Kite Runner Was So ....

Khaled Hosseini’s book “The Kite Runner” was extremely deep. Hosseini brought up many of the issues of Afghanistan back in the day as well as Afghanistan nowadays. I was impressed at how he can write a 371 book about just one subject and he limited himself to a very few people. However, I was not impresses at all with he did most of his things. I think he had many weaknesses that needed to be addressed before he was going to publish the book. However, his purpose and the way he indirectly made it clear that who his audience was really amazed me.

Hosseini talks about how the Hazara’s were discriminated against. In addition, he explains how once you do something bad, you can always go back and rejuvenate yourself. Another thing that I noticed was Hosseini indirectly talks about loyalty and how people use others just to keep them company for a while. Most of the book was written around these three topics and it fascinated me at the fact that he had so much to say about so little. One of the Pashtuns named Assef says something that I found to be very interesting:

“His blue eyes flicked to Hassan. ‘Afghanistan is the land of the Pashtuns. It always has been, always will be. We are the true Afghans, the pure Afghans, not this Flat-nose here. His people pollute our homeland, our watan. They dirty our blood.’” (Hosseini, pg. 40)

 This quote interests me because I wonder if Assef could have backed it up. Not only that, but this also contributes to the idea of the Hazara’s being discriminated against. Even in modern day Afghanistan, people look at the Hazara’s funny and they did the exact same thing back then. Assef comes from a powerful family so he can get away with doing many things. Again, the Pashtuns have a lot of power so if Assef were to punch Hassan in the face, his father could have paid the police and gotten away with it.  

This book has a lot of strong language and a brief scene with some sexual content. I would not recommend this for children under the age of 13 however; I would definitely recommend this for the people whom are looking for a dramatic and non-fiction like book. He made it clear that he was aiming at the teenager generation to let us youngsters know that we have it so good out here in America. Hosseini tries to write his book in a way where the sexual content is not said but he indirectly hints it to us by saying:

“Assef knelt behind Hassan, put his hands on Hassan’s hips and lifted his bare buttocks. He kept one hand on Hassan’s back and undid his own belt buckle with his free hand. He unzipped his jeans. Dropped his underwear. He positioned himself behind Hassan. Hassan didn’t struggle. […] I stopped watching, turned away from the alley.” (Hosseini, pgs. 75-77)

 The parts which I did not include were irrelevant to my point but what I am saying is that Hosseini decides to not say what actually goes down in that alley. He makes Amir turn away so that it would not be necessary for him to go into detail about the disgusting incident. He does not go into detail about the sexual things but what he does do is say many bad words. For instance, Amir’s dad or otherwise known as Baba says:

“Fuck the Russia.”

By saying that, he makes it clear that this book was not intended for the younger generation but for he more mature ones.

This book was fabulous but twice as weak. The weaknesses in this book are an extremely big part of the book. He fails to impress me when it comes to showing that the Hazara’s. He does a good job showing what happens to them but he does way too much and goes overboard. What is his reason for making all of the bad things happen to Hassan? It becomes repetitive at a point in the book as we here the same thing repeatedly. It gets a bit boring and he got his point about the Shi’a across in the beginning of the book. Not all of the Hazara’s have such a horrible life. Most of the Hazaras have better lives than the Pashtuns so to put them down so much is annoying.

Do we have to constantly hear about the things that go wrong? Hassan is Hazara, he is hated on, he gets raped, Amir uses him, him and his wife get kicked out of their house and killed, his son is put in an orphanage, his son Sohrab is then taken by Assef and he dances for him, and Sohrab tries committing suicide. Why does he pick on them? Then when the backstabbing and jealous Amir goes through an obstacle, everything has to get better or the world will end and Afghanistan will no longer be Afghanistan. After I finished the book, I was disgusted by the amount of repetitive content he had, and it bored me. I realized that I was reading the same thing but in different forms.

Another weakness was when Hosseini kept on putting in all of these unnecessary memories. For example, when Hassan was getting raped, Hosseini decides he wants to talk about a fatigue memory. These memories have nothing to do with what is going on at the moment and it is just a bunch of clutter.

Overall, the book was one with many difficulties and I liked it lightweight. It could have maybe changed from the typical successful conclusion but it is what it is. I thought that I would start out having to hear my countries name be thrown in the dirt but it turned out that even if it was, we came out cleaner than everyone else did because this book shows that we can admit to the wrongs of our people. We do not hide our mistakes and this book is where everything is clearly written out and proves my claim.