2. ●
Important Places
Kabul, Afghanistan-Amir grew up here and it was the
first influence on him.
●San Francisco, America-The area that Amir moved to
when he left Afghanistan. This is where he attempts to
drown himself in the American culture to forget his
past.
●
5. ●
Setting Influence
Kabul, Afghanistan was where Amir grew up. As a
result he is very used to the Afghanistan culture and its
traditions. However, he must become used to the
American culture once he moves there and find a
balance between the two cultures. Baba has a hard
time adjusting to America, however, because he was
too used to the culture of Afghanistan.
6. •Racial division
The distinct racial division in
Afghanistan occurs between
the H
azara and the P
ashtun.
●The Pashtun are the majority
race, and discrimination
against the Hazara is
widespread.
9. ●
Amir
The narrator and the protagonist of the story. Amir is the sensitive and
intelligent son of a well-to-do businessman in Kabul. Amir is a gifted
storyteller and grows from aspiring writer to published novelist. His
great desire to please his father is the primary motivation for his
behavior early in the novel, and it is the main reason he allows Hassan
to be raped. From that point forward, he is driven by his feelings of
guilt as he searches to find a way to redeem himself. Ultimately he
does so through courage and self-sacrifice, and he tells his story as a
form of penance.
10. ●
Hassan
Amir’s best friend and half-brother as well as a
servant of Baba’s. Hassan proves himself a loyal
friend to Amir. As a poor ethnic Hazara, he is
considered an inferior in Afghan society, and he is
the victim of racism throughout the novel as a result.
He is Baba’s illegitimate child, though he is not
aware of this fact, and he grows up with Ali acting as
his father. His rape is an early catalyst in the story,
and even though he is not present in a significant
portion of the novel, he plays a major role
throughout.
11. ●
Baba
Father of Amir and Hassan and a wealthy, well-respected
businessman. When necessary, he is even willing to risk his
life for what he believes in. Yet his shame at having a child
with a Hazara woman leads him to hide the fact that
Hassan is his son. Because he cannot love Hassan openly,
he is somewhat distant toward Amir and is often hard on
him, though he undoubtedly loves him.
12. Rahim Khan :He is Baba’s closest confidant, and the one
●
man who knows all of Baba’s secrets. For Amir, he serves a
father figure, often giving Amir the attention he craves and
filling the holes left by Baba’s emotional distance.
•Ali :Acting father to Hassan and a servant of Baba’s. Ali is
defined by his modesty more than anything, and he works
diligently as Baba’s servant. He loves Hassan deeply, though he
rarely expresses his emotions outwardly. Poor and an ethnic
Hazara, he suffers from partial paralysis of his face and walks
with a limp caused by polio.
13. ●
Symbols
The stories of Rostan and Sohrab in the Shahnamah represent
Hassan.
●The Blue Kite-It represents Hassan’s loyalty to Amir, as he
holds onto the kite even when he is getting raped by Assef.
●Sohrab- Hassan’s son, he is an example of the story of David
and Goliath. Also, by using the slingshot just as his father had
to protect Amir, he represents how his father is reborn through
him.
●
15. The Kite Runner is an inspiring book about the life of a young
Pashtun boy named Amir as he copes with his childhood
decisions 26 years prior. Living in a lavish house in the richest
district of Kabul, Afghanistan, Amir has everything he could
ever wish for, except the loving attention and acceptance of his
father, Baba. Ali and his son Hassan are their servants, both
being of the Hazara minority ethnicity. Throughout his
childhood, Hassan was always by Amir’s side as a loyal and
dedicated best friend; they did everything together including
Kite running.
16. Each year it was a tradition for the Afghan community to hold a
festival of kites during the winter and each year a single victor
would arise amongst hundreds, being the only kite left in the sky
after a long day of cutting. There were those who ran and fought the
kites and then those who were the kite runners. Amir was an
incredible kite flyer and Hassan was the best kite runner there was.
Promising to fetch the prized blue kite that Amir defeated to win the
festival, Hassan ran off into the streets of Kabul. When he did not
return, Amir went looking for Hassan and discovered him cornered
by Assef, a sociopathic bully, and his two followers. It was there
that Amir hit an all time low and cowardice as he watched his best
friend get beaten and raped and did nothing. It was the guilt of this
decision that made him the man that he is.
17. Years later after Hassan and Ali leave, the Roussi army attacked,
forcing Baba and an 18 year old Amir to flee the country to
California, America. It is here where he is still haunted by Hassan’s
rape each day while attended high school and college to become a
writer. When Baba becomes very ill with cancer, Amir asks Soraya,
a fellow Afghan refugee to marry him and she becomes his rock of
stability. Shortly after they get married Baba dies. Soraya and Amir
try having kids but fail and it is then when Amir receives a call from
a man who was more of a father to him than his own, Rahim Khan.
Rahim tells Amir of the unfortunate shooting of Hassan and his wife
but that their son is now in an orphanage. This is a chance for Amir
to make amends and atone his “ sin” adopting their son.
18. ●
Themes
The Search For Redemption
●The Love and Tension Between Fathers and Sons
●The Intersection of Political Events and Private Lives
●The Persistence of the Past
●
19. The ending of the book is not exactly a happy one, and not all loose
ends are tied up neatly. It is not certain that the characters we have
come to know will get what they want. It is quite the opposite, in fact,
and for Sohrab in particular there are fresh wounds that will leave
permanent scars. Amir’s redemption is not perfect either. As his
feelings of guilt return in the aftermath of Sohrab’s attempted suicide,
he feels that, because he was going to break the promise he made
never to send Sohrab back to an orphanage, it is his fault Sohrab tried
to kill himself. With all this, Khaled Hosseini suggests a general
lesson about life: that there are no simple solutions to such
emotionally and historically complex problems as those we have seen
throughout the novel.
20. In a perfectly just world, Amir would have been able to adopt Sohrab
without any difficulty and bring him home to a wonderful new life.
For that matter, in a perfectly just world, few of the novel’s significant
events would have occurred at all. Despite this dose of realism,
Hosseini ends his often painful novel with hope. Flying the kite with
Sohrab, Amir feels like a boy again, and for that time at least, he is
innocent. The novel comes full circle as it ends, with Amir going to
run the kite for Sohrab. He says to Sohrab the last words Hassan said
to him before Hassan was raped, but despite the fact that those were
the circumstances the last time these words appeared in the book, the
hopeful tone suggests Amir has paid his penance and found his
redemption.
