Book Review for Kite Runner

1.         In the one of my posts, I said that I thought the book would be about remorse. Some of it turned out to be that way. However, now that I've read the entire book, I know that there's more to it than just remorse. It gives the reader feelings of hope, loyalty, redemption, and the price of making very wrong decisions. Since I already talked about why this book has remorse, I will explain why and how there is all the other feelings that I stated earlier.
         I said that there was hope in this novel. This is depicted when Amir begins his search for Hassan, then later searching for Hassan's son, Sohrab. Amir assumes that getting him out of Kabul will be easy, but then realizes little by little that he could fail his task. Even after he rescues Sohrab from Kabul, he finds Sohrab lying unconscious, and bleeding to death.

"There is no God but Allah and Muhammad his messenger. I pray. I pray that my sins have not caught up with me the way I always feared they would."(p346)

This is where Amir has a spiritual awakening and prays that if there is a God, then he will keep Sohrab alive, and in return, Amir will be Muslim and pray daily. Since Sohrab is alive, Amir keeps his promise and prays everyday, does namaz, and all the other requirements of a Muslim.
        The part where loyalty comes in is with Hassan. He was forever loyal and shared a strong bond with Amir, even when Amir watched him get raped by Assef. Hassan knew that Amir had done this, yet he still forgave him and considered them to still be great friends with the same bond. Evidence in this is written in a letter that Hassan writes to him.

"If you do, you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you."(p218)

Whether it was because Hassan was their servant or because of the friendship that he and Amir had, Hassan was always a great friend to Amir.
          Despite this loyalty however, Amir could never forgive himself for what he did. He thought of himself a sinner, and desperately wanted to be punished for the bad things that he did.

"I wished he would. I wished he would give me the punishment I craved, so maybe I'd finally sleep at night."(p92)

           Shortly after the event took place, Amir and Hassan both went to their favorite tree and stayed there a while. Amir then threw a pomegranite at Hassan, and when Amir told Hassan to punish him, Hassan only took another one and squished it against his head, and made a reply that made Amir feel even worse.

"Are you satisfied? Do you feel better?" (p 93)

         Amir was then haunted by everything he did to Hassan. He became an insomniac, and couldn't bear to even think about Hassan. He finally feels that he gets some punishment that he deserves when he crosses paths with Assef, and he gets beaten up by him. Then he ends up in the hospital.

"The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip."(p297)

         Amir soon starts to think that every bad thing that happens to him is punishment for what he did. When he thinks this, he thinks that now he has a harelip like Hassan did. He thinks that he is going to go through everything that Hassan went through, starting with the harelip. Another example of this is when Amir and Soraya try to have a baby, but they can't.

"Maybe this was my punishment, and perhaps justly so. It wasn't meant to be, Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be."(p 188)

        After the sins that Amir commited, he feels extremely guilty and fears that his sins will catch up to him and he will lose many things: He fears that he will die in Kabul and fail Hassan, he fears he will lose Sohrab, he fears that Soraya will never be happy because they can't have a baby, and he fears that he won't know what to do when Baba dies.
        All of these feelings that are presented in the book are meant to teach children to make good choices, otherwise they'll either wish almost all the time that they could take it back or they'll be distraught from remorse of something they did. This may have happened to Khaled Hosseni, as I stated in one of my posts on The Kite Runnner.

It is possible that something like this happened to Hosseni. Not all of this word for word, but maybe he did something small that he would never forgive himself for. Then he could have exaggerated greatly the amount of regret he felt and made it into a much bigger problem. Also, he may have based Amir on himself, maybe on the decisions he would have made as a kid: trying anything to please his father, being scared of bullies like Assef, and even making some decisions that may have seemed good at first, but later he realized that was the wrong choice. Then these may have affected his life. He may have even gone a long time in his life haunted by something he did, and every day wishing he could take it back.

       In the end, Amir has to make it up to Sohrab because he broke a promise to Sohrab. He then teaches Sohrab how to be a kite-runner like Hassan. Sohrab still doesn't forgive Amir for the promise that he broke, but he smiles when Amir performs tricks that his father did. It was, as Hosseni put it, the first snowflake melting. So Amir is close to making up for his sins by regaining Sohrab's trust and taking care of him. 
        To summarize it all, the purpose of this book can be viewed from many perspectives: teaching children to stick up for their friends, to teach them to have hope and faith, or even so Hosseni can feel that making the book (and trying to teach children about all the feelings that I talked about) is making up for whatever sins he did and he went through all the guilt that Amir went through.