Children are products of their parents, leading to most parents having certain expectations of how they want their offspring to grow up to be, but as stated in the novel The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, “Children aren’t coloring books.You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors” (Hosseini 21). The haunting novel, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, is set in Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban and describes the torturous journey of a young boy named Amir who’s father, Baba, had unrealistic expectations of him. Baba wanted Amir to be athletic and brave, even though Amir was more interested in standing on the side lines of fights and reading poetry and writing stories. In order to attempt and fill Baba’s expectations, Amir ends up betraying his loyal friend and servant, Hassan, when he was being assaulted by the sadistic neighborhood bully, Assef. This …show more content…
This story further demonstrates that, in the end, despite parents’ expectations of their children, each of us is ultimately the constructors of our own paths.
Due to his father’s unrealistic expectations in The Kite Runner, Amir struggles throughout the novel to become his own person. When Amir was younger, Hassan always fought his battles for him, such as when Assef, the local bully, threatens the two boys and Hassan defends them with his slingshot. His father looks down on this because of his belief that “A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything” (22). However, when he is older, and Hassan isn’t in his life anymore, Amir had to grow his own confidence and courage. As the story progresses, he can be seen standing up to his disapproving father unlike how he did when he was a kid. An example is when he decides to major in english, even though his father thinks that it isn’t “real work”(134), he chooses to pursue his own interests and become an
Because of Amir’s extreme desire to receive the attention and affection from Baba, he begins to subconsciously sacrifice his relationship with Hassan in order to fulfill his interests. However, as Amir continuously matures and begins to recognize his initial ignorant, detrimental actions towards Hassan, he no longer “worships” his father like he did in the past. This causes him to ensure a sense of independence because of his ability to quickly adapt to a completely new, unfamiliar environment and remain adamant on pursuing their own aspirations. When individuals highly idolize and worship the successes that their loved ones have achieved, their in-suppressible desire to emulate the achievements of others causes them to inevitably experience difficult circumstances that challenge their morality and principles. In The Kite Runner, Amir has always displayed overflowing affections for Baba due to his prideful feelings of being the son of a wealthy, prominent father.
Literary value can be defined as a plot that follows the guideline that Joseph Campbell set before his theory of “monomyth,” inferring from the two videos and Foster’s ideas. Understanding this concept allows us to confirm that the book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, contains an ample amount of literary value. Amir’s journey to Afghanistan serves as the prototype that Campbell constructed when producing his hypothesis. The two videos and Foster’s book lays out the conditions of a book containing literary value through Campbell’s ideas.
The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, talks about Amir’s life in first person point of view. The book talks about Amir’s childhood, the war in Afghanistan, and his self-salvation. Hassan is the servant’s son in Amir’s family. Hassan and his father, Ali, are Hazaras, who were despised by the Pashtuns. Hassan and Amir are fed from the same breast and they are best friends. Hassan is loyal to Amir all the time and he is always ready to be the scapegoat for Amir.
“I had 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'd 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.” In Khaled Hosseini’s, The Kite Runner, Amir, the young protagonist, lives a lavish lifestyle with his father, Baba. Until the Soviets invade and the Taliban become the dominant influence in Afghanistan. Amir’s sumptuous lifestyle comes to an end, and the values of not only his father but also his society begin to impact him and he realizes how much he does not belong in his own culture. Amir is taught the virtues of being a good man, however when the opportunity presents itself to demonstrate his teachings; Amir realizes how different he is from the ways of his father.
In Khaled Hosseini’s book, The Kite Runner, Amir is an example of growing up, making mistakes, and facing the consequences for those mistakes. Amir grows so much throughout the book. He is a fictional example of maturing and growing up in a realistic manner. Making mistakes is a part of this growth, even though his were extreme. The reader is introduced to Amir and is disgusted about how he treats Hassan and abandons him in a time of needing rescuing. His mistakes disgust us, especially after Hassan has been by his side the entire book. As the reader gets deeper into the book, they start to develop feeling of anger but sometimes sympathy, towards Amir. By the end, we are not as angry as Amir than the reader to begin with. Amir has grown into
During the tournament, Amir fought the kites and Hassan ran them. Amir cut the string of the last kite and Hassan began to run. That day, Amir witnessed Hassan being raped by a childhood bully and his friends. Amir ran away instead of helping Hassan escape. This is where Amir’s morals are first questioned in the novel.
At the beginning of The Kite Runner, young Amir wins a kite fighting tournament. He feels like he has finally redeemed himself for his father. However, Amir’s happy day turns dark, when an hour later, he witnesses Hassan, his best friend, raped in an alley. He had “one final opportunity to decide who [he] was going to be. (77) Instead of standing up for his friend and...
