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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.