The Kite Runner Literary Analysis

In The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, the life of an Afghan child is changed forever by an outbreak of violence and warfare, eventually causing him and his father to leave Afghanistan, and undergo the immigrant experience in America. Hosseini writes about Amir, the son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, known as Baba. They are Pashtuns, and have two servants from the minority class in Afghanistan, the Hazaras. The servants are treated like family, but one day the servant to Amir, Hassan, is raped by an older boy who joins the Taliban later in the novel. Amir sees this happen but does nothing to stop it, and after weeks of distrust, Amir forces the two servants out of the house. The Soviet army then invades Afghanistan, and many families,

In Kabul, merchants and well established people or families have trust in each other. Amir wants to explain the process of trust to a store owner after Baba has an incident at the store. He wants to tell the store owner that in Kabul, “He’d [merchant] carve notches on our stick with his knife, one notch for each loaf of naan he’d pull for us from the tandoors’s roaring flames” (128). The bread seller would then show the stick to Baba at the end of the month, and Baba would pay for the bread. In the neighborhood Baba and Amir come from, good people trust one another and can be trusted based on reputation. Baba has an arduous time adjusting to life in America. Baba when asked to show his ID yells, “Does he think I’m a thief?” and “What kind of country is this? No one trusts anybody” (128). In American business, there are more rules and regulations with stores. Baba does not yet understand that even though “Almost two years we’ve bought his damn fruits...the son of a dog wants to see my license” (127). Amir tries to explain that stores are required to ask for an ID if given a check, but Baba believes it to be an insult and a sign of distrust. Baba and Amir’s world substantially changes as they encounter new customs in