Because of this, Hassan is almost constantly bullied when he steps outside. Amir usually refuses to help Hassan, fearing he will get bullied for helping a minority. This type of thing built guilt up inside of him because he was then viewed as weak by his father’s friend. He overheard them talking and he was called weak because he would not even stand up for his best friend that he essentially lives with. He continues not to back Hassan up and starts being mean to Hassan, just like the other boys because he does not want to be viewed as weak.. During the kite runner festival, Hassan went to get the winning kite that Amir had knocked out of the sky. When he does, he is cornered by one of his bullies, Assef, and some of his friends. They take the kite and then rape Hassan. Amir stands nearby, watching the event take place and does nothing about it. Eventually he runs away trying to get the thought out of his head. Gradually over time, guilt builds up inside of Amir and it starts to become hard to even be around Hassan. This then leads him to frame Hassan for stealing his watch. After Amir does that, Amir finds out he forced his father to kick his brother out of the only housing he had. His father starts crying a lot and Amir feels that it is all his fault. Guilt impacts him very much even when he moves to America, he still
Infancy is the rudimentary status of human beings, which the ways for the rest of one’s life is determined. Unforgettable events may generate certain emotions in childhood. Thus, it modifies the nature of that person as an adult. Setting in the 1970s in California, the historical and fictional novel, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, illustrates the main character through his determinations to lengthy life conflicts. The novel outlines Amir’s assorted feelings of love and jealousy towards his best friend, Hassan. Despite their distinctive economic and social classes, they grow up in the same household facing strenuous hardships, resentments, and guilt together. However, the two boys reach a decisive point when the neighborhood bullies Hassan severely. As Amir sees his best friend getting a torture, he tries to provide an assistance. Unfortunately, he gets afraid and watches and does nothing. Amir's guilty, caused by the fear of avoiding his friend’s struggle, eventually leads him to betray his friend. Through the use of irony, foreshadowing, and metaphor, Amir’s childhood experiences harass him into his adulthood.
The other source of tension in Amir’s life is his relationship with Baba, his hard-driving and demanding father. Desperate to win his father’s affection and respect, Amir turns to the sport of kite flying, and at the age of 12, with the assistance of Hassan, he wins the annual tournament in Kabul. Amir’s victory soon is tarnished when he witnesses a vicious assault against his friend, who raced through the streets of Kabul to retrieve the last kite, Amir had sliced from the sky, and fails to come to his aid. Amir’s cowardness is compounded by a later act of betrayal that causes Ali and Hassan to leave their home, and he now faces the nightmare, bearing the burden of his poor choices for the rest of his life.
The longing for parental acceptance is often what leads to childhood downfall. At some point a child strives to make their parent proud. When a lack of attention is displayed in a parent child relationship there is a lack of communication and support. In The Kite Runner this type of relationship is shown through Baba and Amir's interactions. Throughout The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini Amir and Baba’s relationship takes many turns. Their relationship affects the plot through many situations such as when Baba acts uninterested in Amir's life, When Baba fails to treat Amir the same as Hassan, and when Baba takes his guilt and anger out on Amir.
In the novel The Kite Runner, author Khaled Hosseini writes about Amir a young Afghan child who is a coward and who later as an adult seeks redemption from past mistakes. These characteristic effects Amir’s live throughout the novel from childhood to present. However, these are just words on a paper without some proof and the novel happily supports this either through the events or the behavior of other characters. Now let’s start with Amir’s past childhood.
Over the course of the novel, Baba implies that he is not proud of Amir and the only reason he knows Amir is his son, is because he witnessed Amir 's birth. He states to Rahim Khan that he thinks Amir needs to stand up for himself more often. Countless times during the novel, Amir feels like he has to fight for his affection, that he has to earn Baba’s love. In order to prove himself worthy of affection and to redeem himself for not being a son Baba could be proud of, Amir yearns to win the kite runner competition. He reminisces on a memory, when all “I saw was the blue kite. All I smelled was victory. Salvation. Redemption” (65). In the aftermath of Hassan’s rape, Amir got rid of Hassan so he would not have to face the cause of his guilt on a daily basis. Amir buries the secret of the rape deep within him, where he hopes that it will not come back to haunt him, which is not the case. “We had both sinned and betrayed. But Baba had found a way to create good out of his remorse. What had I done, other than take my guilt out on the very same people I had betrayed, and then try to forget it all? What had I done, other than become an insomniac? What had I ever done to right things?” (303). As mentioned earlier, Amir is not one who stands up for himself. In order for Amir to redeem himself for betraying Hassan, and not standing up for him earlier,
During The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini reinforces the theme of the loss of innocence and redemption. Many characters lose innocence or are the cause of another character losing theirs. Amir both loses his innocence and that of others. His innocence is stolen by his father. In the novel Amir overhears Baba saying, “‘If I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own eyes, I’d never believe he’s my son’” (Hosseini 24-25). This affects Amir for his entire life as he tries to compete with Hassan for his father's attention. He does not realize that in doing so, this crumbles his world as he knows it. It makes Amir resentful, calloused, and even cruel, all of which are characteristics of someone who has lost their innocence. In turn, Amir’s loss of innocence causes other to lose their innocence because of his lack of courage and disregard for others feelings.
Khaled Hosseini on his novel The Kite Runner illustrates that how the hero of this novel “Amir” affected by his father. Amir thought that his father does not love him because Amir admits