Circularity In The Kite Runner

Sometimes life brings you full circle to a place that you have been before just to show how much you have grown. In stories, there are connecting pieces that intertwine the lives of the many characters involved, and the things they face bring similarities throughout the course of the book. In the novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini uses the idea of circularity between the main characters and symbols that emerge at the beginning and end of the story to construct a wholeness in his writing. First, the personality of Hassan at the start of the book was circulates to his son, Sohrab, towards the end of the novel and is shown through their actions. During Amir’s childhood, he encountered Assef, a sociopath of the same age, who planned to hurt

Hassan’s characteristics from Amir’s childhood days are easily visible in Sohrab during Amir’s adult life because of the way they protect others and stand up for what they think is right no matter how grave the danger. Additionally, there is circulation between Hassan and Amir that Hosseini portrays through both characters’ physical attributes, actions, and phrases that connect the two on an emotional level. Both boys are extremely close over the course of their early years, and Hassan used to have a harelip until it was surgically fixed. All of Amir’s childhood memories are filled with the memory of Hassan, whose importance was explained by Amir at the start of the story, in which he described, “Nevermind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin-boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a Chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped smile” (Hosseini, 2003, p. 25). Amir and Hassan had many differences as they were kids, such as the fact that Hassan had a physical defect and Amir was in perfect health, and both boys come from different ethnic backgrounds. To Amir, their relationship was servant and master, and even though it seemed they were

In the beginning, after Hassan runs the last blue kite for Amir to bring home as a trophy, he is raped by Assef, and Amir witnesses it all. He can either decide to save Hassan or run and pretend he did not see anything so that he could have the last kite. Amir describes his thoughts as he is watching: “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” (Hosseini, 2003, p. 77). Because of Amir’s choice, Hassan suffers and is forced to leave the home he had also grown up in because Amir could not handle the guilt he had caused himself. During the first half of the novel, kites represent the severing of ties between two friends. Kites are importantly brought up once again at the very end of the book, as Amir and Sohrab are kite flying at a park in America, and Amir uses one of Hassan’s favorite tricks to cut one. Then, he runs to get the kite, explaining, “I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But I didn’t care, I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lips. I ran” (Hosseini, 2003, p. 371). Instead of running from someone he cares about, Amir is now running for someone he cares