The Kite Runner 7

The first time Sohrab looks at Amir is when their parents are brought to the subject. Sohrab asks if Amir misses his parents and "[rests] his cheek on [Amir's] knee, looking up at [him]." Then he continues to grow closer to Amir when he "[looks] straight at [him]..." and later "he let [Amir] draw him to [his side] and rested his head on [Amir's] chest" while he sobbed." Amir says, "he was looking at me, really looking at me, for the very first time...his hand squeezed mine back." This is very important to the story because it shows how strong of a bond these two will have eventually. They have the same emotional drain because of Hassan's death and are chiseled into each other's lives by family relation. All they have now  to save that connection to each other (Hassan) is one another.

When Amir is in the hospital and decides to pray he asks a nurse "which way is west" and when the police officer points him in the right direction, he "[throws his] makeshift jai-namaz, prayer rug, on the floor and [he gets] on [his] knees, [lowers his] forehead to the ground, [his] tears soaking thought the sheet. [He] bows to the west." The reason he bows to the west is because that's, more than likely, where Mecca is  Muslims always bow facing the Black Box which is inside the Mosque in Mecca (one of the holiest places in Islam).

The sheets that Soraya picks out for Sohrab's bed foreshadows the kites at the end of the story. "The sheets showed brightly colored kites flying in indigo blue skies...Soraya pulled on my sleeve. 'Amir look!' She was pointing to the sky. A half-dozen kites were flying high, speckles of bright yellow, red, and green against the gray sky." Then when Amir runs the kite for Sohrab and says "For you, a thousand times over." He is made good again. He is pure once again and he becomes like Hassan with just those simple words. He is also like Hassan because he ran. "I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But I didn't care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lips. I ran." He if finally free!

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Hosseini uses vivid diction to describe how wrecked the memorable "Pashtunistan Square" has become.A kabob restaurant that Baba used to take Amir to when he has younger "...was still standing, but its doors were padlocked, the windows shattered, and the letters K and R missing from it's name. [He] saw a dead body near the restaurant...the clothes he'd worn on the last day of his life shredded, bloody. Hardly anyone seemed to notice him...The front steps had crumbled. Like so much else in Kabul, [Amir's] father's house was the picture of fallen splendor."

On page 164, Amir has to see one more thing and finds the old cemetery and pomagranite tree are still on the hill he and Hassan would run up. "The carving [on the tree] had dulled, almost faded altogether, but it was still there." This symbolizes Amir's chance of becoming good again. The time he has is depleting and his chances are getting slim, but it is still possible. 

When Assif comes back into the story at the ball game, he tells the crowd that "We (talibans) are here today because of the will of Allah...We (Afghans) listen to what God says and we obey because we are nothing but humble, powerless creatures before God's greatness." Hosseini describes Assif as "The tall man" whose garments sparkled in the afternoon sun. "his arms spread like those of Jesus on the cross...he was wearing dark round sunglasses like the ones John Lennon wore." The reader also finds out in the next chapter that Assif has "..a prayer rug...nailed to one of the walls." So it is probably unused. This portrayed Assif as the biggest hypocrite of the time. He said he was doing the will of God but he wasn't dying for the people on the "cross" he apparently seemed to be on; Assif was having other people, sinners, die for him. He was wearing sparkling white garments and had the suns rays displaying them clearly so he could easily be mistaken as pure and "holy" but it is obvious, by his actions, that he is the opposite. This would make Assif the Anti-Christ figure.

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 After Amir was told that him and Hassan had the same father, he didn't feel he knew who he really was. "Did Hassan know? [He] said through lips that didn't feel like [his] own...(Amir) I felt like a man who awakens in his own house and finds all the furniture rearranged, so that ever familiar nook and cranny looks foreign now. Disoriented, he has to reevaluate his surroundings, reorient himself." This created a change in the whole reason Amir had to make things right. Knowing this pushed more pressure on his guilt and "[he] had to leave as soon as possible. [He] was afraid [he'd] change [his] mind."

In chapter 19, Amir and Farid leave Wahid's house and the reader soon learns that Amir had placed a handful of cash under the bed's mattress. The first time Amir had done this was when he set up a trap for Hassan. The change is Amir's reasons behind placing money under the mattress proves he's had a change of character and he's growing and starting to be good again.

