First Impression

From the first few pages, Hosseini captured my interest in “The Kite Runner.” The clear and straight up writing gives me a good idea of what is going on, while simultaneously giving off a sense of mystery and curiosity as to what it was that happened in the winter of 1975. Many scenes in the first few chapters portray the hostile and violent environment of Amir’s childhood, one being when the guard messes with Hassan vulgarly telling him what he did with his mother. This shocked me and made me feel sorry for Hassan, an innocent boy who had been abandoned at a young age. I found it sweet that Hassan and Amir were childhood friends, and enjoyed reading about their friendship. In a way, I see Amir as an older sibling figure to Hassan, and find that Amir has a stronger personality than his friend. I took from the writing, though, that Amir and Hassan are bonded by the fact that they both lost their mothers and were raised by their fathers.

We are also introduced to Amir’s interest in kites, and are given a clue that this will be important later in the book. Given by the title, it is obvious that there is a symbolic meaning correlated with kites that we will find out eventually. I liked that the author is so forward with everything, and that the readers get a good sense of Amir’s childhood. At the same time though, the author leaves us with a curiosity to know what it was that happened in 1975 that changed his life.