Kite Runner Review

I'm sorry I'm getting this in so late, there was a lot going on yesterday and I ended up passing out at eight forty... Also? It was absolutely freezing outside last night.

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The Kite Runner is a blistering emotional roller coaster. Throughout most of the book, the main character, Amir, feels intense guilt because of something he couldn’t have ever done anything about anyways- stop the rape of his best friend, Hassan.

He’s guilty from the very start, in that first moment that he decides to do nothing; although that makes it sound like he could have done something.

“I stopped watching, turned away from the alley. Something warm was running down my wrist. I blinked, saw I was still biting down on my fist, hard enough to draw blood from the knuckles.” (77)

Here he’s feeling guilt and horror, to the point where he doesn’t even feel pain when he injures himself. He wishes he could do something, but he understands that he’s one twelve-year-old boy against three fifteen-year-olds, and he doesn’t want the same fate for himself.

“In the end, I ran. I ran because I was a coward. [...] I was afraid of getting hurt.” (77)

Running is, truly, the only option he had. He could have stepped into the alley, and then he’d have been raped as well and possibly killed. He could have screamed for help, or maybe gone and gotten Baba, but then others would know of his weakness, his cowardice, and he would have had even more guilt and shame to deal with.

Amir deals with his guilt by finding a way to get Hassan, the center of those terrible feelings, out of his life. He plants money and a new watch under Hassan’s bed, trying to make it seem like he is a lowly thief. He is shocked, though, when Hassan admits to stealing them.

“I flinched, like I’d been slapped. My heart sank and I almost blurted out the truth.” (Page 105)

Amir had not been expecting that answer. In fact, he’d probably wanted Hassan to deny stealing the items, to shake his head in confusion and swear on his life that he didn’t know what Baba was talking about, what items, he’s never stolen anything. Perhaps Amir wanted this to happen so that Baba would ask why his son would do such a thing and Amir could have told him, could have started sobbing, and then it wouldn’t have been on his chest anymore.

However, Hassan leaving doesn’t fix anything like Amir hoped it would. His life gets better when they move to America and begin living a happier life, but when Baba mentions Hassan one day after Amir has graduated high school at age twenty. Amir’s reaction is one of pure, raw emotion.

“A pair of steel hands closed around my windpipe at the sound of Hassan’s name. I rolled down the window. Waited for the steel hands to loosen their grip.” (Page 134)

By this time the guilt has worsened. He lives with the ghost of his past constantly lingering on his consciousness, and when Baba actually says something about it, it’s like ripping open an old wound and watching the blood ooze out again without knowing anything about how the human body works. It always hurts worse the second time, because you remember it hurting before but your memory has faded slightly and you keep telling yourself, “It was never this bad!”

Finally, one day after he’s married and Baba has died, he goes to Afghaniistan to visit his older friend, Rahim Khan. It’s at this time that he finds out Hassan was his brother, Hassan had a son named Sohrab, and that Hassan is now, sadly, dead. Rahim tell him, “There is

a way to be good again.” At first Amir is only thinking about the redemption, the atonement.

“A way to end the cycle. With a little boy. An orphan. Hassan’s son. Somewhere in Kabul.” (Page 227)

He’s torn between yes and no. On one hand he can save two lives- Sohrab’s from the orphanage and his own from his guilt. On the other hand he’d have to be close to a boy who looks almost exactly like Hassan and he’d have to go to his old home of Kabul. But then, as time begins to pass slowly on his search for the boy, he begins to feel more than just a need for
‘forgiveness’.

“I realized something: I would not leave Afghanistan without finding Sohrab.” (Page 255)

It’s a simple but desperate need to find his nephew and take him to America, away from the horrible life that he might have had. Amir feels that if he couldn’t save Hassan, he could at least save his son.

Once he finds the boy, a sort of bond starts, almost as though Amir was his father and not his uncle. He officially decides he will take Sohrab to America, and even calls his wife to get her input. However, we discover that Sohrab would have to go to an orphanage beforehand, before any adoption occurred. Hearing this, Sohrab tries to commit suicide. We find out how deep Amir’s feelings are.

