Literature Analysis
Hannah Hosking
January 30, 2012
Period: 4
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is about Amir and his struggle to cope with things that happened when he was a boy and his attempts to make them right. He grew up in Afghanistan with his friend and servant, Hassan. Amir and Hassan did everything together and Hassan would protect Amir at all costs if it ever came down to it. That winter, Amir wins the kite fighting tournament and Hassan runs to collect the kite only to be raped by a few other boys. Slowly Amir and Hassan drift apart and Hassan and his father leave. Amir and his father flee Kabul when it is invaded by the Soviets and move to California. Here, Amir meets and marries Soraya and they try and fail to have a baby. Amir goes Pakistan where he learns that Hassan has been killed, but has a son, Sohrab, in an orphanage. He rescues Sohrab but gets badly hurt in the process. After he recovers, Amir and Soraya try to bring Sohrab back to the U.S. to live with them. Sohrab tries to kill himself and fails. He becomes severely withdrawn and only smiles when he wins a kite battle back in the U.S. And Amir runs the kite for him.
The theme of this novel is really all about redemption. “There is a way to be good again,” is one of the quotes that seems to haunt Amir throughout the book and what drives him to try to fix everything that happens. He regrets everything that happened between himself and Hassan and wants to do everything he can to try and make it right.
The authors tone throughout most of the book is very tragic. While there are uplifting and happy parts, the main tone is one of despair and loss.
“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.”
“A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”
“That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.”
Symbolism -
The pomegranate tree - The pomegranate tree serves as a symbol of Hassan and Amir’s friendship. As long as Hassan and Amir’s friendship is strong, the tree blooms, and produces fruit, and is healthy. But as soon as the boys start to drift apart, the tree withers and dies.
"Amir and Hassan, the sultans of Kabul." "Those words made it formal: the tree was ours."
Irony -
Amir wants to be like his father and make his father proud, but instead he ends up possessing the traits of his father that are unwanted. He, like his father, betrays his best friend. Amir constantly has to deal with the unintended consequences of his actions that he took when he was a child and almost every action has a negative consequence.
“My body was broken—just how badly I wouldn’t find out until later—but I felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed.”
Foreshadowing -
A lot of the major things that take place in Afghanistan, reoccur when Amir is grown up. He has to deal with the rape of Hassan’s son, realizing that he betrayed his best friend just like his father did, and the most well known foreshadowing; Amir running Sohrab’s kite for him.
“For you, a thousand times over.”
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