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The Kite Runner Rhetorical Analysis

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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini explicates the life of the main character Amir, and his relationship with his childhood best friend Hassan. Throughout the novel, Hosseini uses irony to show the growth and improvement of Amir’s character. Back when Amir and Hassan were little they used to be close. As children, they used to participate in Kite Fighting tournaments. One day, they went to Kabul with Amir’s father, Baba, to buy kites for the new season. Amir reflects on the experience by saying, “If I changed my mind and asked for a bigger and fancier kite, Baba would buy it for me--but then he’d buy it for Hassan too. Sometimes I wished he wouldn’t do that. Wished he’d let me be the favorite” (Hosseini 51). Amir lives the life that everyone …show more content…

He spends years trying to impress Baba so that he will finally be proud of Amir. However, Hosseini portrays the relationship between Baba and Hassan to be different than his and Amir’s. Baba is always proud of Hassan and wants the best for him. He sees himself in Hassan. When these relationships are put side by side it is clear that Hassan is Baba’s favorite. Later in the novel, Hosseini writes another passages that shows irony. This is when he writes, “My body was broken--just how badly I would’t find out until later--but I felt healed” (Hosseini 289). This is another significant moment of irony in the novel. Assef, the person who raped Hassan and is the root of Amir’s guilt, returns to the book as an adult but continues to bully small children like Sohrab, Hassan’s son. During this event, Amir is beaten harshly by Assef and he feels as though this is his payment for running away when Hassan needed help. This event shows irony when Assef used to bully and fight with Hassan and Amir as children and now, as an adult, he is fighting with Sohrab and Amir. These situations are similar yet they mean different things to Amir and show his growth over time. During his childhood, Amir was not a quality

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In the beginning of the book, we see little moments that have a significant impact on Amir and Hassan. We may not think of it as a big deal but we learn later in the book that made a significant change in the characters. Amir witnesses Hassan, his best friend, getting violated by the bully, Assef and doesn’t help him. He just runs away and doesn’t tell anyone about what he saw. “And there’s nothing sinful about teaching a lesson to a disrespectful donkey”.

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I wanted Baba all to myself,” (Hosseini 13). Since the very beginning of his journey, it was easy for Amir's father to turn his head toward Hassan for all of his abilities, but it left his son in the dark, feeling inferior to the boy that was supposed to be his servant. After years of growing up with this internal struggle to be better, Amir realized that in many ways, Hassan was always liked more by Baba than he was, and there was nothing he was able to do to change

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In Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, Amir watches his servent-friend Hassan get raped, all while doing nothing to help his friend. Amir has multiple chances to redeem himself in the following weeks, yet he decides not to tell anybody about what happened to Hassan. This leads to a feeling of guilt building up in Hassan. This feeling of guilt becomes a positive force in Amir’s life, as Hosseini illustrates a life of positivity in Amir’s attempt to redeem himself and rid himself of his guilt. Soon after Amir witnesses Hassan’s rape, the guilt he feels influences him to avoid Hassan while at their home.

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This guilt and shame follow Amir throughout his life, causing him to struggle with happiness and personal redemption. Ultimately, Amir finds a way to healthily make amends with his past, finding healing and closure from the past. After returning to Afghanistan, Amir encounters the one person that was capable of causing such unimaginable trauma, Assef. By this time, both Amir and Assef were grown adults but they never moved past Hassan’s assault.

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Hosseini explains how Baba’s relationship with Hassan led Amir to have negative feelings towards his father. Amir grew jealous of Hassan’s physical connection with his father and this led to feelings of jealousy. Amir loved his father and at the same time, hated him for his actions. Amir spent his childhood trying to prove himself to his father. After betraying Hassan, Amir tried to justify his actions remarking, “Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” (Hosseini 65).

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While in Kabul, Amir is told he needs to take Hassan's son back with him, but to do so he must fight his childhood bully, Assef. In the midst of this fight, Amir is relieved of the guilt he once felt, and remembers the way the

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The novel is set in the 1960’s to early 2000’s through the war in Afghanistan. Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner portrays various actions of betrayal and the consequences that unite with those actions. Hosseini’s The Kite Runner uses the character Amir as a main piece in portraying betrayal and its consequences.

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He has finally learned to stand up for himself. By first rescuing Sohrab, Amir has stood up for himself and Sohrab physically. By not running away from the fight, Amir has stood up for himself the way that Baba always wanted him to. This also brings Amir closer to redemption, as he has corrected his past choice to stay uninvolved in a fight, all because he wanted to win his father’s praise. This demonstrates the growth that Amir has had, and it is all due to his relationship with Baba, as it taught him to stand up for himself.

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Later in the book, his regret did not allow him to fully experience his life, which in itself was a form of self-punishment and destructive. When Amir was contacted by Rahim Khan and found out Hassan had a child he was determined to find him, however, the director of the orphanage he was supposed to be in revealed that he had sold him to a Talib, when Amir attempts to rescue Sohrab from his Talib captor, he finds out it is Assef and his only option to rescue Sohrab is to fight him. Amir laughs as he is beaten, thinking to himself, “What was so funny was that, for the first time since the winter of

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In his childhood, Amir spent his time competing for his father's affection. As a child who did not meet the ultra-masculine standards of his father, he was in a constant struggle with Hassan who is strong and athletic and patient and caring. Amir shows this to us through his jealousy: “It’s an unusual present, I know” Baba Said “And probably not what you had in mind, but

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However, the difference between Hassan’s and Amir’s confrontations with Assef is that the protagonist did not fight alone; Sohrab, like his father, had a “slingshot pointed to Assef’s face.” (290) Despite his young age, Sohrab demonstrates more courage than Amir during his thirty-six years of life. If Amir had rescued Hassan on that winter day so many years ago, his entire life may have transpired

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“Amir looks down the alley where Assef and the others have Hassan pinned to the ground without his pants.” ( Hosseini 72) The Kite Runner is the first novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books, it tells the story of Amir, a young boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul whose closest friend is Hassan. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of Afghanistan's monarchy through the Soviet military intervention, the exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the rise of the Taliban regime according to Chicago Tribune.

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This part may seem insignificant to some of us but to a small child this is how they measure their parent’s love for them. On (52) “he would buy the kite for me, and he would buy it for Hassan too. Sometimes I wish I could just be the favorite.” The reason there is tension in this statement is because Amir feels unloved and unnoticed by his father because he is buying a kite for his servant just as often as him.

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“I dream that someday you will return to Kabul and revisit the land of our childhood. If you do, you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you” (Hosseini). Said by Hassan in a letter to Amir, Hassan was always very faithful to Amir, they had a friendship or bond like no other. In the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, he portrays a lot of themes throughout the reading, friendship being a known subject in the novel. The main character Amir has Hassan, a boy who works for Baba, Amir's father and later known to be Amir's half brother.

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Wayne Dyer, an American philosopher, once said, “Problems in relationships occur because each person is concentrating on what is missing in the other person.” This is the protagonist 's main source of conflict in the book, the Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini. Amir and Hassan appeared to have a brotherly friendship. Even though they grew up together, it was intriguing how Hassan develops a brotherly bond with Amir while Amir does not reciprocate the love. By concentrating on what is missing in Hassan, it causes Amir to become separated from the relationship because Amir values social class over his friendship with Hassan, and stems from his jealousy that comes from an idea that Baba favors Hassan.

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