The Kite Runner Essay

The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, tells the extraordinary story of an unlikely friendship between a wealthy Afghan boy, named Amir, and Hassan, the son of his father's servant - who he later finds out, after Hassan's death, has always been his half-brother. Within The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Amir, the protagonist, undergoes a controversial redemption arc after being affected by the deteriorating socioeconomic conditions in his homeland, Afghanistan, which reflects on events that happen to Amir throughout the text and shape him as a person. Khaled Hosseini’s second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, like The Kite Runner, is set in Kabul, Afghanistan and displays Kabul’s hopeful spirit; Hosseini’s novels portray the importance

From the beginning of the text and based on the novel’s name, The Kite Runner, kites are extremely important and act as a journey of spiritual redemption for Amir because the story starts with Amir seeing kites in the present day: “I glanced up and saw a pair of kites, red with long blue tails, soaring in the sky. They danced high above the trees on the west end of the park, over the windmills, floating side by side like a pair of eyes looking down on San Francisco, the city I now call home. And suddenly Hassan’s voice whispered in my head: For you, a thousand times over. Hassan the harelipped kite runner” (Hosseini 2) and ends with Amir saying the same quote to Sohrab, Hassan’s son and his nephew whom he has adopted, as he runs the kite for him to depict a full circle. Chen declares, “chasing kite also means the quest for good humanity. Perhaps everyone has this kind of knot and a “kite” of old life. One can find “a way to be good again" just to be honest and kind-hearted to others” (241). Amir’s transformation into a kite runner shows that he has earned his “nang and namoos'' (Hosseini 147) or honor and pride back because at the beginning of the text, Hassan was Amir’s excellent accomplice and the kite runner in the tournament and sacrificed himself; Hassan’s loyalty, honor, and ability to act as an “underdog” or “sidekick” archetype show that he is able to be the kite runner, unlike Amir, who at this point in time, “craves fatherhood and hopes to gain his father’s approval through his own efforts” (Wen 590). This sacrifice represents Hassan as a lamb or sheep within the text, historically sacrificial and innocent animals that are immolated to achieve a higher goal - like Amir talks about on the day of Eid al-Adha or Festival of Sacrifice. Amir, flashing back to