Theme Of Details In The Kite Runner

Thesis: Betrayal leads to feeling of guilt which forces the person in search of redemption either directly or through indirect actions and gestures.

Khaled Hosseini’s, “The Kite Runner”, uses an abundance of diction and tone, to convey a centralized motif. Hosseini, uses three specific symbols throughout the story, the cleft lip; kites; the lamb. The central symbols, tie into what the overall theme is of the story, the search of redemption, tension and love between father and son. Hosseini expressed his centralized motif of irony and regressing in time by using symbolism and figurative language to make his point more clear “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.”

Growing up in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, I do not remember a time when there was not turmoil in Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan. It seemed like every time we turned on the news, there was another report about a refugees and military advances. But Khaled Hosseini's book, The Kite Runner, takes us back to a time of peace. Narrated by Amir looking back on his past, the book starts off with Amir talking about when his life changed. Then the book shifts and is narrated by Amir during 1975, when he and Hassan were both still living in Afghanistan. During this section, Hosseini uses simple language and sentence structure in order for his reader to focus more on the content of the book and to further give the impression that the narrator is an eleven year old boy.

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.

The Kite Runner is a film based on the first novel of Khaled Hosseini, which was published in 2003 and became a bestseller, thus was translated to many different languages and spread around the world, becoming a discussion topic for quite a while. One of the reasons why this book is so rich and attractive is the variety of characters, which are all born in Afghanistan and spent at least most of their childhood there, but at the same time have different views, virtues and experience. And those characters, depending on the generation they belong to, are shaped by particular circumstances, political and historical events.

“A widespread mythological and literary motif is the one of two brothers, who hate or are in conflict with each other and which sometimes even ends in the murder of one of those brothers.”

Khaled Hosseini and Arundhati Roy’s novels are devised in such a way that the plot structures are exact parallels. Thus, they can successfully use the same plot structure to portray two divergent effects of losing one’s innocence in a traumatic event. The plot structure of the novels also reinforces the idea of innocence. The plot structure for The Kite Runner is chronological, but the plot structure for The God of Small Things is circular. In his novel, The Kite Runner, Hosseini begins to dive into the distinction by beginning the novel with introducing the main character, Amir, and his friend Hassan. Hosseini makes sure to note that the two boys are from different religious clans, and so their friendship is looked down upon. Hosseini

This view is carried out with the supportive character, Hassan, who plays a significant role in the novel by representing a Christ figure who is forever forgiving of Amir. Hassan is the, “harelipped kite runner” whose only friend is Amir (Hosseini 2). Hassan demonstrates the themes of second chances and forgiveness through his actions of kindness. For example, when Assef and his gang come to torment Amir, Hassan comes to the rescue with his slingshot. Although Amir never considers him to be his friend, Hassan proves to be a flawless servant to his half-brother, even after Amir betrays him. Throughout the story, Amir remembers Hassan by his kind-hearted phrase, “For you, a thousand times over,” which evidences how magnanimous and

In the novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini tells a notable coming-of-age story portraying the actions and thoughts of Amir, a penitent adult living in the United States and his reminiscence of his affluent childhood in the unstable political environment of Afghanistan. Throughout the novel Khaled Hosseini uses character description to display his thoughts on sin and redemption.

Secrets are things that are suppose to be kept hidden from society. While some may hide them well, they not only take a toll on the person holding them, but the people around them too. In the book Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the main character Amir has his life turned upside down when one of the biggest secrets in the book get out. As we look at Freud’s Theory, it is clear that people in this book keep secrets because of their egos. While many characters are affected by these secrets, if shows the most through Amir. He has to live with the guilt from past decisions and feels the need to redeem himself throughout the book.

In Khaled Hosseini’s novel, ‘The Kite Runner’, it is often thought that symbols and metaphors are used as visual representations to reinforce and put emphasis on important stages in the novel. In can be seen that symbols are used in the novel to highlight particular moments in key relationships. For example Kites, the Pomegranate tree, Scars and the Slingshot are each used to put emphasis on specific moments in the relationships between Amir and Hassan and Amir and Baba. Through using symbolism and metaphor to present these key

The Kite Runner was written by Khaled Hosseini and published in 2003. It tells the story of Amir, a young boy from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Hassan, his father’s Hazara servant. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of Afghanistan’s Monarchy, through the Soviet Military intervention, the exile of Pakistan refugees to America, and the rise of the Taliban. The main theme of this book focuses on guilt and redemption. Throughout the novel, Amir is constantly trying to redeem himself. Early on, Amir strives to redeem himself through his father’s eyes primarily because his mother died giving birth to him, and he feels responsible. The more important part of Amir’s search for

“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mad wall, peeking into the alley near a frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it is wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it” (Hosseini 2).

The writing style in The Kite Runner is enjoyable yet sophisticated. Hosseini uses sentences that were easy to understand but had a deeper meaning. Like many fiction authors, Hosseini uses plenty of literary devices in his writing, such as epiphanies and metaphors, with the exception of some rhetorical questions as well as many others. Some examples of epiphanies include, “I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan- the way he stood up for me all those times in the past- and accept whatever happened to me. Or I could run. In the end, I ran.” (Hosseini 77). A few uses of metaphors include “America was different. America was a river, roaring along” (Hosseini 144). This is an example of an easy sentence with a much deeper meaning. Amir sees America as a new fresh start. With a new setting, he can now finally stop being reminded of his past. Within this, we can see that Amir compares America to a river, and rivers do not flow backward hence he can move forward with his life and not be burdened by the past. In Christianity, a river can symbolize baptism and rebirth. Another example of this would be, “I feel like a tourist in my own country” (Hosseini 244).