“I pushed the door open. Stepped into the bathroom. Suddenly I was on my knees, screaming. Screaming through my clenched teeth. Screaming until I thought my throat would rip and my chest explode. Later, they said I was still screaming when the ambulance arrived.” (Page 343)

Thank goodness Sohrab lives. Amir does take him to California, where he and hid wife manage to adopt the child. Sohrab is silent, though, and never smiles. He continues to be silent for a long time, until one day when Amir takes him kite fighting. Sohrab smiles, and Amir completely melts.

“‘For you, a thousand times over,’ I heard myself say. [...] Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird’s flight. But I’ll take it. With open arms. [...] I ran.”

Amir runs Sohrab’s kite, and it’s as though the world is as it should have been the entire time. Sohrab finally begins to open up again, and for once a tragic story ends happily, something that tends to be rare these days.

A love of music

I love music. As I've said on Facebook, I'd rather go completely numb for the rest of my life than go without music. I love to sing, especially when I'm in a place where I can sing loudly- it's easier to hit the higher notes then, and my voice is stronger. I have an old guitar that needs to be restrung and tuned, and I've always dreamed that the guitar would someday rest in my lap, the strap loose over my shoulder, the neck in my left hand, my right hand strumming out something sad and bittersweet and thick as honey. I imagine that I could turn my poetry into lyrics and I could mingle voice with guitar and create a one person band. 


But what I'm best at, what I can do that can make crowds silent, is play the piano.


I don't remember it, but my parents are always talking about how, when I was just barely starting to walk and  talk, I crawled up onto my grandmother's piano bench and started tinkering out some simple, messy notes that went nowhere and did nothing. I do remember, though, very clearly, the day I was sitting in my living room, in front of my own piano, and my mom asked if I wanted to take lessons. I was quick to say yes- I was seven and a half, and I already knew that I loved making melodies on any piano I was near. 


The first woman we went to doubted my talent because of my youth. She turned me around and closed my eyes and touched a key and said, "Which one was it?" And then I would face the piano, reach across it's smooth, ivory teeth, and I would press down on that note. And I knew which one it was because I'd played the note before and I remembered the sound it made. She was shocked by how easily music came to my ears, and immediately jumped into a high level training book. My parents whisked me away from this madwoman who asked too much of me.


My first real teacher was a strict German woman named Anita. She taught me scales and finger placement, and began teaching me how to read the notes on the page as though they were words, sentences, paragraphs, each musical piece it's own mystical story. I developed a close bond with her, as well as the grand pianos at the store she was at. But before long we were moving to a new town, a tiny city called Alameda. My second teacher's name was Cynthia. 


Cynthia... was good for me and bad for me. Through the five years I learned under her, I went to the Piano Guild Auditions four times. The Piano Guild was a national competition that occurred every year, and each time I went I succeeded in winning pins and medals. I had a way of filling my music with emotions, something some others were incapable of.


But one thing Cynthia failed to teach me was how to read the music. The year I'd spent with Anita and the progress I made went down the toilet- suddenly my eyes were always focused on my fingers, and I was struggling with the black dots and smudges on my music sheets. Because of this, piano became a burden for me. I was no longer interested in the instrument I had once loved dearly. I was bored, and longed to quit taking lessons.


And then, one day, I had an excuse. I was going to high school, a special high school that would require my constant attention. I wouldn't have time for piano, I said, so the only option was to stop taking lessons.


After that, the ancient piano that had been a part of my life since the day I was born began to collect dust. I was finally free from those thirty minutes a day in which I would play the same songs over and over again and try in vain to play the notes in front of me. I was relieved, and every time I glanced at it my eyes would mock the wood that shut off it's yellowing keys from the sunlight. 


However, my fingers were itching. Always fidgeting, tapping out some beat or rhythm that I didn't know. For a while I thought that I was destined to play the drums- I could keep time with anything. But even when my hands were drumming percussion, there was something missing. A strange emptiness that confused the hell out of me. Why? Why was I always being haunted by these lingering beats and melodies?


It was today that it finally clicked. I was sick from drinking coffee with an empty stomach, and in an exhausted haze I stumbled up to the piano and lifted the lid, staring down at the black and pale yellow. Before long I was  mumbling to myself, squinting at the black and white blobs on old, wrinkled paper. I wracked my brain, pulling out old, children's books and trying to remember where my fingers went and that thing Anita told me...


