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Transcript

Sohrab shoots Assef's eye out, like his father threatened to do years earlier.

Baba proves he is the man Amir always saw him as; stubborn but strong and good

Amir reads to Hassan under the pomegranate tree.

The Kite Runner Analysis

Imagery: Quote

Elements of Style: Imagery

“Lore has it my father once wrestled a black bear in Baluchistan with his bare hands. If the story had been about anyone else, it would have been dismissed as laaf, that Afghan tendency to exaggerate...But no one ever doubted the veracity of any story about Baba. And if they did, well, Baba did have those three parallel scars coursing a jagged path down his back. I have imagined Baba's wrestling match countless times, even dreamed about it. And in those dreams, I can never tell Baba from the bear.”

This is a wonderful quote to show how Hosseini used imagery to make things clear for the reader to see. This gives the reader a perfect image of how Amir saw his father.

Hosseini uses a great deal of imagery in the Kite Runner, which tends to make the novel more interesting. For example, when Amir tells the story of Baba wrestling the black bear, it gives the reader the image of Baba as how Amir must have seen him, very strong, intimidating, and hulking. Also, the image of the kite fighting is very significant. When Amir describes it, it paints a perfect picture of Amir and Hassan’s relationship and what it was based on; loyalty. The kite fighting could be seen as a metaphor for their childhood, where Hassan is the “sidekick” who helps Amir and sacrifices himself to do so.

Genre Analysis

Elements of Style: Tone

It’s clear that Khaled Hosseini intended to make his story very emotional, and wanted his writing to pull at the heartstrings of the readers. The Kite Runner’s tone is a mixture of warmth/love, guilt, nostalgia, and violence with just the right amount of each to make the story brilliant. There is violence, but after the violence there always comes a sort of healing period, where the characters come to terms with the tragedy, and once the mourning has ended, there’s the nostalgia for a lost past.

While the Kite Runner can fall under multiple genres, it is mostly historical fiction. The story takes place during an event that happened in the past, before its publication. The characters are greatly affected by this event (or events) and the historical setting of the story is the basis of everything that happens. The characters and plot themselves are fiction, but the politics and war are not. The fictional story is something that can be related to by people who experienced the history of it themselves.

Tone: Quotes

“Then I blinked and, for just a moment, the hands holding the spool were the chip-nailed, calloused hands of a harelipped boy. (370)”

“Then far away, across the stillness, a voice calling us home, the voice of a man who dragged his right leg. (370)”

Both of these quotes do a wonderful job of showing us the emotion that Amir was feeling at this time. This is at the end of the book, when Amir's guilt and sadness has gone, and now he remembers his childhood with nostalgia and content.

“And one more thing, General Sahib,” I said. “You will never again refer to him as ‘Hazara boy’ in my presence. He has a name and it’s Sohrab. (361)”

This quote is important because Amir is finally standing up for something he believes in and a person he loves. He did not become a man who wouldn't stand up for anything, like his father feared he would. Amir shows strength and defiance when he says this, two things he got through a lot of suffering and pain.

Symbol: Slingshot

A slingshot appears in the Kite Runner multiple times, and plays a part in some of the events coming full circle. At the beginning of the story, Amir emphasizes how deadly accurate Hassan is with his slingshot, and the reason for that emphasis becomes clear when Hassan threatens to take Assef’s eye out with it. Later on, Hassan’s son Sohrab is just as accurate with the slingshot as his father was, and the boy really does use it to take out Assef’s eye, just like Hassan has threatened to do when he was his son’s age. The slingshot is a symbol of bravery, standing up for others, and doing what must be done to protect someone in danger.

This is the tree that Amir and Hassan often climbed together when they were very young. It’s also the tree from which the fruit that Amir pelted Hassan with out of overwhelming guilt came from. When Amir reads a letter from Hassan many years later, he tells him that “the tree hasn’t borne fruit in years.” This fact is extremely significant as the death of the tree is a reflection of how the relationship between Hassan and Amir crumbled, and also how the Afghanistan of their childhood had gone from fruitful to barren and destroyed once the Taliban came.

Title Analysis

Symbol: The Pomegranate Tree

In the sport of kite fighting, there is one person per each pair that “runs” the kite, meaning that they chase down a kite that was just cut and try their best to get to it before any of the other runners.

The title is significant to this story because both Hassan and Amir played the role of the kite runner in situations that would become very important. Hassan ran down the kite for Amir right after Amir had won the biggest championship of the year, and right before he was assaulted by Assef. At the end, things come full circle when Amir runs down the kite for Hassan’s son, Sohrab.

“Did I ever tell you your father was the best kite runner in Wazir Akbar Khan? Maybe all of Kabul?” (367)

Elements of Style: Perspective

Perspective: Quotes

“But I’ll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting. (371)”

Amir's comment is foreshadowing an event that, if it happens, will happen at a time that is not covered in the novel. But him saying this lets the reader know that things probably will get better for Sohrab.

“So I left the room and went looking for another hotel, unaware that almost a year would pass before I would hear Sohrab speak another word. (456)”

Amir basically spoils the end of the story here, but this is an example of the perspective of the novel, how Amir tends to speak. He says many things that give hints towards things to come.

Hosseini wrote his novel from the first person point of view of an intelligent man who understood everything in his own and his country’s history. This means that the reader is never confused or left wondering about anything that they just read, and the events are not unclear or hard to understand.

The story is written as mostly a telling of the past from Amir’s point of view, but it ends with a comment that foreshadows things that won’t happen in the span of the novel.

By: Angie Napolitano

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