The Kite Runner - What really difficult or complex things are happening in the text?

 The Kite Runner

What really difficult or complex things are happening in the text?

             The book The Kite Runner, can be considered a social action book because it contains social issues like bullying, peer pressure, child abuse, poverty, and many other things that someone might want to take action upon. However, the book also includes secondary issues that are deeper in the text. Sometimes the book might include some child abuse from time to time but it is actually teaching the reader to not abandon your peers for your own sake because they are your equal.   

             

              To begin, although the main character, Amir and his servant friend, Hasan don't go to school and don't participate in anything, besides kite flying, that require more than one person, they have acquaintance with peer pressure. For instance, in the beginning of the book Khaled Hosseini includes an excerpt of Amir's story that Amir reads to Hasan. After Hasan said, "That was the best story you've read me in a long time," without envy in his voice, Amir hugged him with covetous hands. Amir was envious of Hasan because of how he was able to cope with life without an actual home and not even being able to read and write (Hosseini 30). Peer pressure can be a form of social injustice, even though neither of the characters show immoral behavior. Hosseini, however, not only includes this social issue as a theme, but it is also to teach the reader to not feel any negative emotions towards his/her peers and learn to manage in life without having to put pressure on others.

             Furthermore, The Kite Runner has quite a lot of poverty and struggling when it comes to surviving in the economy. For example, Amir and his father have a servant family that is extremely poor and they live in a small hut in Amir's yard. For a long time, Baba, Amir's father, had been treating Ali and his son, Hasan very well; as though they were his brothers. However, Amir, on the other hand had been friends with Hasan but treated him like he was an actual servant. The author, Khaled Hosseini portrays the servants as one of the social injustice topics (poverty) but there is a deeper theme to this; friends should not be abandoned. In the book, the main antagonist of the story, Assef, rapes Hasan and Amir leaves him to suffer (Hosseini 75-76). Poverty can be related to many people in real life because it is a social issue that many people go through.

              Moreover, bullying appears in this book numerous times. For example, Amir and Hasan have multiple encounters with Assef and his gang. The first time they confront each other, Assef threatens to beat Amir because of how he interacts with a "Hazara," which is Hasan. Hasan, then points a lethal slingshot to Assef's left eye and threatens him back for him to go away. Hosseini includes this part of bullying to show how standing up for one another can be the solution to bullying and this is how action can be taken upon bullying in real life. The second time Assef meets Amir and Hasan is when he rapes Hasan and Amir runs away. In addition, Hosseini includes child abuse, using the notorious character, Assef. After Amir and Hasan part ways, Amir comes back to Kabul, Pakistan after a very long time. He comes back to clash with Assef a third time. This time it was to save Hasan's son Sohrab, who was raped and abused by Assef. Assef wanted to take vengeance on Hasan so badly but since Hasan died, Assef had to carry it out on Sohrab to make Hasan's blood to suffer. Again, Hosseini had a secondary message for the reader when he included this social issue; child abuse can be stopped when you stand up for the child.

              In conclusion, I've noticed that in The Kite Runner, all of the social issues that are brought up are used to carry out one specific theme; standing up for someone and not abandoning the "battlefield" can solve the problem to these issues. When kids are bullied and/or are going through peer pressure, they can solve their problems by telling someone to stand up to whoever they are facing or the victim could stand up for him or herself. The same actions can be carried out to solve child abuse and poverty in certain ways. All these issues be related to people in real life because people of various races go through them every day. Bullying and peer pressure happens every day at school, while in Africa, dozens of people suffer from poverty and children are abused by Kony. Khaled Hosseini uses these issues and plants themes deeper into the text.