Great Big Dogs Fight Animals. Morbid, yes, but it forced me to remember which note each line stood for. Suddenly the confusing mass began to form into something possibly readable, dusty memories floating to the surface. I opened up my green book, my heaven, flipping to The Swan.


My mother sighed as I pressed down on the pedal and the music flowed from my fingers, clumsily at first with stops as I desperately tried to remember what came next. But I had it. There it was, that song that was angry and sad and peaceful and joyous, all at the same time, relief rushing through me like a gust of wind. My back automatically straightened, my wrists lifted, my fingers remembering to keep your fingernails off the keys, but don't flatten the joints. 


It was magic and harmony and fantasy and reality and everything was falling into place. I'd found my love again, in this old, out-of-tune piano, sending waves of precious music throughout the space around me. I'd rediscovered an instinctual and profound love of music.

Third Kite Runner Post

I wasn't in class today for any discussions, which means that this post isn't going to be about anything like that. Thank goodness!
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The last section of the book is, in my opinion, the most filled with raw, visible emotion. In the other parts of the story the emotions are all in the background, hiding in the depths of the many words and sentences, creating a sort of ominous depression to mask the finer points of shame and guilt. In this section of The Kite Runner, our mentally badgered protagonist, Amir, finds a way to atone for his sins- saving his nephew.

At first he's unwilling- he's frightened of seeing this boy who looks so much like Hassan, his half-brother that he saw get raped. He knows that as soon as he sees Sohrab, Hassan's son, all of his past emotions will flood back and make his life hell again. Just as well, he doesn't want to see Kabul, his home, and how much it has degraded since his departure long ago. Eventually he makes up his mind, however, and begins the long trek to find the boy.

Around this point in the book we find out that Sohrab has been sexually abused by the same man who raped Hassan- Assef. Once Amir takes Sohrab away from Assef's clutches, he begins to try to find a way to get his nephew out of Kabul and into America, where he can adopt him... however, at one point, he makes the mistake of telling Sohrab that he may have to stay in an orphanage for a little while before.

Sohrab tries to commit suicide, and every tiny emotion from the story that had been building up suddenly releases itself onto the pages. It tells about how Amir is screaming and screaming and doesn't stop even when the ambulance comes.

The orphanage never happens. Amir takes Sohrab back to America with him and he adopts him and makes him his own child. Sohrab doesn't smile for a while, until the very end when Amir takes him kite fighting and runs the kite for him when they win. It's a happy ending, which is rare for the kind of tragic book that Kite Runner is.

Chains of Steel

Why do you do the things that you do?
Make me feel these emotions
To appease your inner turmoil?
I'd thought I'd been rid of that hell
Putting chains of steel around my heart and hiding the key
Isolating myself from the cold world that boils me so.
When I came to this sanctuary, this haven
I tore away the chains and let my wings spread
Basking in the wind and smiles.
But before I knew it that sunshine was gone
Leaving storms and tears to greet me
My fresh wings drenched and useless.
I lock up my heart again now
In a small cardboard box labeled 'fragile'
And I shove it away in my attic
In a place too difficult to find
And hope your words and actions don't shatter it anymore.
I embrace these chains of steel
Welcoming back an old and familiar friend
Who once fed me with pity and loneliness
And loathing of myself and the world.

And again I plead

I'd thought that by the time we had gotten this far in the book my peers would have a better grip on Amir's emotional standpoint and the psychological processes of those that are close to him. But my classmates are still calling him selfish, still saying he deserves any bad things in life. They say that because he didn't do anything to save Hassan, karma has made it so that he can't have a son. They don't know how wrong they are. I've already explained why he didn't do anything (here). And if karma did, for some reason, take place in his life, all of the guilt would have already paid his price.

They say he's selfish because he didn't want to go and get Sohrab until after he knew the boy was his nephew. They say he's just as bad as before. I say there's evidence against that. From looking at the picture he knows that Sohrab looks just like Hassan- by being near the boy, he'd be reliving his guilt day in and day out. Also, he doesn't want to go to Kabul because he's heard that it's changed- a lot. He doesn't want to go back to the place he grew up and see it in ruins. It was once his beautiful home- going back would mean he would be forced to experience just how much it's degraded.

