The Kite Runner: Week 7, Post B

I have just finished the book. I can't even count the number of times I shed a few tears because of what was happening in the story. It was so touching and I couldn't believe how much I liked this book. It is not the kind of book that I usually pick up to read and get really into. I surprised myself and just simply ADORED it. 

There are a couple things I liked about it. First, I loved how the book came full-circle and ended with Amir adopting Sohrab, Hassan's son. It also came full-circle by ending with Amir running a kite for Sohrab. To me, it felt like Amir trying to redeem himself for Hassan who he believes is still there, maybe as a spirit, watching over him. One other thing I liked about the last half of the book is that the main character, Amir, made many mistakes and he was definitely not perfect. He was always promising things to Sohrab and he would usually come through on them. Except for the one promise that really mattered the most to Sohrab. Amir promised to Sohrab that he would never have to go back to an orphanage. And, still, the lawyer Amir talks to says that it would be best for Sohrab to go back to one for the time being while they figure out immigration policy things. It was the only promise that really mattered to Sohrab and Amir went back on his word and told him that he had to return to an orphanage. This is earlier in the same night in which Sohrab cuts himself and almost dies of suicide. Then, even though Amir saves his life, Sohrab never utters another word and never even cracks a smile in the rest of the book. Amir feels that this is all his fault, but he doesn't stop trying to please Sohrab. Like the last scene of the book, with the kite fight, Amir finally makes Sohrab smile a little for a short moment or two. It's what I like about Amir. He isn't perfect, and he definitely knows it. But, he never gives up at trying to be the best person he can be. I think this is true of all of us. We all like to think that we're perfect and so we try our best to put on a good show, but inside, we all know that being perfect is impossible and so I think we idolize people who we think are perfect. This is why we keep secrets. Most of everyone's deepest secrets are of things that make us seem less than ideal people, which is why we keep them to ourselves. However, I think if more people became more comfortable with everyone's and everything's imperfections, we'd be in a better society. I could go on forever about things The Kite Runner made me reflect on. They are countless, so I'll stop now. I just want everyone in the world to read this book and maybe bring back the same things that I did. I think things would change. Thank you, Khaled Hosseini. This was a truly beautiful book.

The Kite Runner: Week 7, Post A

VOCAB:1. plume (210):  a visible puff of smoke 

2. epiphany (247): a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple or commonplace experience. (i love this word and especially this definition too! :D )

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: 1. "with a scream trapped in my throat" (210). This is a personification, because a scream, an object, cannot be trapped, just as a person can. It is giving human-like characteristics to a non-human object. 

2. "Rrrriiiip" (242). This is an onomatopoeia, because it isn't a real word. It's a noise being made into a word that sounds like the sound it would have made in the story.

3. "He said it fondly, like a man telling of a great party he'd attended" (243). This is a simile because it uses the word "like" to describe something and compare two objects.

QUOTE: "His name rose from the deep and I didn't want to say it, as if uttering it might conjure him. But he was already here, sitting less than ten feet from me, after all these years. His name escaped my lips: 'Assef' (246). This quote is very significant, because it shows how Amir felt when he saw the boy he knew in his childhood. He was the boy who raped Hassan and Amir did nothing about it. Now, Amir had to ask Assef to give Hassan's son Sohrab back to Amir so that he could give him a good home with a nice couple. From this moment, the reader can tell that this is going to become a very interesting ending to the book. It is going to be so incredibly suspenseful.

THEME: The theme of this section is that you have to never lose your dreams, and never give up because if you do give up, you never know when things will turn around.

The Kite Runner: Week 6, Post B

!!!!! WARNING: THIS POST WILL SPOIL THE BOOK FOR ANYONE WHO READS IT. *BIG  HUGE SPOILER WARNING* !!!!!

For this week's Post B, I just want to reflect on what I just read. The section was full of significant events and there is a lot to think and talk about. 

When I finished the last page of this section, I just started to cry. I couldn't help but do anything but that. I felt terrible for Amir and all he went through in this section of the book. 

First of all, there's Baba getting sick and Amir having to help him and support him when he was turning so incredibly frail. Because Baba was so strong, confident, and robust in his life as a younger man, no one ever saw his illness and being so sick coming. Amir doesn't know what to do once Baba gets really sick. Baba had always been his strongman when Amir really needed it. Now that Baba was weaker and less confident, Amir doesn't know what to do. He can hardly recognize his father. 

