Final Post for The Kite Runner

What begun as an extremely slow paced novel turned out to be one of the best books I have read thus far. Though the majority of the novel was genuinely captivating, I did find certain elements within Hoseeini’s writing of The Kite Runner to be especially intriguing.

The depiction of Hassan as a Jesus- like figure was one of my favorite parts of the novel. Though he is not represented in the typical manner that an author chooses for a character he is crafting like Christ (i.e the name Christian, being a fisherman, a crown of thorns, etc.) he embodies my image of Jesus. Hassan is unarguably the most accepting individual that the reader comes across throughout the entire novel. Amir even describes Hassan’s pureness of heart as “sickening”. Sohrab later confirms that this loving ideology of Hassan’s does not go away later in life when he remarks that his father told him it was never acceptable to harm anyone, not even bad people because they did not know better. Hassan saw no flaw in Amir, one of the most despicable characters of the novel, and was even able to move past the brutal rape that he had to go through. Nonetheless, Hassan, the most pure and deserving of a life, was one of the first to go and one of the most hated by the other characters in the novel.  He ends up brutally murdered while carrying out a completely selfless action.

Hassan’s death truly saddened me because he was the only character I had any sort of hope for. If you connect The Kite Runner to the concept of the circle of life and the seasons, it becomes evident that Hassan, even though a young boy, is at the winter stage of life when it comes to mentality. It is not to say that he acts on purely physical needs or desires, but he is at the “grandparent” mentality. The petty things in life do not bother him because he has matured and is able to see past them. He allows Amir to throw pomegranate at him repeatedly without any sort of counterattack because he knows for Amir it is merely a form of catharsis.  Hassan never shows any signs of having a filter of distortion in the novel. None of his actions display any sort of polarized view or bias instilled into him by his  highly cultural upbringing. Nevertheless, just like Jesus and Meursalt from The Stranger he is murdered because people fear this thing that they search so hard for.

I also enjoyed how Hosseini brought the novel “full circle” if you shall. The novel could be split into two parts: the one before Amir’s maturation and the one after his maturation. Many of the events that transpire after Amir’s maturation have already occurred once in the novel. For example, Amir witnesses the rape of Hassan in one of the novel’s most memorable moments. Decades later, Amir is confronted with Assef, the boy who raped Hassan, only to find out (though it is not stated explicitly) that Assef has raped Sohrab as well. Prior to his maturation, as every reader knows, Amir did nothing to defend Hassan. The second time around however, he defends his, Hassan’s, and Sohrab’s honor and fights Assef, nearly killing himself in the process. The reader is able to see that Amir has passed his faze of petty wishes that will leave him empty anyways. Amir is now a man that is able to stand up for himself. He was able to prove Baba’s fear that “a boy who does not stand up for himself will never stand up for anything” wrong.

The phrase “I had done this ___ years ago” is constantly repeated throughout the novel indicating to the reader that something is different. The action that most stood out to me when this was said by Amir was him leaving a handful of cash under a pillow for the second time in his life. This time the cash was not hidden under the pillow as a deceitful and conniving action; he did it as a kind gesture to help out those that had helped him so greatly. It may sound kind of sappy and borderline pathetic, but seeing that chang in Amir was outstanding. I hated him so much for the greater part of the novel, that an action like this made me reconsider my opinion of him.

The realistic natures of Hosseini’s writing also lead me to like the book so much. In the real world, Sohrab does not end up a happy boy because he is given a privileged life in America. He does not just miraculously recover from a suicide attempt and become the boy he was before his parent’s murder. I liked the Hosseini ends the novel with only a slight smile from Sohrab. It is not a word, or even a full-length conversation; it is a simple smile. The vivid imagery and detail he used to describe Amir’s first return to Afghanistan was heavy with credibility. He leaves out no minute detail. Everything that has changed (even the car on Amir’s driveway and the way the new Jeep leeks oil) is included upon his return. Every gruesome detail of the Taliban’s Afghanistan is included in the description. The depth of the writing showed me something I already knew to an entirely new extent; anything has the ability to fall and be broken.

-Talia Akerman