Saturday Climbing Short Story

Parent and child relationships

“The irony of a parent and child relationship is, that at any given moment, you never know who is teaching whom.” - Linda Poindexter. Relationships between children and their parents are complex and interesting. In both Saturday Climbing by W.D. Valgardson and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, there are many similarities and difference parents have when raising their children.

In both stories the fathers are single men raising their child alone. In The Kite Runner Baba lost his wife when she was giving birth to his son, and in Saturday Climbing Barry’s wife left him, so the men can both relate to the fact that raising a child alone is very hard work. One thing that really catches your eye as a similarity between the men is that neither of them can really relate to their children. “If I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of my

Moira wants to do what she wants when she wants and doesn’t have time to care what her father thinks about it, Amir is opposite, he is nowhere near independent and cares more about what his father thinks than what anyone else thinks of him. Amir craves the attention he hardly gets from his father and longs for the affection he missed out on all his life, while Moira appreciates her dad caring for her, feels as though she is being smothered and craves distance from her father. These two are completely opposite in what they need and want, not only that but they have completely different mindsets on life. Amir needs guidance and help from everyone around him as he is still a kid, he seeks out kindness and hates violence and confrontations. Moira is mature, strong, and knows exactly what she wants from life, she feels a need to have more responsibility as seen in this quote, “he has been trying to keep her from rushing headlong into taking on too much responsibility at once.” (Valgardson, 55) these two children share many differences, just as their parents