The Kite Runner, first three chapters

We're having a book project at school, and the whole class is reading The Kite Runner, and also blogging about it. Here's my first blog post about the novel, first and foremost the three first chapters.

  The Kite Runner is Khaled Hosseini's first novel. The first part of the book mainly takes place in the north of Kabul. Amir is twelve years old and his days usually consist of playing with Hassan and reading literature. Hassan is Ali's son, and Ali is Amir's family's servant. The relationship between Pashtuns (Amir and his father “Baba”) and Hazaras (Hassan and Ali) is a bit strained. The Hazaras are mostly looked down at by people. Amir and his father is an exception, - they're friends with their servants. Baba and Ali are childhood friends, and Baba treats Ali well, even though he's Ali's "boss".

Starts with foreshadowing. The very first chapter in the book takes place in Los Angeles, and is in fact the present. The plot isn't chronologically, as we start in the present, then go back to the past that made way for the present. As the main character says; “I thought of the life I had lived until the winter of 1975 came along and changed everything. And made me what I am today”. This is called foreshadowing, or in Norwegian, “frampek”. It's a writing technique often used in short-stories to draw attention, as it foretells what is going to happen, but not how it's going to happen. This makes us as readers interested and curious about the future, and therefore we read ahead. There are significant differences between the two cities, Kabul and Los Angeles. The first chapter creates two parallel “worlds”, the one today – L.A.,and the previous one – Kabul. The history starts..

Amir's life isn't very complicated. He enjoys every season of the year, and he and Hassan do a lot of fun. They're very good friends, although Amir tends to boss a bit. Hassan is kind of suppressed by him, and if the boys do something stupid that was Amir's idea, Hassan always takes the blame. This makes Amir feel guilty. Hassan is always there for Amir, but Amir doesn't want to play with Hassan when he has someone else to play with. He is a bit embarrassed of him.

Amir is secretly jealous of Hassan. Maybe that's why he's mean to him. Amir's father, Baba, seems to like Hassan as much as Amir, maybe even a bit more. This makes Amir upset. He thinks that Baba is, without telling it, blaming him for “stealing his wife”. Baba's wife and Amir's mother died of hemorrhage during the birth of Amir. To kill, or as Baba says it, “stealing a life”, is a sin. Baba's also seems more ashamed of Amir, as he doesn't play soccer or is as manly as Hassan and himself at their age. Amir is more into literature and poetry, and spends all his allowance on books he hides away from his dad. Amir wants his father's redemption, more than anything else.

Religion, race and class. The first part of the book says something about the situation in Kabul and Afghanistan. For instance, when Amir reads one of the history books his mother left behind, he discovers that the people he belongs to, the Pashtuns, once killed the Hazarans, drove them away from their country, burned their homes and sold their women. When he takes this up with his teacher, the teacher simply says “that's one thing Shi'a people do well, passing themselves as martyrs”. Amir had never learned about this. He has never learned about Pashtuns being Sunni Muslims and Hazarans being Shi'a Muslims, which may be the main reason of the differences in treatment. The children in the neighborhood of Amir call Hassan for “mice-eating, flatnosed, load-carrying donkeys”, referring to how the Hazaras look a bit different from Pasthuns. Not only is Ali and Hassan servants, they're also Hazarans. Imagine their position in the community..

Well-written and trustworthy. The book is written with a first person narrator. This makes the book more trustworthy, as the relationship between the narrator and me becomes more personal. I believe there is a person behind the plot that has a story he wants to tell. And it's so well-written as well. I've always had a little trouble getting through books, especially if they're not crime fiction or if they're in English (exception: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon). I don't have this problem with this book. It's so exciting, and it's almost as if I can feel the warmth and the cold that's written with words. English homework has rarely been better..