Analysis Of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner

In the “multifaceted” (“Khaled Hosseini”) novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini has seamlessly integrated Amir’s transition from youth to adulthood with the ethnic tensions in Afghanistan between the Pashtuns and the Hazaras. Hosseini’s coming-of-age novel, The Kite Runner, has earned its rightful place in the AP curriculum because of the well-developed and juxtaposed characters that implicitly illustrate the central idea that no matter how many mistakes one may commit, one is always capable of self-improvement and self-redemption.

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner deftly weaves a “searing spectacle of hard-won personal salvation (INSERT INTERNAL CITATION)” through well-developed and well-juxtaposed characters, making the novel a must read in the AP curriculum. The Kite Runner opens with a chapter of foreshadowing that enlightens the readers from the beginning of Amir’s goal of redeeming himself from his “past of unatoned sins (Hosseini 1).” After the first chapter, Hosseini breaks Amir’s life into three primary points: his childhood in Kabul, his life and Baba’s in America and lastly, Amir’s road to redemption through his return to Kabul. Amir and Hassan share a “brotherhood… a kinship that not even time could break (Hosseini 11).” It is the development of this “complex relationship (“Khaled Hosseini”)” that makes the novel more poignant as Amir’s coming-of-age story progresses. Along the way, Hosseini utilizes objects like the pomegranate tree where Amir and Hassan play together, eat together and grow together to imprint to the readers the deep kinship between the Pashtun and the Hazara. Furthermore, Hosseini solidifies this kinship by juxtaposing Hassan’s dream with Amir’s success in validating his existence towards Bab...

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...illustrates the ever-present hope to be better than who we are. In addition, “his passionate story of betrayal and redemption (INSERT INTERNAL CITATION),” is an “informative, sentimental but nevertheless touching popular fiction. (Kipen 51)” Although some may argue that “the story as a whole [is] a bit sentimental (“Khaled Hosseini”),” this sentimentality is what makes the novel so lifelike because it is that sentimentality that drives Amir to “end the cycle (Hosseini 227)” of guilt, burden and terrors. Oftentimes, people “give in to loss, to suffering accepting it as a fact of life, even see it as necessary (Hosseini 201).” However, here is Hosseini saying that it doesn’t have to be like that. People should be more proactive. People should actively be seeking self-improvement and self-redemption. Here is Hosseini saying “there is a way to be good again (226).”