 

Second, there was actually a really happy and good thing that happened in this section. Amir finally talks to his father about wanting to marry Soraya. Baba goes to the General's house and asks if he will allow his daughter to marry Amir, Baba's son. This is how engagements happen in Afghan custom. Then, Baba tells Amir that the General has indeed allowed Soraya and Amir to get engaged. They have a huge party, and Amir and Baba meet all of Soraya's family and they get to know them better and everyone becomes very happy about the engagement. They get married and they become a perfectly married couple, wonderfully happy with each other. Soraya helps take care of Baba with Amir, and he continues just about the same as he was when he got sick.

 

Third, there is something heart-wrenchingly sad that happens once Amir and Soraya get married. They try to have a child for about a year. They go to see a doctor about it and he calls it "unexplainable infertility". This devastates Amir and Soraya because they really wanted to have children, and adoption is just not an option in the Afghan state-of-mind. 

 

Fourth, Rahim Kahn calls Amir all the way from Afghanistan and tells him that he is getting sick. Rahim is the man that was best friends with Baba when Amir was a young boy still living in Afghanistan. He almost preferred Rahim Kahn to Baba, because Rahim supported Amir in everything he did and he had encouraged Amir's writing ever since he gave him the leather-bound notebook to write all his stories in. He was Amir's second father, and when he finds out that Rahim is getting old and becoming very sick, Amir is torn apart. Amir goes to visit him in Afghanistan.

 

Fifth, when Amir gets to his homeland, Rahim begins to tell him what happened to Hassan ever since Amir and Baba fled their beloved country. Hassan had found a small home, a wife, and he'd had a son. But, then, things suddenly turned worse when he moved into Baba's house to live with Rahim Kahn. The Hazaras, Hassan's people, are getting killed everywhere, and for no reasons at all. Soon, they find Hassan and his wife. He is tortured in the street, and then shot in the head. Same with his wife. 

When Amir hears all that has happened to Hassan, he feels terrible. He starts to cry, he cannot believe what he's hearing, and he wishes that he could do something about it. He has just lost the closest person he ever had to a brother. I think most of what Amir feels is guilt from not protecting Hassan in the alley that afternoon. He probably believes that this is the reason Hassan stopped talking to him. And, I think it is. If I were in Hassan's shoes, I'm almost sure that I would treat Amir the very same way. Hassan was nothing but loyal, loving, trustworthy, and kind to Amir. Pretty much the only thing Amir was to Hassan was betraying, cruel, and just plain bullying most of the time. I do not blame Hassan at all for how he treated Amir. I think Amir deserved it. But, after a while, Hassan or Amir should have done more to find the other, because they still loved each other very much. I think they should have found each other and forgiven each other for what both of them did to the other.

 

Now can you see how the only thing I could do in response to this section was cry? I think all of it was heart-wrenching. I still adore this book, however. It is amazing to me. I am still only a little more than halfway done with it! I have a long ways to go yet. 

The Kite Runner: Week 6, Post A

VOCAB: 1. bouffant (146): puffed-out, full

2. mosque (151): a muslim temple or place of public worship

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: 1. "his internal smile, as wide as the skies of Kabul" (151). This is a simile because it uses the word "as" to compare two objects and describe one of them.

2."sweet as sugar" (185). This is a simile because it uses the word "as" to compare two objects.

3. "illiterate like he had" (186). This is also a simile, but it uses the word "like" to compare two objects.

QUOTE: "If you do, you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you" (191). This quote is very significant because it's in the letter from Hassan, and it shows that Hassan still loves Amir as a brother and still wants to talk to him and spend time with him again. Amir may have left his life in Afghanistan behind, but Hassan never forgot how much he loved Amir and how wonderful a relationship they once had.

THEME: The theme of this section of The Kite Runner is that you have to forgive others for things they do, but most of all, you have to forgive yourself as well.

