Essay on the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner is a successful novel written by an Afghan-born American novelist Khaled Hosseini. The author’s literary talent and the issues which the novel raises up secured the readers’ admiration of this book and its enormous popularity. The novel was also made in a successful film. As it was said in the book “World Cinema, Theology, and the Human: Humanity in Deep Focus” written by Antonio Sison: “The Kite Runner” offers conversation points surrounding the themes of father-son relationship, friendship, betrayal, and redemption” (Sison, 2012).
In the centre of the plot lies a story of a Pashtun boy Amir, the son of a well-to-do merchant. The reader first encounters him as a child, who lives with a wealthy father in one of the districts of Kabul. He dearly loves his father and affectionately refers to him as “Baba”. His best friend is Hassan, the son of his father’s servant Ali. Hassan is a brave and loyal friend and his character receives more approval from Baba. Amir’s father loves both boys, and it seems sometimes that he admires Hassan even more than his own son. Baba thinks that Amir should be more courageous. He does not approve his son’s inclination to writing, thinking that it is not an occupation for a true man. At the same time, Amir loves his father with all his heart and desperately wants to achieve his praise and admiration. He is jealous of his best friend Hassan, whom he thinks to be stealing Baba’s love from him. In the beginning of the novel Amir is a selfish child, who thinks only of his own happiness. Even though Hassan is his friend, Amir feels that Hassan is inferior to him, as he is just a servant’s son. Because of his jealousy he often mocks Hassan’s ignorance and sometimes even plays tricks on him. He does not have to confront anyone else, because Hassan is always by his side ready to defend him. Hassan is portrayed as a loyal friend with brave and kind heart who in the contrary to his friend Amir is not prone to jealousy at all. Even though he has much less than Amir, being just a son of a servant, he never envies his friend. He says that he is happy with what Amir has and there is no hypocrisy in his words. Hassan possesses all the best traits of character a true friend can possibly have: loyalty, sincerity and readiness to sacrifice his happiness for the sake of the happiness of his best friend. In the beginning of the novel, when Amir remembers the times he and Amir spent together, he mentions one of the episodes from his childhood, when the two boys used to climb a tree and Amir talked his friend to fire “walnuts with his slingshot at the one eyed German shepherd” which was their neighbor’s dog. As Amir recollects it: “Hassan never wanted to, but if I asked, really asked, he wouldn’t deny me. Hassan never denied me anything” (Hosseini, 2008). This episode gives a bright illustration of the two boy’s character. Amir was quite a selfish child who did not think much of the feelings of people and creatures surrounding him. His own joy was on the first place for him. He did not care of the physical pain which the dog would feel, or of the moral pain which his friend was going to feel from doing what he was asked to do. It hardly seems that the boy enjoyed the fact that the dog was going to suffer; most probably he just found it funny when the creature would jump up from the suddenness of the attack and would look round in bewilderment, seeing no enemy nearby. His friend in the contrary showed deeper understanding of what others feel, whether they were people or animals. He understood that firing a walnut at the poor animal is a mean and cowardly act. Still, the happiness of his friend was above his own morals for him, and when Amir wanted something which only Hassan could do, Hassan did not hesitate to make his friend happy.
In fact, some critics even say that this character is too idealized by the author. For example, this thought is mentioned in the short analysis of Hassan’s character, given in the study guide for the Kite Runner written by Richard Wasowski. The quote goes as follows: “Hassan epitomizes the perfect servant who is loyal to his master, even after his master betrays him. Many critics consider Hassan’s character “too good to be true”, for even after he is betrayed by Amir. Hassan continues to lie for a person he considers his friend”. (Wasowski, 2009). This thought seems to be quite right, for Hassan’s loyalty and purity of his intentions and deeds really seem to be more suitable for the image of a saint, not a son of a servant. However, this almost unrealistic goodness which Hassan shows in his acts helps the author to create the right mood and doubles the moral sufferings of the main character. His friend’s purity and moral strength highlights Amir’s faults. The Kite Runner is sometimes interpreted as a novel of sin and redemption, and in my opinion this thought is quite true. Having betrayed his best friend in the childhood, Amir cannot forget it and forgive himself even though many years have passed and his life was full of other events. He blames himself for his cowardice and jealousy. The remembrances of the past never cease torturing him. The summary of the plot given in the book “500 Great Books for Teens” written by Anita Silvay includes a concise but very true remark which goes as follows: “It serves as a deeply personal story about how choices made in childhood affect adult lives”. (Silvey, 2006). Generally, Amir depicts a man who once made some awful mistake and would give everything to make amends for it.
The author gives him a chance for redemption: though Hassan was killed by the Talibans after having refused to leave the house of his friend Amir to them, his son Sohrab is alive and in trouble. Amir faces a situation which is very similar to the one that all these years aroused in him such painful memories. Again his enemy is Assef, but this time Amir is the one who is beaten by him. Thus a parallel drawn between what happened in the childhood and what happened many years after this. For the first time in all these years, Amir felt relief, despite severe pain from beatings. For him Sohrab personifies Hassan, and suffering from Assef’s hands instead of him is what Amir had wished for. For Amir it felt like partial redemption for the cowardice which he had displayed when being a child. Another vivid parallel with his childhood and adulthood appears in the very end of the book, when he, his wife and Sohrab come to the Afghan gathering at a park. They see a kite seller and Amir buys a kite for Sohrab. He talks about Hassan and shows Sohrab some of his Hassan’s favourite tricks. Finally he thinks that he saw a faint smile on Sohrab’s face. The moment is mentioned and discussed in the Shmoop bestsellers guide dedicated to The Kite Runner. “As he flies the kite memories of Kabul come flooding back in a beautiful and moving passage. For most of the book, memory has literally been a nauseating affair, but now it brings joy to Amir”. (Shmoop, 2010). Thus the painful remembrances of the day when Amir and Hassan were flying kites and Hassan got raped by Assef are covered in Amir’s consciousness by the moment when he did something that made Hassan’s son smile. This is Amir’s final redemption which ends the story.
This novel shows how the values and morals of one man were developing and changing in the course of his life influenced by the feeling of guilt for the mistake he made when he was a child. Amir felt that his best friend Hassan deserved much better attitude from his side even when they were children, but only having become an adult he fully realized how awful and repellant his betrayal of Hassan was. The novel shows to which regrets jealousy and selfishness can lead – that is why it is especially relevant for teenagers, who are often more prone to these feelings, because they usually have life experience than adults and often do not know what really matters in life. Perhaps not all the issues which are to be come across in the novel are relevant to us – for example, the fact that Baba was unable to acknowledge Hassan as his son because he was illegitimate. However, identity issue seems timely and worth mentioning. Hassan, who belonged to different ethnic group suffered from derogatory attitude of Pashtun people. However, his image as of a brave man and loyal friend proves the reader that judging people by their ethnicity is absolutely wrong and unworthily.
Shmoop (2010). The Kite Runner: Shmoop Bestsellers Guide. Los Altos Hills, CA: Shmoop
Silvey, A. (2006). 500 Great Books for Teens. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Sison, A. (2012). World Cinema, Theology, and the Human: Humanity in Deep Focus. London: Routledge.
Wasowski R. W. (2009). CliffsNotes on Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley
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