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The Kite Runner

Elements of the Story
Protagonist – Amir
The reader is not introduced to Amir until page 12 of the
novel.
This is his story that details his childhood in Afghanistan, the
terrible betrayal, and eventually his return of his homeland
to atone for the mistake of his youth.
Antagonists –
On the surface Assef seems to be the primary antagonist.
He is a bigoted childhood acquaintance who is extremely
violent and sadistic. Later he is a member of the Taliban.

Elements of Khaled Hosseini‘s Writing Style
Hosseini uses accurate historical events, dates,
and political figures.
p. 5 ―. . .[a photo of] My grandfather and King Nadar Shah taken in
1931 two years before the king‘s assassination . . .‖
p. 9 ― . . . Ali and Hassan‘s characteristic Hazara Mongoloid
features . . . Mongul descendants and that they looked a little
like Chinese people.‖
p. 9 ―. . . The Pashtuns had persecuted and oppressed the Hazaras
. . . the Hazaras had tried to rise against the Pashtuns in the
nineteenth century, but the Pashtuns had ‗queled them with
unspeakable violence.‘‖

Hosseini includes Afghan words in his writing (he has these
printed in italics) and then he immediately provides the English
translation.
p. 9 “Some had taken to calling him Babalu, or Boogeyman.‖
p. 13 ―. . . Baba‘s famous nickname, Toophan agha, or ‗Mr.
Hurricane.‘‖
p. 15 ―‘I think I have saratan,‘ I said. Cancer.‖

You will notice as you read this novel that Hosseini also makes
extensive use of foreshadowing.
p. 25 ―Rahim Khan had been wrong about the mean streak
thing.‖ (Amir does turn out to be mean spirited.)
p. 37 ―Because suddenly Afghanistan changed forever.‖
(This appears at the end of Chapter 4.)
p. 41 ―Years later, I learned an English word for the creature
that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent
does not exist: ‗sociopath.‘‖
p. 288 ―I popped another one [a grape] in, unaware that it would
be the last bit of solid food I would eat for a long time.‖

Also notice as you are reading that Hosseini makes extensive use of
figurative writing devices such as similes, metaphors, alliterations,
personifications, allusions.
At the end of the novel we will also identify several symbols.
Can you identify the following devices
p. 9 ―‘Hey, Babalu, who did you eat today‘ they barked to a
chorus of laughter.‖
p. 13 ―My father was a force of nature . . .‖
p. 18 ―‘But Mullah Fatiullah Khan seems nice,‘ I managed between
bursts of tittering.
‗So did Genghis Khan,‘ Baba said.‖

p. 28 ―Baba burst out in gales of his deep-throated laughter—a
sound not unlike a truck engine revving up . . .‖
p. 32 ―Words were secret doorways and I held all the keys.‖
p. 34 ―Air grew heavy, damp, almost solid. I was breathing
bricks.‖
p. 45 ―. . . How can you talk with him, play with him, let him touch
you‖ he said, his voice dripping with disgust.
p. 55 ―The chase got pretty fierce; hordes of kite runners
swarmed the streets, shoved past each other like those
people from Spain I‘d read about once, the ones who run
with the bulls.‖

p. 67 ―They [the kites] fell from the sky like shooting stars with
brilliant rippling tails, showering the neighborhoods below
with prizes for the kite runners.‖
p. 132 ―Baba loved the idea of America. It was living in America
that gave him an ulcer.‖
p. 144 ―The neighborhood‘s heads turned, the afternoon the bus
sputtered up the street and farted its way across out the
lot.‖
p. 183 ―Through the open door, I could see lines of cars pulling
in, sunlight winking in their windshields.‖

p. 256 ―He pointed to the crumbled, charred remains of the tiny
village.‖
p. 279 ―Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot
had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we
were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.‖

Another stylistic element that Khaled Hosseini uses is parallelism.
Note some examples:
p. 91 ―An hour later, I couldn‘t sleep. I kept tossing and turning
as my relatives grunted, sighed, and snored.‖
p. 103 ―For now, the lot was bare, save for dirt, stones and weeds.‖
p. 130 ―After everything he‘d [Baba] built, planned, fought for,
fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his
life: one disappointing son and two suitcases.‖
p. 194 ―The idea of fatherhood unleashed a swirl of emotions in
me. I found it frightening, invigorating, daunting, and
exhilarating.‖

Can you indicate the parallelism in these quotations
p. 198 ―Soraya had hers, the general had his, and I had
this: that perhaps someone, somewhere,
had decided to deny me fatherhood
for the things I had done. Maybe this
was my punishment, perhaps
justly.‖
p. 255 ―Baba had gotten himself shot by a singing, stoned Roussi
officer—Baba made me so mad that night, so scared, and,
ultimately, so proud.‖

Finally, you will notice as you read that Khaled Hosseini frequently
incorporates sentence fragments at the end of an idea, primarily as
an added thought.
p. 54 ―If I changed my mind and asked for a bigger and fancier
kite, Baba would buy it for me—but then he‘d buy it for
Hassan too. Sometimes I wished he wouldn‘t do that.
Wished he‘d let me be the favorite.‖
p. 131 ―But before any of us could say or do anything, Kamal‘s
father shoved the barrel in his mouth. I‘ll never forget the
echo of that blast. Or the flash of light and the spray of
blood.‖
p. 141 ―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.‖

What some reviews have said about The Kite Runner
―. . . tragic, filled with despair, and very sad; at other
times, it is uplifting and hopeful …‖
―. .. exploring the culture of a previously obscure
nation (Afghanistan) . . .‖
― . . . I was completely riveted, horrified and moved so much
I had to put it down and sob at least twice.‖