The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
No doubt, this book will test the strength of your
emotional capacity, but also will leave you dazed as to our natural inclination
towards the ‘bravery’ of the main character Amir. Wonderfully painted with the
Afgan conflicts in the background, we get an insight into another culture yet
failing to leave our ties of childhood memories which we genuinely relate to.
Amir and Hassan, partners in crime, shared a beautiful childhood, although from
different perspectives, until the ill-fated day that deeply scarred him
creating a wide chasm between their ‘Brotherhood’.
The title ‘The Kite Runner’ is the central event
around which the plot is constructed. Yearning to attain the love that he never
really experienced, Amir is forced to battle between his morals and his
childish selfishness at the cost of his tainted heart. Hosseini’s descriptive
capacity brings out the agony that the central character feels but consciously
omits what the sufferer has to say. All that Hassan sincerely thinks is summed
up in his lines “for you a thousand times over.” What we can summarise from the
story is that Amir is a human with all his flaws but again forces us to hold
Hassan in the spotlight for being the contrast with his selflessness.
What I could sympathise with was the guilt that
loomed in the mind of a child and the deadly poison that it could spread. We’ve
all had at least that one experience where our older siblings come to our
rescue to take the blame. Amir, however hard I tried, still in my eyes remains
a selfish character. The brief tussle between Assef does glorify him but
immediately ceases to too on account of his redemption from his ‘sin’ as a
means to live peacefully.
Hosseini has taken us from our cocoon of comfort into
the wild, war mongering streets of Afghan to etch in us, an image of culture,
nationality, brotherhood, religion etc first through the naiveties of a child’s
mind and further through the complex, irrational workings of corrupted adult
minds. The culmination of the book, pleasing to most readers simply feels like
a drama filled ‘deus-ex-machina’ to fix it all up for the main character to
look selfless and chivalrous in the audience’s eye.
Despite the few flaws that I found displeasing to
my taste in a novel as such, I discovered scenes that touched me to the core.
Naming one would be injustice, but the scene in chapter 8 under the pomegranate
tree where Amir yells “hit me back! Hit me back goddamn you!” simply made my
heart melt at the condition of both the characters unable to relate what’s on
their minds.
Hosseini captured the tender hearts of his readers
and has imprinted into them the lives of two characters-in-the-flesh as two
sides of a coin, complementing each other.
- Christina Mary George
