Kite Runner -- Questions Troubled

¶ … Kite Runner -- Questions

"Troubled times bring out the best and worst in people"

The protagonists of the Kite Runner face perhaps one of the most horrific circumstances any one of us can imagine, namely the loss of their home. The narrator, Amir, is born into a life of privilege, yet despite the fact that he has lived a relatively protected existence, or because of that fact, his father might allege, he is unable to steel himself to protect his friend Hassan during the annual 'kite fighting' competition in his home city of Kabul. According to the rules of that competition, by all rights, as Hassan is Amir's 'assistant,' he has a responsibility to protect Hassan but Amir does not. Rather than strike back at Hassan's aggressors, he instead strikes back at Hassan afterward, shaming him and even accusing him of thievery because Hassan is a living memory of Amir's failure to respond to a challenge in a positive way. His father always reproached Amir for being less manly than his friend, and Amir's passive stance during the rape seems to confirm rather than undercut this accusation.

Yet Amir's father 'Baba' does not prove himself any more resilient -- when forced to leave Afghanistan after the takeover by the Taliban, Baba becomes depressed and anxious, living in poor "homes that made Baba's house in Wazir Akbar Khan look like a servant's hut" and working at menial jobs he feels are beneath him (Hosseini 135). Like the child Amir took out his aggressions upon Hassan, Baba projects his own frustrations about manhood onto his son, whom he now sees as unmanly because he wants to be a writer.

But the novel does not suggest that all people respond equally poorly to the challenge of troubled times. Hassan was raped by the gang because, even when pressed, he refused to give up Amir's kite to the evil Assef. He even confesses to the crime Amir stages to save his friend's reputation and later, back in Kabul, dies protecting Baba's old house, where he was staying on the behest of Baba's friend Rahim Khan. Hassan always puts loyalty above himself and his own interests and troubled times bring out his nobility of spirit.

Question 2: Kinship is the strongest of all human relationships. Discuss.

On the surface, the Kite Runner seems to belie this quotation. At the beginning of the book, Amir's father Baba seems to value the son of his servant Ali more than he does his own child. Baba seems to place the moral values of strength and manliness above his blood ties to his son by birth. In contrast, Baba's friend Rahim Khan seems to embody the values that Amir is able to encapsulate. For all of his faults including his deceit and cowardice, Amir is still a good storyteller and a good writer.

But it is Amir's false nostalgia for an ideal he cannot inhabit and his difficulty adjusting to life in the United States, and accepting the imperfections of his life and himself that he shares with his father Baba. Amir and Baba both see themselves as failed men, and in this sense they are both one another's 'blood kin.' Neither man has high self-esteem. Both father and son have anxieties about their manhood and their status. Furthermore, the reader later learns that Baba actually is Hassan's son, not Ali. This explains why Baba loved Hassan so much -- Hassan was the more beloved brother, in Baba's eyes, even though he could not lay claim to him publically.

Finally, the novel reinforces blood ties perhaps most explicitly in the longing for a homeland that both Baba and Hassan experience. Neither of them can give up the past, no matter how much they try to move forward. After all, the novel begins with the words that Amir is who he is, not because of his location in the United States during the present moment of the book, or even his status as an author but of what happened back in pre-Taliban Kabul in 1975, "at the age of twelve, on a frigid and overcast day," remembering the events as if they still lived within him (Hosseini 1).

I had on last chance to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan - the way he'd stood up for me all those times in the past - and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run."

During the incident described above, Amir perceives himself as having a choice. He can go into the alley and defend Hassan against Assef and his gang, and very likely get raped and beaten as well by the older, stronger boy. He knows he should because Hassan became a victim by refusing to yield Amir's kite to Assef. Hassan is sacrificing himself for Amir, as he later will sacrifice his life as an adult, protecting Baba's home. But Amir is a physical coward (and later an emotional coward) and instead he runs. This is why the event remains within him all of his life, and defines him -- Amir is a runner, running away from obligations, family, and home, while Hassan always stays and stands up for himself.