Kite Runner Project

Turning Points

Symbol: Pomegranate tree

Before the Kite flying tournament, Amir would always tease Hassan without feeling more than a little guilt. Even before the tournament when Hassan was telling Amir about his dream, Amir snapped at him. "I almost apologized,then didn't. Hassan understood I was just nervous. Hassan always understood about me." (Ch. 7 Pg. 60) This example shows how Amir relied on the fact that Hassan understood his rudeness in order for Amir to forgive himself.

After the tournament ended with Amir cutting the last kite and being declared the winner, Hassan went out to get back the blue kite Amir had just cut. After staying to say thanks to people congratulating him, Amir went around town to try and find Hassan. After a while, he found Hassan surrounded by Assef and his friends trying to convince Hassan to give them the blue kite. After Hassan refused to give it to him Assef said "I'll let keep it so it will always remind you of what I am about to do." (Ch. 7 Pg. 73) That is when Assef raped Hassan while Amir was watching in a hidden place in the alley. " I has one last chance to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. 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 would happen to me. Or i could run. In the end, I ran." (Ch. 7 Pg. 77) This shows that Amir had a chance to redeem for himself all the times Hassan has been kind to him, while Amir treated him poorly, and he wasted it. That's when Amir started to feel the real guilt.

Hassan never really seemed happy after he was raped. He usually did his usual chores in the morning then went back to sleep and never said if he knew that Amir had witnessed the incident and didn't help him. This caused Amir to feel so guilty, that eventually, he just wanted Ali and Hassan to move so he wouldn't have to see Hassan to remind him of his guilt. Amir placed a watch and some cash that he got for his thirteenth birthday in Hassan's hut, making it look like Hassan stole Amir's presents. When Amir told Baba that his gifts were missing and they found the items in Amir's hut, Baba called up Ali and Hassan to have a talk with them. Unlike Amir's prediction, Baba told Hassan that he forgiven him, but Ali insisted that they had to leave anyways. "Ali glanced my way and in his cold unforgiving look, I saw that Hassan had told him. He had told him everything from about what Assef and his friends had done to him, about the kite, about me." (Ch. 9 Pg. 106) The quote shows that Ali wanted to move because Amir didn't help Hassan even though they were supposedly friends. Even after Baba begged and pleaded them to stay, Ali and Hassan moved that day out of Amir's life, and making his guilt less strong temporarily.

The Kite Runner project:How the text deals with trauma and guilt

By: Darby Townsend

Amir ended up going to America five years later, where he met his soon to be wife, Soraya. Soraya and Amir were quite alike,especially for there passion in books and the fact that they had done something to give them a huge amount of guilt. Right when her father accepted Amir's proposal, she told Amir about how she ran away to America with a man who was on drugs, which was why people in the town were ashamed of her. Even though Soraya revealed her secret to Amir, he still wasn't brave enough to tell Soraya what he had done to Hassan. After the phone call, Amir told himself "I suspected there were many ways in which Soraya Taheri was a better person than me. Courage was just one of them." (Ch. 12 Pg. 165) This shows that no matter how guilty he is, he is still a coward and cannot admit to anyone other than himself that he has made huge mistakes in his life.

Amir lived in the United States for twenty six years before he got a call from Rahim Khan. Because of Afghanistan's political unrest, he didn't really want to go back, until Rahim Khan had told him, "Come. There is a way to be good again." (Ch. 14 Pg. 192) These words brought out the overwhelming guilt that had been trapped in Amir for so long. Since he had done so many bad things to Hassan, while not mentioning it to anyone, he decided he was willing to do anything to get back his pride.

Rahim Khan ended up telling Amir that Hassan was killed and had an orphan son who needed to be saved, named Sohrab. At first Amir was hesitant, but he eventually agreed to find him. After searching for several days he found Sohrab with one of his biggest enemies, Assef. Assef agreed to give Sohrab over to Amir, if Amir was able to beat Assef in a fight to the death. Since Amir was considerably weaker than Assef, Assef started to beat up Amir really badly. Instead of crying of begging for forgiveness, Amir started laughing. He laughed because he felt relieved from the guilt of not helping Hassan, since he was now going through similar pain. "My body was broken- just how badly I wouldn't find out until later- but i felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed." (Ch. 22 Pg 289) The guilt of Hassan finally went away now that he knew that he had stood up to Assef and endured the punishment that he deserved a long time ago.

The literal definition of a pomegranate tree is a tree that bares fruit that has a rough skinned outside, that contains many edible red seeds filled with the fruit's juice. The symbolic definition of a pomegranate tree is the place that Hassan and Amir always hung out in during their childhood. One day Amir brought a knife brought a knife to the tree so he could carve "'Amir and Hassan, the sultans of Kabul' Those words made it formal: the tree was ours. (Ch. 4 Pg.27) Amir and Hassan had most of their childhood memories take place here, even some bad ones. One important bad memory was when Assef threatened to hurt Amir and Hassan because Hassan had said, "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." (Ch 5 Pg.42) This caused Assef to become angry and threaten revenge against them. The encounter at this tree eventually led to Assef raping Hassan, making this tree an important symbol throughout the plot.

