End of Kite Runner

"If someone where to ask me if the story of Hassan, Sorhab, and me ended in happiness, I wouldn't know what to say" (357).

I didn't know if the story was happy or sad myself. I guess a little of both. I think there are a few stories in this one book. The story of Amir lifting his guilt and finding a way to indirectly help Hassan by saving his son. The is the story of Hassan, who till his dieing day lived for Amir. He died protecting Amir's home leaving his son an orphan. Sorhab story is of a broken soul. Hosseini leaves the reader with a glimmer of hope for Sorhab's future, "A smile. Lopsided. Hardly there. But there" (371). With that, the book leaves Sorhab's future to the readers imagination.

More Kite Runner

A lot has developed in this middle section of the book. As I see Amir grow a little into his adulthood, I feel like he becomes more of a likable character. He gets married, writes a few books, and tries to have a baby. In a sense he is trying to start a new, and forget about his old self, the person who would desert his best friend in a time of need. When Amir goes to Packestan to visit his father's business parter who is dieing, Amir is confronted with another situation that shows his true character. When Rahim Khan asks Amir to find Hassan's son, his first reaction is unwillingness to go. "Rahim Khan, I don't want to go to Kabul. I can't!" (220). Finally after groveling, he decides to go. "Then I told [Rahim Khan] I was going to Kabul. Told him to call the Caldwells in the morning" (227). Although he redeemed himself by not chickening out completely, part of me wanted Amir to say he will take the child in no questions asked, and without even meeting the kid, because he is Hassan's son, and Hassan would do that for him. Instead he tells Rahim to call the Caldwells. Despited his final decision, his initial reaction is important to scrutinize. It was Amir's quick reaction that made him run away from Hassan in the ally. When Amir is faced with another quick decision, he storms out of Rahim Khan's place. Perhaps if Amir got to think about saving Hassan from Assef, he would have grown the courage to do it. But what makes a hero in a story is the type of character who doesn't have to go back home and ponder if he wants to be good, he just is.

The Kite Runner Chapters 1-12

The book is amazing! By the time I'm done reading each night, my face is rosy on the cheeks and my eyes are watery. I think what I like best about the story is I can relate to it a little. Coming from a middle eastern family, many of the customs are similar. The relationship Amir has with his Baba I recognise a lot. Khaled Hosseini inquires that in Pashtun custom you must earn a father's love (class notes). Amir's relationship with his father changes drastically from the beginning of the story to where I left off in chapter 12. The fact that Baba admits he is working his laboring job just for Amir to go to school, shows his father's true feelings, whereas in the beginning the reader sees a lot more of Amir's jealousy toward Hassan, and even Assef and the orphan kids Baba helps with the orphanage. In Calinfornia, Amir no longer has the other people in his life to be jealous over. He begins to see his father as only human, something that is only learned when you come of age. Amir sees his father working in a menial job, and later, with a crippling illness. Seeing one's father slowly wither brings reality closer for a boy to turn into a man. Amir knows the reality and asks "What about me Baba? What am I supposed to do?"(156). His farther rebuttals "All those years, that's what I was trying to teach you, how to never have to ask that question" (157). This quote is similar to "Girl" where the girl asks "but what if the baker wont let me feel the bread?". The mother's voice then replies "you mean to say after all you are going to be the kind of women who the baker won't let near the bread?