Literary Essay - The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

Literary Essay - The Kite Runner,

By Khaled Hosseini

           In reality, friendship is a tremendous matter. Friendship is seen everywhere in the outside world; students are friends with one another, families that walk by are started by a friendship, and more. In the book, The Kite Runner, friendship and its attributes (both good and bad) are expressed throughout almost the whole book. First of all, this book contains Amir's life divided into three sections; one in Pakistan with his servant (and best friend) Hassan, another in California with his dad, and the last back in Kabul with his wife and Hassan's son.  In the first section, Amir and Hassan are best friends and enjoy their childhood but there was an older boy named Assef who often got in their way. One of the more unfortunate characteristics of friendship comes into play in one of the encounters with Assef. Amir abandons Hassan when Assef sexually abuses him. In the second section Amir attempts to forget about the incident with Hassan and lives in America with his “baba." After saving Hassan's son, Sohrab, in a similar incident, Amir could no longer take the guilt of abandoning Hassan and adopted Sohrab with his wife, Soraya. He made a similar friendship as the one he made with Hassan, with Sohrab; he had the same admiration as he had for Hassan. Though Sohrab remained very depressed after the death of his father, Sohrab was able share love with Amir, by being friends with him as his son. Khaled Hosseini's purpose for this story is to relay the themes of friendship; innocence and admiration.
            To begin, the friendship in this book, in general, is crucial. For example, in the beginning of the book Hosseini uses, "[Ali] would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time could break. Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words. Mine was Baba. His was Amir. My name (34-37)." This example shows the importance of bonds between two or more people. Later in the book it is revealed that Hassan and Amir both came from the same father, which brings their bond even closer, even after Hassan dies. Another example of friendship was when Hassan stands up for Amir with his slingshot when Assef threatens to beat them up (41-43). Although Hassan stands up Amir, Amir does not stand up for Hassan when he was being raped by Assef. However, Amir does note that Hassan resembles the look of the "lamb." This leads to one of friendship’s properties; innocence.

            Furthermore, innocence plays a huge part in this story. Soon after Hassan gets raped, Amir takes out his guiltiness on Hassan himself by smashing pomegranates on him (92, 93). Hassan is completely innocent for getting raped by Assef and then getting abandoned by Amir. Moreover, innocence is brought up again and again with rape; for example, after Hassan gets raped, Amir and his father sneak past the border of Pakistan to get to Freemont, California. On the truck ride past the border, Baba stops the rape of an innocent woman (121-124). This pattern continues when Amir rescues Sohrab from being raped by Assef (281-292). Afterwards, when Amir adopts Sohrab, Sohrab could not help but feel extremely depressed; he lost almost all of his loved ones lived with people he did not even know. If anyone were to be in his shoes they would feel the same so Sohrab was innocent for feeling like that.

            Lastly, admiration is also a characteristic of friendship that occurs several times in the book. For example, when Amir read his story to Hassan when they were kids, Hassan envied Amir's ability to read and write, even though he barely showed it. In the book Hassan says, "Mashallah," which means "in Allah's will" or "bravo"(52-57). This would be used when someone does something unique or something that was never done, so Hassan clearly admired Amir's abilities. In the second section, however, the admiration is completely different from the admiration in the previous section. Mid-way into the book, Amir and his father were in Kabul and they ran into Baba's old friends. General Taheri and his family. Amir admired the General's daughter, Soraya and her beauty; "[Soraya], a slim hipped beauty with velvety coal black hair, an open thermos... (140-141)." In addition to this there are series of people admiring one another continuing in the book that Hosseini included. He most likely included this aspect of friendship because he wanted to show how friendship gradually changes over time and relationships start to divide.

          In conclusion, Hosseini's main goals were for the readers to learn the roles friendship, innocence, and admiration play. These are not only essential in the book but also essential in real life. Admiration leads to friendship and can also display innocence in some ways. Khaled Hosseini implies many other themes in The Kite Runner, such as, betrayal, gender, racism, etc. which the reader can always relate to in reality, but friendship was the lesson that stood out the most as the one that Hosseini wanted to teach.
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