- The novel opens with Amir as a grown man reflecting on his childhood. Provide a detailed description of the opening scene of the novel.
Amir is in America and his old friend Rahim Khan calls from Pakistan and asks for Amir to come and see him. There is an alleyway that we don’t know about yet that is somehow significant to Amir’s story. He goes for a walk and sees two kites, red and blue, “The red hue symbolizes valor, courage, enthusiasm, blood, and life while the blue color indicates perseverance, justice, vigilance and respect for God.” He then thinks back into the past and we see Hassan’s name for the first time in the book and Amir thinks of what Hassan said 26 years ago, ‘for you, a thousand times over.’ the harelipped kite runner. ‘there is a way to be good again’. and he thinks of everyone that is in his past that isn’ in his future and I think this is when he decides that he’s going back to see Rahim Khan.
2. The novel ends with Amir and Sohrab in the park together. Provide a detailed description of the final scene of the novel.
Sohrab is in hospital on suicide watch and Amir is breaking on the inside and after 26 years of not practicing his religion in America then he starts to pray again for Sohrab.
“I pray. I pray that my sins have not caught up with me the way I’d always feared they would.”
They cannot stay in the same hotel they were staying in because it was bad for business because Sohrab tried to kill himself. Sohrab says that he’s tired of everything and that he wants his old life back and Amir says that he can’t do that because they’re all dead. He doesn’t know but that was the last time that Sohrab would speak for the next year. They arrive back in America and Sohrab meets Soraya but stays silent. The General calls Sohrab a Hazara boy and Amir stands up to him for probably the first time in the whole time they have known each other. Amir and Soraya became the project manager to a little hospital in Afghanistan and it gets up and running. The General got summoned and went back to Afghanistan, and at an afghan gathering, there was the kite running competition, and Amir convinces Sohrab to play with him and shows him that his father used to play this with him and shows Sohrab how to plat and fly a kite the way that his father did. Sohrab shows the most acknowledgment that he ever has in a year including a smile, small but it was a smile and then Amir asked if he wanted to run the kite for Sohrab and he nodded. ‘for you, a thousand times over’ Amir says to Sohrab; full circle. And Amir runs, for a good thing this time instead of away from someone/something it’s for someone.
- Reflect on Hosseini’s intentions when framing the novel like this. Consider how the novel’s key themes are established and developed by these scenes. Reflect on the position the reader is placed in by Hosseini’s deliberate framing of the text in this way.
He might have framed it like that because when you read something like the scene when Amir finds that he has a scar-like Hassan when he is recovering from being beaten up by Assef and you are immediately reminded of Hassan and how he was, so you link those two thoughts together and depict it and it starts to mean something. The whole book is about redemption in a way so when you read about Amir going back to Afghanistan to meet Rahim Khan and then to find Sohrab, so you get excited and think that Amir if finally standing up for himself and doing something that his younger self wouldn’t ever dream of doing, so you think that he is redeeming himself from the little boy that let Hassan get raped. It is set up like that because the author deliberately wanted to get a reaction as either surprise or excitement from the reader through the reveals and the character redemption arches throughout the story, he gets sympathy and emotions like sadness and wanting to help but you can’t; hopelessness. And so by the end of the story, you get a sense of bittersweet ending when Sohrab finally smiled.
- Describe three other scenes in the novel that you consider to be significant. Explain why these scenes are significant in regards to the development of character and theme development.
When Assef is beating up Amir and he starts laughing even though his ribs are cracking and he’s basically dying, but he starts laughing because he knows that this is what would have happened to him before if he had intervened in the alleyway, that he deserved it and he felt like he was finally being forgiven and that is such a liberating feeling when you know that you have been forgiven.
“Then he’d taken the pomegranate from my hand, crushed against his forehead. Are you happy now? He’d hissed. Do you feel better? I hadn’t been happy and I hadn’t felt better, not at all. But I did now. My body was broken-just how badly I wouldn’t find out until later but I felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed.”
Again when Assef is killing Amir and Sohrab wants it to stop so he has his slingshot, and just like Hassan he aims the ammo at Assefs eye, Hassan reincarnate to protect Amir, but unlike Hassan, he shoots Assef in the eye and the ball that he fired and stayed there. That in itself could be a symbol as the hate that was kept from Assef finally came back and stayed there, his comeuppance finally came for him. Pg 253
“The slingshot made a thwiiiiit sound when Sohrab released the cup. Then Assef was screaming. He put his hand where his left eye had been just a moment ago. Blood oozed between his fingers. Blood and something else, something white and gel-like. That’s called vitreous fluid, I thought with clarity. I’ve read that somewhere. Vitreous fluid.“
The kites at the end of the book drew a full circle, that the next generation of Hassan is playing the same game that they would play when they were boys. Except their roles are swapped, Amir runs the kite and Sohrab battles with the other kites, wherein the old days when everything was fine, Hassan ran the kite and Air battled the other kites. This is also, I think, that Sohrab feels close to Hassan as this is what he and Amir used to do and Hassan has obviously told Sohrab about Amir.
“I looked down at Sohrab. One corner of his mouth had curled up just so. A smile. Lopsided. Hardly there. But there.”
“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”
“I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me. I was afraid of getting hurt. That’s was I told myself as I turned, my back to the alley, to Hassan.”
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