They also inquire about Baba. "Why didn't he accept the medication?" they ask. "Did he want to die?" No, of course not! If he hadn't had his history, and if he hadn't been so stubborn, he would have accepted the meds. But Baba is Baba, and there's no changing him! Taking the medication would have been like taking the food stamps- it would have seriously damaged his pride. It would have made him appear weak. Baba is not the kind of man who would allow himself to feel the shame and insecurity of being weak.

Basically... I'm disappointed still. I'm still trying to show people the emotional, human side of things... But... I don't know if my last blog post wasn't read or what. :/

Ohh, religion, how it is a mistake to debate about thee...

So, some stuff about religion started popping up. I posted a questioning comment on one of Kasia's posts, and I... think it's turned into a debate? Here's the first 'response' comment she made:

susan, what you don't understand about religion is that everyone has a choice. God gave us the gift of choice, which is why He does not reveal Himself. We have the CHOICE to be good people or not, so yes, we have the choice to rape, torture, murder, etc. We have the choice to feed the starving children in Africa, so why aren't you staring a fundraiser to buy food for them? We even have the choice to refuse His love eternally, which is what hell is- eternal separation from God.

Hmm... Just a couple things. If a person has a choice on whether or not they can rape and torture and murder, why doesn't the victim have a choice? My question isn't why God let these people do these things, it's why He let the victims go through something like that. If they live through it, they're going to carry that weight with them throughout the rest of their life (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome). It just doesn't seem right to me. And then... why aren't I making a fundraiser? Well, I suppose I could, but school is taking up a lot of my time right now and I don't have the money to just... donate. I mean, I could start a fundraiser when I'm older, but until then what are the starving children going to do? Are they going to just not die in the meantime? And why do people go to hell because they no longer love God? Sounds like parental issues to me...

Here's the second 'response' comment (heheh, I like that... response comments):

Those starving children do not die needlessly, God loves each and everyone of them. He will punish those rapists and murderers, but if they feel guilty at the moment of their death, then they have the chance to be forgiven. This does not mean that they will be let "off the hook"- we all still have to purify ourselves in purgatory, but they will go to heaven in the end.

If my dad starved me but said "You'll be OK because I love you" I'd run away from home. Just saying. Anyways, the whole system seems terrible to me. We're talking about a man who has the power to create an entire planet in seven days (including every single living thing on it). If he can create an entire world, why can't he get rid of rapists and murderers before they make more victims? And, personally, I find it kind of wrong that these people are still able to go to heaven because they felt bad right before they died. "Ohh... I'm about to die... What did I do with my life? I killed babies. Ohh, maybe I shouldn't have done that... Wait, I get to go to heaven now? GREAT!!!"

I'm not saying there isn't a God. I'm not saying there isn't a hell. I just don't believe in either one of them.

And I thought you were mean!

I've been getting really angry really quickly lately. Or I start crying. One of the two. I mean, someone could lightly and jokingly poke my shoulder and I, like, attack them. I don't know why I'm getting so emotional recently, especially since I'm usually very hyper (I'm an energy vampire, which means that when I'm around a lot of people I kind of take their energy from them? I dunno how. Osmosis maybe?). I have a 'reputation' for being hyper and silly and constantly happy, but it's like all I want to do is scream and beat the sh*t out of someone. Or some people.

I don't know if I'm looking for reasons to be angry or if a part of me just kind of snapped from the past fourteen years of being secretly annoyed. A lot of people are really annoying to me- most of them are people my age. I've always gotten along better with adults. I grew up with adults. My sister moved out for the first time when I was, uh, seven or eight. She moved in with her boyfriend/fiance who later became her husband (they're a cute couple). I'm ok with little kids (they're cute, too) but preteens and teenagers (and some ignorant old people) piss me off. A lot.

I don't want to be angry at people all the time. I'm usually able to keep stuff bottled up and put on a happy face (I learned that skill from my mom), but my acteeng skeellz are wearing thin.

