The Kite Runner Cultural Analysis

With many different heritages and cultures, multiple Afghan ideologies and cultural ideals are also demonstrated throughout the book, The Kite Runner. Many of these ideas appear repeatedly and support the storyline while emphasizing the real-life dangers that can be encountered in mid-eastern countries. More specifically, the story features Amir’s run-in with one group in particular, coordinated by the infamous Assef. Though the book is fictional, it portrays many realistic examples of environmental conflicts that may have occurred in Afghanistan. Understanding the history and motives of the Taliban helps readers comprehend the mass histeria taking place in Afghanistan when the story is taking place. The ideologies and actions of the Taliban are unspeakably violent and

However, Afghanistan was eventually taken over by smaller ethnic groups who became the majority of the population. Commonly, Pashtuns thought highly of their heritage and lowly of other minority groups such as Hazaras. Young children were no exception. Children, like Amir, had even been exposed to such racial discrimination, and most times Amir witnessed Hassan as the target. As described in chapter 2, “...people called Hazaras mice-eating, flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys. I had heard some of the kids in the neighborhood yell those names to Hassan.” The takeover of the Taliban in the late 1990’s sparked hope and confidence in Pashtuns to again dominate Afghanistan.
When Baba and Amir fled Kabul Amir described the future for him and all of Afghanistan stating,
The end, the official end, would come first in April 1978 with the communist coup d'état, and then in December 1979, when Russian tanks would roll into the very same streets where Hassan and I played, bringing the death of the Afghanistan I knew and marking the start of a still ongoing era of bloodletting (Hosseini