rest of his life trying to forgive himself and gain redemption by “ feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, and giving money to friends in need” (302). Through these acts of trying to forgive himself and gains redemption, because “ he found a way to create good out of remorse” (303). Through the guilt of his betrayal, he was able to forgive and achieve

“He was the embodiment of every parent’s dream, a strong, tall, well-dressed and well mannered boy with talent and striking looks”- Hosseini 96

As well there is Baba, who is another important character who shows courage by first taking in Ali and Hassan, who are part of the Hazara, a minority group, and letting them serve in his household as a servant, even though they are Hazaras: “Amir, Hassan, and their fathers live together in a well-off neighborhood of Kabul. The Hazaras act as servants to their Pashtun superiors, but are also part of the family, clashing with the social norm” (Spiegel 2007).This was a courageous act since the whole Pashtun community is against the Hazaras living in his household as it violated the normal rules and expectations of the Kabul community and it would have been considered a deviant act in a sense. This does not only show his act of courage but also

While on a truck, he defended the women. Willing to take the bullet without hesitation, he put his life on the line for the stranger, for his passion had been stronger than his fear of death. Baba acted out of bravery due to his grand stature, level head, and big heart, “when all six-foot-five of him thundered into the room, attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun” (13). Baba was well respected in Afghanistan, and he knew that his voice would be heard; therefore, he used his power as a way to defend the defenseless. He was willing to sacrifice himself even though his son disagreed with the idea. Amir thought only of himself and that he would be left as an orphan if Baba was shot; whereas Baba wanted to help the woman as long as he was only risking his own life. His heart reached out for anyone needing an extra hand. He loved and cared for so many people, he wanted to help all of them. Baba put in hard work to help the people around him, and they all looked up to him due to “the marks he had left on people’s lives” (174). Baba’s willingness to sacrifice himself for strangers shaped his reputation in Afghanistan.

One of this novel’s themes is the ability to redeem oneself by removing political and religious barriers and fighting for what is right, without allowing obstacles to prevent such action. In the first quotation presented, Amir redeems himself for hiding money beneath Hassan’s mattress to frame him for larceny. Years later he has “planted a fistful of crumpled money under a mattress” (pg. 254), this time it’s to provide for an impoverished household. This is Amir’s way of starting to apologize to Hassan. The subsequent quote presents Amir realizing that the only way to be released from his past is by repenting. Amir says ““I have a wife in America, a home, a career and a family”. But how could I pack up and go back home when my actions may have

Baba’s lack of faith prevents him from finding atonement through God. Moreover, Baba is unable to find holistic atonement because he fails to admit and reconcile his sins to those who are affected by them. Although Baba preforms small deeds to redeem himself, such as providing cosmetic surgery to Hassan, he fails acknowledge him as his son, which would allow Baba to achieve true atonement. Evidently, Baba’s actions illustrate he only sought personal redemption. For instance, in an effort to ease his guilt, Baba constructed an orphanage in Kabul. While this initially depicted Baba as selfless, it is later discovered this act of charity is preformed predominantly to alleviate his guilt. Rahim Khan later tells Amir, “ I think everything he did, feeding the poor, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of redeeming himself” (Hosseini 302). Although, as Rahim Khan also says, “real good was born from your father’s guilt” (Hosseini 302), Baba never achieved holistic atonement because he failed to make peace with Ali, Hassan and Amir. Opposed to amending his sins to the people directly affected by it, Baba preforms charitable deeds to his community to make himself feel better about his iniquities.

In the novel, The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, the motif of revenge is evident as characters face consequences for their earlier actions. At the beginning of the novel, Hassan uses a slingshot to defend Amir from Assef. When Assef “raised his fist and came for” Amir, Hassan immediately threatened to use the slingshot to hurt Assef. Hassan even threatened Assef by saying, “‘If you make a move, they’ll have to change your nickname from Assef ‘the Ear Eater’ to ‘One-Eyed Assef,’ because I have this rock pointed at your left eye,’” (42). Later in the novel, Assef mocks Hassan by saying, “‘Where is your slingshot, Hazara?’” (71). Assef also mocks Hassan’s threat of aiming the slingshot at his left eye, “‘What was it you said? ‘They’ll have to call you One-Eyed Assef.’ That’s right.

In Runner, Robert Newton conveys that Charlie the protagonist is bound to mature early to make completely selfless choices. When his father dies, Charlie is contrived to fill his father’s boots, meaning he had to take up his father’s role of being the financial provider of his family. Additionally, Charlie makes an altruistic choice by running for squizzy Taylor. Lastly, Charlie makes the self-sacrificing decision by gambling his large saving from Squizzy on the Ballarat Mile. In summary, Newton demonstrates that Charlie is forced into adulthood early through necessity and make self-denying decisions due to his family's desperate circumstances.

In Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, the atmosphere of discrimination normalizes the use of slurs, and the ostracization of certain members of the community, for the children in the novel. To Kill A Mockingbird, written in 1960, set in the fictitious town of Maycomb, Alabama. This novel, from the perspective of the character Scout, is a tale of identity, injustice, and inequality in a time of heavy discrimination. In Lee’s novel, the use of slurs is a common occurrence in the town of Maycomb. Scout, as well as the other children in the novel, are exposed to adults and their peers using these slurs, and, consequently, slurs become a desensitized part of everyday language. From the beginning of the novel, Boo Radley is an enigma to Scout,

The expression "riddled with guilt" is a good way to describe the main character's life, Amir, in the book The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini. The Kite Runner is a story about an Afghan boy, Amir, who has many hardships throughout his life as he grows from a boy living in war-torn Afghanistan, to a successful writer living in America. Amir experiences many events that caused him to carry a great amount of guilt throughout his life. So much guilt that it even turned him into an insomniac. He needed to find a way to make amends which would allow him to forgive himself and hopefully, one day, be able to sleep soundly again.