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?