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There is repetition on page 168 emphasizing Baba's statement of Amir being his only child. We know that Hassan is also Baba's son so maybe he's finally seeing the wrong in what he did and accepting Amir more and Hassan less. Although Baba makes a point of Amir being his only child, Amir "[remembers] with Rahim Khan [was].."at his wedding. When Amir was a child Rahim Khan was more of a father than Baba so even though Amir does his best to forget the past, he still hasn't been able to yet.

After Rahim Khan calls Amir, Amir later goes for a walk in the park and notices "a pair of kites, red with long blue tails." The long blue tail relates these kites to Hassan and his blue kite, but instead these kites' main color is red like blood, foreshadowing Hassan's death.

In the "small village just outside Bamiyan" where Hassan lived Hosseini description of the land is: "sunbaked bushes, gnarled, spiny tree trunks, and dried grass like pale straw. [Amir] passes a dead donkey rotting on the side of the road...that barren land [with]...mountains like jagged teeth." However, "the people in Bamiyan...told Amir [he] would find [Hassan] easily- he lived in the only house...that had a walled garden." This shows that Hassan in life in a barren land or light in darkness like Jesus was referred to.

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Hassan proves to be a christ figure once more by being "one last sacrifice for [Amir]...He knew [he] betrayed him and yet he was rescuing [Amir] once again, maybe for the last time."

It "rained the afternoon Baba took Ali and Hassan to the bus station.." sybolizing a new beginning. Not necessarily for Hassan because i think what's done is done for him, but for Amir and Baba. They will be the only  company for eachother now and in the next chapter we descover they are making their way to America to start a new way of life, to make a new beginning because "America was different." Amir describes America as "a river, roaring along unmindful of the past. [He] could wade into this river, let [his] sins drown to the bottom...Some place with no ghosts, nomemories, and no sins." So even though Amir's past still haunted him he planned to forget his memories and move

Hassan isn't the only one taking the blame for Amir any more! Amir has become fond of a girl named Soraya and when he thinks about the gossipers staring their way as the talked he became aware that "she would bear the brunt of that poison, not [him]." The poison referring to the dirty looks.

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Amir notices two different faces that Hassan seems to have; one is the smiling face he shares everyday and the other would appear for "a fraction of a moment, long enough to leave [Amir] with an unsettling feeling that maybe [he'd] seen it some place before." Hosseini seems to be implying that Amir knows someone else with this face that Hassan seems to have a similarity to and a reasonable explanation would be that their "brotherhood" is an actual brotherhood! Hassan and Amir are related! Dang father.

I discovered by re-reading some notes that I jotted down from the first section we were assigned to that Hassan sacrificing himself for Amir and Amir sacrificing Hassan for Baba was foreshadowed on page 11! Amir is saying "Hassan and I fed from the same breast. 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." He even tells the reader "I think the foundation for what happened in the winter of 1975-and all that followed- was already laid in those first words."

On the day that Hassan was raped, Amir described the streets as "[glistening] with fresh snow and the sky was blameless blue." The snow represents Hassan's purity and innocence along with the "blameless blue" kite because Hassan always take the blame for Amir.

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The first chapter introduces Amir, his servant/friend Hassan, and their fathers who we discover later on in the reading are opposites of each other. When Amir's not in school him and Hassan cause trouble, like every boy does, and Hassan always seems to be the scapegoat. "Hassan never denied [Amir] anything..[but once] Hassan's father Ali [caught them, Hassan] never told that [it] was always [Amir's] idea." Hassan seems to sacrifice himself just to make sure Amir is happy. Could that make him a Christ figure?

Also the reader finds out that both Hassan and Amir's mother died so they fed from the same breast of a Hazarian woman and "there [is] a brotherhood between people who [feed] from the same breast, a kinship that not even time [can] break." This foreshadows the mistake that Amir made in the winter of 1975 that he has to return to Afghanistan to fix. I think this proves they will become friends once again and live happily ever after.

On page 5 in the top line of the first paragraph Hosseini uses Asyndeton while describing Baba's favorite things: "politics, business, soccer."