BOOK Review.: bye bye kite runner

Title: Kite Runner
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Drama.
Subject: Afghanistan
Kite runner is a tale of toy boys who grow up in Kabul and share the bond of brotherhood. When a situation that devastated them both occurs they are both uprooted from their home and separated by time race, guilt, lies, death, and war. The war that plagues there beautiful Afghani city.
Amir and Hassan play together all the time, but Amir never treats Hassan quite the same, this is why. Baba plays a major role in Amir's issues because he doesn’t support Amir in the things he loves. Amir takes on the feeling that Baba hates him because his mom died giving birth to him. Baba treats Hassan like a real son, even thought it isn’t established to Amir that Hassan is Baba’ son too. He feels left out, even thought he has more than Hassan he lacks one thing, his father’s approval. On top of his father being ashamed of him, he is also ashamed of himself for not being able to be like Hassan. He is actually jealous of Hassan, he has two dads, but when we think about it in a sense of compassion and unconditional love, Amir doesn’t have that. After Hassan was sexually assaulted Amir gets even more depressed at his inability to be brave like Hassan. After Amir moves to California things seem dry for him. I think he misses Kabul. He was only a kid so I feel as though he wouldn’t be able to get over leaving for a while and he also wouldn’t be able to get over Hassan being hurt until he learned to face his fears.

Amir was always a person who considered a person of high standing to be stronger, so he easily gave in, feeling inferior to them. He also felt superior over Hassan, but Hassan knew that and never took it to heart or hated him for it. Hassan was at peace with himself in a way. He knew that he had to give Amir the respect that he’d want Amir to give him. He treated Amir how he would want to be treated, even though in return Amir stood by letting Hassan fight for him, even in this instance, “Hassan shrugged. To an outsider, he didn’t look scared, but Hassan’s face was my earliest memory.” He knew Hassan was scared and had little defense, but he dared not stand up for himself.

I think that Amir becomes brave when he goes back to Afghanistan to save Hassan’s son. He sees so many things that he missed out on because he was lucky. “I don’t know if I gave Assef a good fight…I had never so much as thrown a punch in my entire life”. This quote shows him changing from I don’t know if I fought good but the matter becomes less about him and more about protecting Sohrab In a way living in America taught him that defiance is okay when it’s defying someone who is corrupt. Assef was the person who forced him to stand up, not for himself but for Sohrab his brother’s son. Whilst confronting Assef the only thing he thought about was Sohrab, Hassan, and how he couldn’t let Sohrab be an orphan any longer, how he couldn’t let Soroya become a widow, and how Hassan took the pain for him a long time ago. Thus giving him enough courage to not die in vain, to fight back.

Hassan is a much different character in this story. When Hassan was a child Amir and him were fed from the same person, the lived together from birth but a major thing that set Hassan apart from Amir is that Hassan enjoyed the innocence of his youth for as long as he could. He was always kind and considerate. That is because he was cared for by his Ali. Ali must have put morals and lessons into Hassan so that he would grow older and stay kind and pure hearted.
Hassan was a real friend to Amir; he protected him from Assef when he tried to hurt him. And the second time Hassan paid a price for being such a loyal friend to a coward. Yet Hassan knew Amir was there, he never was angry at him for not stopping Assef. Never blamed Amir, the guilt Amir felt was his own not someone else making him feel guilty. He always thought highly of Amir because he wasn’t as educated as Amir, and didn’t write like Amir either. Hassan didn’t need to know that he and Amir were brothers; he already treated Amir as if he were an older brother with respect and submission. If Amir had let time take its course and not blame himself so often for the incident then their relationship would have healed, but Amir would have remained cowardice. In reality, Amir trying forget and eventually forgetting his past for a while, guilt of witnessing and not helping Hassan when he was being raped, and Baba never telling Amir and Hassan that they were brothers due to his own pride was what made the two unable to meet again. It made them unable to reconnect, apologize, and bond.

Unfortunately they never made up because these two characters would have healed old wounds and start new. This would give Amir a chance to say sorry, to hug Hassan, to tell him that he was in fact his only friend. Once Hassan died and Amir found out I’m sure there was no reason he would have been as devastated as he was. I’d be sad to if I treated someone like a turd and found out later that he was my brother. Eventually Hassan and his wife encounter a tragic death but Hassan didn’t know he would be shot. I’m sure it would have meant the world to Hassan to know that Amir traveled so far to save his son, even if he wasn’t alive, his soul would be able to rest in peace.