The Kite Runner Presentation

Important Places

Kabul, Afghanistan-Amir grew up here and it was the first influence on him.

San Francisco, America-The area that Amir moved to when he left Afghanistan. This is where he attempts to drown himself in the American culture to forget his past.

Afghanistan

San Francisco- America

Setting Influence

Kabul, Afghanistan was where Amir grew up. As a result he is very used to the Afghanistan culture and its traditions. However, he must become used to the American culture once he moves there and find a balance between the two cultures. Baba has a hard time adjusting to America, however, because he was too used to the culture of Afghanistan.

Racial divisionThe distinct racial division in Afghanistan occurs between the Hazara and the Pashtun. The Pashtun are the majority race, and discrimination against the Hazara is widespread.

The Hazaras typically function as the servant class and partake in few of the freedoms enjoyed by the Pashtun upper-class.

Hazara

Principal Characters

Amir

The narrator and the protagonist of the story. Amir is the sensitive and intelligent son of a well-to-do businessman in Kabul. Amir is a gifted storyteller and grows from aspiring writer to published novelist. His great desire to please his father is the primary motivation for his behavior early in the novel, and it is the main reason he allows Hassan to be raped. From that point forward, he is driven by his feelings of guilt as he searches to find a way to redeem himself. Ultimately he does so through courage and self-sacrifice, and he tells his story as a form of penance.

Hassan

Amirs best friend and half-brother as well as a servant of Babas. Hassan proves himself a loyal friend to Amir. As a poor ethnic Hazara, he is considered an inferior in Afghan society, and he is the victim of racism throughout the novel as a result. He is Babas illegitimate child, though he is not aware of this fact, and he grows up with Ali acting as his father. His rape is an early catalyst in the story, and even though he is not present in a significant portion of the novel, he plays a major role throughout.

Baba

Father of Amir and Hassan and a wealthy, well-respected businessman. When necessary, he is even willing to risk his life for what he believes in. Yet his shame at having a child with a Hazara woman leads him to hide the fact that Hassan is his son. Because he cannot love Hassan openly, he is somewhat distant toward Amir and is often hard on him, though he undoubtedly loves him.

Rahim Khan :He is Babas closest confidant, and the one man who knows all of Babas secrets. For Amir, he serves a father figure, often giving Amir the attention he craves and filling the holes left by Babas emotional distance.

Ali :Acting father to Hassan and a servant of Babas. Ali is defined by his modesty more than anything, and he works diligently as Babas servant. He loves Hassan deeply, though he rarely expresses his emotions outwardly. Poor and an ethnic Hazara, he suffers from partial paralysis of his face and walks with a limp caused by polio.

Symbols

The stories of Rostan and Sohrab in the Shahnamah represent Hassan.

The Blue Kite-It represents Hassans loyalty to Amir, as he holds onto the kite even when he is getting raped by Assef.

Sohrab- Hassans son, he is an example of the story of David and Goliath. Also, by using the slingshot just as his father had to protect Amir, he represents how his father is reborn through him.

Plot

The Kite Runner is an inspiring book about the life of a young Pashtun boy named Amir as he copes with his childhood decisions 26 years prior. Living in a lavish house in the richest district of Kabul, Afghanistan, Amir has everything he could ever wish for, except the loving attention and acceptance of his father, Baba. Ali and his son Hassan are their servants, both being of the Hazara minority ethnicity. Throughout his childhood, Hassan was always by Amirs side as a loyal and dedicated best friend; they did everything together including Kite running.

Each year it was a tradition for the Afghan community to hold a festival of kites during the winter and each year a single victor would arise amongst hundreds, being the only kite left in the sky after a long day of cutting. There were those who ran and fought the kites and then those who were the kite runners. Amir was an incredible kite flyer and Hassan was the best kite runner there was. Promising to fetch the prized blue kite that Amir defeated to win the festival, Hassan ran off into the streets of Kabul. When he did not return, Amir went looking for Hassan and discovered him cornered by Assef, a sociopathic bully, and his two followers. It was there that Amir hit an all time low and cowardice as he watched his best friend get beaten and raped and did nothing. It was the guilt of this decision that made him the man that he is.

Years later after Hassan and Ali leave, the Roussi army attacked, forcing Baba and an 18 year old Amir to flee the country to California, America. It is here where he is still haunted by Hassans rape each day while attended high school and college to become a writer. When Baba becomes very ill with cancer, Amir asks Soraya, a fellow Afghan refugee to marry him and she becomes his rock of stability. Shortly after they get married Baba dies. Soraya and Amir try having kids but fail and it is then when Amir receives a call from a man who was more of a father to him than his own, Rahim Khan. Rahim tells Amir of the unfortunate shooting of Hassan and his wife but that their son is now in an orphanage. This is a chance for Amir to make amends and atone his sin adopting their son.

Themes

The Search For Redemption

The Love and Tension Between Fathers and Sons

The Intersection of Political Events and Private Lives

The Persistence of the Past

The ending of the book is not exactly a happy one, and not all loose ends are tied up neatly. It is not certain that the characters we have come to know will get what they want. It is quite the opposite, in fact, and for Sohrab in particular there are fresh wounds that will leave permanent scars. Amirs redemption is not perfect either. As his feelings of guilt return in the aftermath of Sohrabs attempted suicide, he feels that, because he was going to break the promise he made never to send Sohrab back to an orphanage, it is his fault Sohrab tried to kill himself. With all this, Khaled Hosseini suggests a general lesson about life: that there are no simple solutions to such emotionally and historically complex problems as those we have seen throughout the novel.

In a perfectly just world, Amir would have been able to adopt Sohrab without any difficulty and bring him home to a wonderful new life. For that matter, in a perfectly just world, few of the novels significant events would have occurred at all. Despite this dose of realism, Hosseini ends his often painful novel with hope. Flying the kite with Sohrab, Amir feels like a boy again, and for that time at least, he is innocent. The novel comes full circle as it ends, with Amir going to run the kite for Sohrab. He says to Sohrab the last words Hassan said to him before Hassan was raped, but despite the fact that those were the circumstances the last time these words appeared in the book, the hopeful tone suggests Amir has paid his penance and found his redemption.