The Kite Runner

Cultural and societal norms forbid the expression of certain feelings and influence the thoughts we are allowed to share. Inhibiting our emotions creates inner-turmoil, which influences long-term guilt and shame. However, sometimes we, ourselves decide to keep our feelings a secret because we are anxious about our reputations and how others see us. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, is a strong example of how the lack of sharing these feelings affects our future emotional developments. In the book to movie adaptation of The Kite Runner, the point of view is changed from first to third person, so we must rely purely on Amir’s actions to understand instead of the descriptive details of his thoughts, and because of this we lose the understanding of his emotions and some of the relationships throughout the movie thus, weakening the theme significantly; when people stifle their thoughts, they often experience remorse, but when people share their thoughts, they feel a sense of relief.

The loss of narration from Amir throughout the movie leaves us completely unaware of how Amir’s relationships with different people work. “…Wondered how much time would pass before we talked again the way we just had (19).” This quote from the book has a way of explaining Baba and Amir’s relationship without actually interpreting it. Baba and Amir were very distant personality wise, so they seldom had deep conversations, and when they did, Amir would always ponder the possibilities if it would ever happen again. “I envied her. Her secret was out (164).” Although Amir has fallen in love with Soraya, he despises that she had the audacity to tell him what she felt the most guilty about. Amir believes that Soraya has more courage than him, but he also believ...

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... and his body movement to catch his pain since these details aren’t mentioned. In order to understand Amir’s feelings towards Hassan, we need his thoughts. These details that seem small and unimportant are actually imperative in making the movie coherent.

The point of view change from the book, to the movie notably weakens the theme of the story; we don’t have the help of details from his thoughts, rather we have to gather the information with subtle hints of Amir’s behaviors since he is retaining all of his secrets. Without Amir narrating his insight throughout the movie, we lose the understanding of the important relationships and characters unraveling before our eyes. This makes the movie confusing and less enjoyable for people who haven't read the book. We must have Amir’s narration in the movie in order to convey the theme of the book in a stronger way.