By the time Amir goes back to Afghanistan in order to get his pride back, the pomegranate tree of his and Hassan's childhood was wilted and dried out. "I stood under it, remembered all the times we'd climbed it, straddled at its branches, our legs swinging, dappled sunlight flickering through the leaves and casting on our faces a mosaic of light and shadow." (Ch. 21 Pg. 264) The fact that the tree has shown how Amir and Hassan's childhood has dried out over the years of being apart and growing up. It also symbolizes Amir's guilt of how he needs to correct the bad deed of running away from Hassan the one time he needed help.

Character:Hassan

In the beginning of the novel, Hassan is an eleven year boy, who is a Hazara servant to Amir and his father. Hassan had an "almost perfectly rounded round face, a face like a Chinese doll chiseled from hardwood: his flat, broad nose and slanting, narrow eyes like bamboo leaves, eyes that looked, depending on the light, gold, green, even sapphire." (Ch. 2 Pg. 3) Even though he had a cleft lip, he was usually smiling, especially when was around Amir. He was always nice to Amir, even if Amir was teasing him or being rude. Hassan was always loyal to Amir during the time they spent their childhood together.

Hassan always admired what Amir told him, especially when it cam to telling and writing stories. One day Amir read him a story and changed the plot as a joke to see if Hassan noticed. Amir didn't expect it when Hassan told him "That was the best story you've read me in long time." (Ch. 4 Pg. 30) The innocence of Hassan's personality is one of the main reasons that Amir feels so guilty about not helping Hassan when he was raped and driving him and his father out of of the to try to mask his guilt. The one aspect of Hassan that made Amir feel the most guilty is that Hassan always forgave him and didn't give him the punishment Amir felt he deserved. This also shows that Hassan's mood changes after the raping from happy to depressed, his loyalty to Amir never faltered.

Deeper Idea of the Central Thread

Theme:Loyalty

Throughout Amir's childhood, Hassan was always loyal to Amir. When Amir and Hassan got into trouble, Hassan always took the blame.A specific case was when they were shining a mirror into neighbor's homes, and the glare would cause the people to be annoyed. "He never told on me. Never told that the mirror, shooting the neighbor's dogs, was always my idea."(Ch. 2 Pg. 4) Hassan even ran down the kite that Amir had defeated in the kite flying tournament so Amir could get more praise. before running off to find the kite, he said proudly to Amir "For you a thousand times over!" (Ch.7 Pg. 67)

Unlike Hassan, Amir wasn't nearly as loyal to his friend. Amir and Hassan would often go into a pomegranate tree and Amir would read to Hassan. Hassan was illiterate because of his lack of schooling, which caused Hassan to not have that big of a vocabulary. Sometimes while they were reading and Hassan asked what a word meant, Amir would tell him a false answer in order to tease Hassan. "'Well everyone in school knows what it means,' I said. 'Let's see. "Imbecile." It means smart and intelligent. I'll use it in a sentence for you. "When it come to words, Hassan is an imbecile."'" (Ch.4 Pg. 29) This quote shows how Amir tried to make himself worthy by degrading Hassan, since Hassan has less education than Amir. The fact that Hassan is from the Hazara cultural group while Amir is from the Pashtun cultural group contributes to why Amir would tease Hassan. When Amir showed Hassan the first short story he wrote, Hassan loved it for the most part and only questioned one part of the story. This caused Amir to become angry at Hassan and think horrible thoughts, such as "What does he know, that illiterate Hazara? he'll never be anything but a cook. How dare he criticize you?" (Ch. 4 Pg. 34) Even though Hassan has always bee a great friend to him, Amir still feels that he is better than Hassan becuase he is a higher class than him.

Even though Amir would bully Hassan, Hassan would still be loyal towards Amir. After Hassan got raped by Assef and Amir ran away, Amir told Hassan to come with him to a pomegranate tree. When they got their Amir threw pomegranates against Hassan to see if Hassan would fight back or not. After a little while of having pmegranates being pelted at him he finally took action. " Then Hassan did pick up a pomegranate. He walked toward me. He opened it and crushed it against his own forehead. 'There,' he croaked, red dripping down his face like blood. 'Are you satisfied? Do you feel better?'" (Ch. 8 Pg. 93) This example shows that no matter how mean Amir is to Hassan, Hassan will never even attempt to hurt Amir. Hassan loyalty to Amir is so strong, that if he attempted to hurt Amir, his pride would be crushed forever.

The Central thread for this project how the text deals with trauma and guilt. This theme is mainly shown between Amir and Hassan. Amir feels guilty after he doesn't step in a help prevent Hassan by getting raped by Assef. Not only did Amir not step in to help Hassan, but the main reason Assef even raped Hassan is because Hassan wouldn't give him the blue kite from the tournament because he promised that he would give it to Amir. Amir was going to show the blue kite to his father to symbolize his victory in the tournament and the pride he felt in winning, but it ends up being ironic because the kite just reminds Amir of how he was a coward and didn't help his best friend in his time of need. My project supports this idea by showing how it is involved in the theme loyalty, how it affects turing points throughout the book, how it affects the character Hassan, and how the symbol of a pomegranate tree is involved with the topic or trauma and guilt.