Sumbudeh halp meh. D:

Voting? Hell nah

Found a quote from on of Elizabeth's blog posts...

Even though I'm not 18 yet, I think I would still be able to make an informed vote for Governor.

No, definitely not. As teenagers, we're still too young to make huge decisions like that. We're constantly being influenced by our parents and family, something we won't grow out of until we're older and moved out. Until then, we shouldn't be allowed to vote. If all the millions of teenagers in America started voting, we have no idea what kind chass and havoc might come from our immaturity (and yes, no matter what you might say, we are all immature.)


However, I do agree that we have a right to get our opinion out there. We should be allowed to write essays or comments or something and get them out to all the grown-ups so that they can listen to what we have to say- and who knows. Maybe we can change their minds. Instead of voting and permanently putting our opinion into (possibly) the wrong thing, we should write speeches, have debates, post stuff online, hold rallies in front of city halls, and just generally make sure than the adult population understands that we, their youngest, know what we want to happen. This is where microphones, podiums, and big cardboard signs come into play.


I mean, I wouldn't even want myself to vote. I'm still going through the changes of being a teenager- crazy hormones, crazy thoughts, crazy personality. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. The craziness that is currently my life would only seep into whatever choice I make with voting, and I don't want that to happen.


So no, I don't think teens should vote.

608 Words of Disappointment

I hate how people can read something so emotional and dissect it like a frog. In The Kite Runner, Hassan is raped by an asshole older boy named Assef- he is also held down by Assef’s two friends, Wali and Kamal. Most of my classmates discussed the intellectual side of the rape- why didn’t Hassan struggle? Why didn’t Amir do anything to help him? I’m here to discuss the emotional side. I guess you could say... the human side.

Let’s start with Hassan. This poor boy is twelve and, as I already said, he’s being held down by two older, stronger, more powerful boys. He’s scared, he’s shocked, he’s confused, he’s sad, and most of all? He’s humiliated. He’s  dropped lower than being just a Hazara. He’s being used like a woman, a woman Hazara. He’s being shamed by another boy, even though that boy is older and more of a sociopath. Not only that, he’s been taught, raised, to do what he’s told and not put up a fight. Sure, he pulls out his slingshot at one point, but that’s like his special weapon- take away his weapon and he’s got nothing left to defend himself. Besides... his friend was standing right there. He expected his friend, his master, to at least try to save him. Right?

And now we move to Amir. Amir, watching the rape take place. “Why did he just stand there and let it happen? Doesn’t he care?”

I blinked, saw I was still biting down on my fist, hard enough to draw blood from the knuckles. I realized something else. I was weeping. (Page 77)

Oh, no, of course he doesn’t care. No one who cares would inflict pain unto themselves from watching their loved ones be harmed. Oh no, of course not. “But then why didn’t he do anything?” Just like Hassan, he was scared. He was twelve. When I was twelve, I was just leaving sixth grade. I was short, weak, and still as green as a leaf. I was inexperienced. I was scared of the world, even in our protected society. The same goes for so many other twelve-year-olds out there. Amir was terrified- if he’d done anything like throwing a rock or shouting at them, they would have either beat the shit snot out of him or raped him too. And if he’d run and gotten help, his father only would have looked down on him more- for not being strong or brave enough to defeat Hassan’s rapist. It would have been... shameful.

So, I guess what I’m saying is... don’t look at these horrific things under the magnifying glass of a scientist. Think about it in a deeper kind of way. What would you do if you saw your friend being raped? And don’t say, “Oh, I’d beat that guy!” or “I’d get my daddy and he would kill him!” When you see that kind of thing, when you are standing there witnessing this tragic surprise, you are in complete shock. Your body freezes, you tense up, you can’t breathe. Your heart stops for a second and then it races, it becomes to only thing running away from the scene in front of you. You wouldn’t be able to do anything. You probably wouldn’t even be able to scream.

This is why I got so upset in class earlier. People aren’t paying attention to the human element to the picture, they aren’t paying attention to the emotions behind the characters actions. It was especially disturbing to see smiles and laughter on the faces of the people discussing the topic. Please don’t joke about rape. It’s not funny.