¶ … Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini Throughout history, armies have marched through the mountains of Afghanistan, sometimes pausing to wage war while other times simply passing through on their way to grander prizes. Most of the stories written about the Khyber Pass portray this region of the world as being hostile and untamed, and for good reason. For modern readers in the West, the manner in which young Afghanis come of age may seem completely alien in many ways, but Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner, makes it clear that people are just people all over the world. To achieve this outcome, the author positions the reader in the midst of Afghan culture by examining the threats as well as the hospitableness that define tribal society, and structures the novel to be a description of what is required to become a man in Afghani society today using various literary tools and techniques such as the morality of silence, atonement, guilt, regret, decision-making, selfishness vs. selflessness, Afghanistan as a changed country, terror/war / fear, responsibility, poverty/inequality, actions and consequences and foreshadowing first-person narrative. This paper provides a review of Khaled Hosseini's...

Indeed, Hosseini writes, "Hassan never talked about his mother, as if she'd never existed" (p. 6). This morality of silence is due in part to the shame associated with his mother's having run off "with a clan of traveling singers and dancers" (p. 6), a fate far worse than death in Afghani culture. In this fashion, Hosseini positions his readers in general and his Western readers in particular to differentiate between the young Amir and the adult Amir by providing his first-hand views and empirical observations to illuminate contemporary culture in this ancient part of the world.
The rural regions of Afghanistan are in marked contrast to the more affluent neighborhood enjoyed by…