The Kite Runner: Week 5, Post B

Dear Amir, 

I am, surprisingly, still astonished at your life and all that you've gone through. In the last section I read, you had to travel to America to get out of Pakistan. From what you wrote, it seems like a very traumatic experience for you and I can't believe how you could have gotten through it. I know that I would never be able to do it. You were always talking about the smells, the sleep deprivation, the other people, and just everything that was terrible on the way to Peshawar. I am almost sure that I'd have given up and either killed myself or just gotten out and left with Baba. I give you extreme props for staying with it because you knew that you'd maybe have a better future in America than you would in the changing Pakistan. You knew how disappointed Baba would be in you if you couldn't make it all the way. In a way, I think that's how you kept it up. How you persisted in traveling was because Baba was being just as brave and he was your stronghold in that hard time. I'm also glad that when you finally got there, things started looking up, and you got into "junior college" and you graduated, and you'll soon be going to real college in the fall. Baba actually told you that he was very proud of you, that you got to do the things that he never did in his life. I am excited to see what happens with Sonraya, the beautiful girl that you met at the market. I can't wait to finish your story!!

The Kite Runner: Week 5, Post A

VOCAB: 1. dissertations (109): a lengthy, formal, treatise or thesis

2. belied (121): to contradict, to be false, to misrepresent. 

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: 1. "Baba walked out of the welfare office like a man cured of a tumor" (114). This is a simile because it compares two objects using the word "like."

2. "and the words had vaporized on my tongue" (115). This is a personification because words can't really vaporize. It's giving somewhat human characteristics to a non-human object.

3. "his thin hands belied a firm grip, as if steel hid beneath the moisturized skin" (121). This is a simile because it uses the words "as if" to compare two objects. 

QUOTE: "Proud. His eyes gleamed when he said that and I liked being on the receiving end of that look" (115). This shows how much of a special moment it was when Baba told Amir that he was proud of him when he graduated from junior college.

THEME: The theme of The Kite Runner in this section is that you always have to go after your dreams and you can't let anything get in your way, no matter how big the obstacles may seem.

The Kite Runner: Week 4, Post B

SIGNIFICANCE OF A QUOTE

I had a hard time picking a quote from the section I just finished, and it wasn't a very long section, either. I came across this one and just felt like I understood Amir perfectly in that moment, he described it so well with a metaphor. "I only knew the memory lived in me, a perfectly encapsulated morsel of a good past, a brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that our lives had become" (107). I used this for an example of figurative language, but it is also my favorite quote out of this section of The Kite Runner. What it means is that the only thing Amir remembers (or wants to remember) of his past life is those few actually good memories that he has of himself and Hassan playing together and still being best friends. As he says in the quote, the memory of him and Hassan is the only colorful part of his memory now. While he is running away to Pakistan, with Baba, he keeps wishing that he can leave his mistakes behind him. He wants to make a new beginning with Baba in Pakistan. All the rest is yet to be made colorful by new memories he'll have with Baba in Pakistan. And he is able to do this now, because like he described in the quote, his life is now a blank canvas with one splash of color from that one good memory of Hassan. I think this quote also shows that he regrets not helping Hassan when he was being abused, because the readers can tell that the only reason Ali and Hassan left was because of what Amir did. I like this quote so much because I can understand exactly how Amir felt in the moment he thought this. I see how he'd feel regretful, and I can see how he wishes he had helped Hassan when he had the chance. I understand him because this quote uses the perfect metaphorical imagery to describe exactly how Amir felt. 

The Kite Runner: Week 4, Post A

VOCAB: 1. sluiced (94): to drain, flow, pour water.

2. precipitous (97): extremely or impassably steep.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: 1. "the headlights came on and cute twin funnels of light in the rain" (94). This is a personification of the headlights that 'cut' through rain. Headlights cannot really cut anything, so it's giving human characteristics to a non-human object. 

2. "piled in a corner just like the birthday presents in my room" (94). This is a simile, because it uses the word "like" to compare two objects.

3. "a brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that our lives had become" (107). This is a metaphor of Amir and Baba's lives now that Hassan and Ali left them to go back to Ali's childhood home. It is a blank canvas that they need to fill up with memories to make their lives full again. I like that metaphor; it gives the reader a really good idea of how Amir and Baba feel. 

QUOTE: "That was when I understood the depth of the pain I had caused, the blackness of the grief I had brought onto everyone" (93). This quote describes how Amir looked into Ali's face and finally realized what he had done and how he shouldn't have only watched Hassan being abused in the alley, but he should've helped him. He finally regrets what he did. 

THEME: The theme of this section of The Kite Runner is that you have to forgive people (especially loved ones) for the things they do that might upset you.