Comment to Davis' Post

I agree wholeheartedly with Davis’ comment. The immense amount of detail and imagery (as I had written in my post) that Hoseeini employs, allows for an eye-opening experience. After the September eleventh attack on the World Trade Center a majority, if not all, of what came out in the media about Afghanistan was heavily negative and clearly bias. I am not trying to say that we are awful people for having so much bias, the attacks were grave and frightening and it is a reasonable human reaction. Nevertheless, I was a very child at the time of the attacks and the little information I was given about Afghanistan from then on was negative. I knew close to nothing about Afghanistan before reading this novel and Hosseini has lead me to see that, as cliché as it may sound, there really is so much more to this country than what the media tells us there is.

The people of Afghanistan, as Hosseini marvelously displays, are humans with remarkable personalities just like anybody on the Western hemisphere of the world. There is so much history, culture, and tradition that really make Afghanistan a marvel and nobody ever hears about it.

The themes that Davis notes throughout the novel are ones that I saw as well. He did mention something that took me aback greatly: the fact that Baba had committed the very sin he warned Hassan so greatly against. I kind of disagree with Davis on how he was a thief, though. Davis beliefs that with Baba, the thievery is in taking another man’s wife. To me, Baba’s thievery is not telling Hassan and Amir the truth and letting them believe this lie for so long. Though his intentions were noble and maybe reasonable in context, he robbed Hassan of so much and Amir just as much by not telling them that they were in fact brothers and not just a privileged boy and his hazara. 
-Talia Akerman