1. Could the story of the The Kite Runner Cliff Notes novel exist without the class difference between Amir and Hassan? Make a case, using specific plot points and historical facts to ground your argument.

2. Examine the concept of circularity in the novel The Kite Runner Cliff Notes . What important cycles exist in the characters’ lives and histories? How is circularity connected to redemption?

3. Explore the way in which courage is portrayed in the The Kite Runner Cliff Notes novel. What constitutes true bravery? What are the key moments when characters are brave and who is the bravest character, if any? Use specific examples from the text to support your argument.

4. Each character in the novel is shaped not only by his particular circumstances, but by the historical and political events that occur during his life. Consider Sohrab, the only character of his generation; how is he different from the other characters and how are these differences a function of what he has experienced?

5. Consider the idea of a homeland or “watan.” How do you think the novel defines a homeland? Make sure to consider the opinions of Farid and Assef. Also, consider this question in terms of Amir and Sohrab, two characters who leave Afghanistan when they are still growing up.

6. Even though countless events occur in the novel The Kite Runner Cliff Notes , the title refers to kite fighting and kite running. What do these activities represent in the novel and why are they so important? To whom or what does the title, “The Kite Runner,” refer?

7. Examine what it means to be American in the novel. How do different characters see America and is there one perspective that comes across most definitively? Some characters you may want to consider: Amir, Baba, General Taheri, Omar Faisal, Farid.

8. Think about the fathers in the novel. According to the novel, what does it mean to be a father? How can one measure one’s success at fathering? Some characters to consider: Baba, Ali, Amir, Hassan, General Taheri, Farid, Wahid, Raymond Andrews.

9. “Like father, like son.” “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” “Monkey see, monkey do.” Use one of these cliches as a starting point to consider the way characters in the story behave. Characters to consider: Amir, Hassan, Assef, Baba, Sohrab, Rahim Khan.

10. Make a list of instances in the novel where someone is forgiven. What constitutes true forgiveness? Why is forgiveness so important? You may want to consider moments between Hassan and Amir, Baba and Hassan, Hassan and Sanaubar, Amir and Sohrab, General Taheri and Soraya, and Amir and himself.

11. Think about acts of violence in the novel individually and as a whole. Why is violence so essential to the story? Could the story occur without so much violence? Using your answer from the previous question, explain what you think Hosseini is using violence to say. You may want to consider: Hassan’s rape, Sohrab’s rape, the stonings at Ghazi Stadium, Assef and Amir’s fight, Sohrab’s suicide attempt, the story of Kamal and his father, Hassan and Farzana’s murders, Sanaubar’s appearance at the house, and the activity of kite fighting .

Chapter Twenty-Three The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Amir is lying in his hospital bed, floating in and out of consciousness. He does not know where he is or how long ago he was brought in; all he can think of is that he wants to thank a child for something. In his fleeting moments of clarity, he sees a caretaker named Aisha, a doctor, and Farid-although he cannot remember names. Amir has a vision of Baba fighting a bear in Baluchistan, a story that is supposedly true. At the end of the vision, he sees that he is Baba.

When Amir finally regains full consciousness, the doctor, Dr. Faruqi, explains his injuries. He has had several surgeries in the two days since Farid brought him in; his jaw is wired together, his spleen ruptured and had to be removed, he suffered several broken ribs and a punctured lung, his upper lip was split open, and his eye socket bone broken. Dr. Faruqi said Amir was lucky to have survived such trauma. As Amir tried to take in the magnitude of what happened, one ironic fact stayed with him; he now had a harelip scar just like Hassan had.

The next day, Farid and Sohrab came to visit. When Farid asked what happened in the room with “the Talib official,” Amir replied, “Let’s just say we both got what we deserved.” Farid told him that Rahim Khan had left Peshawar, leaving behind a key and a letter for Amir. Amir asked Farid to leave Sohrab with him for a few hours. Even though Amir tried to reach out to Sohrab and thanked him for saving his life, Sohrab was shy and refused to make eye contact. The day dragged on, but it was punctuated by the entrance of a strange man. He surveyed the room, stared at Amir, and left. Most likely, he was a spy sent by Assef to threaten Amir’s life.

After Sohrab left, Amir read Rahim Khan’s letter. In it, he revealed that Hassan told him about the rape soon after it happened. He told Amir that he did betray his friend, but reminded him that he was only a boy at the time. He assured Amir that he had suffered from his guilt so much only because he was a good, caring person. Rahim Khan explained that it was hard for him to watch Amir vying for Baba’s attention. Baba, he said, was hard on Amir only because of his own guilt. His betrayal of Ali and the fact that he could never claim Hassan as his son tortured him. Rahim Khan believed that all of Baba’s charity was in atonement for his sin. Amir, he said, should learn from Baba’s example and try to redeem himself as well. He said he had left money for Amir in a safety deposit box, which the key would open. He ended the letter by requesting that Amir not look for him. Amir cried reading the letter. He was ashamed that, unlike Baba, he had acted out because of his guilt rather than doing good.

The next morning, Amir looked at his face in a mirror. His monstrous appearance shocked him. Then Farid came to visit. He warned Amir that they had to leave Peshawar right away before Taliban sympathizers tried to finish him off. Amir sent him to find John and Betty Caldwell and spent the day playing cards with Sohrab. They did not talk much, but eventually Sohrab told Amir what Hassan said about him, that he was “the best friend he ever had.” Still, every time Amir tried to touch Sohrab’s arm, he pulled away.

The next day, Amir left the hospital against Dr. Faruq’s advice. He planned to use the money from the safety deposit box to pay his bills, leave Sohrab with the Caldwells, and fly home. When Farid arrived with Sohrab, he explained that there were no Caldwells in Peshawar, nor had there ever been. Farid drove Amir and Sohrab to Islamabad

Chapter Twenty-Four The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Islamabad was much more modern and cleaner than Peshawar, and the hotel they stayed in even had a television-a big change from Kabul. Before Farid left to rejoin his family, Amir paid him a little over two thousand dollars, leaving his friend speechless. Sohrab fell asleep and then Amir did the same. When Amir awoke, Sohrab was gone. The hotel manager, Fayyaz, decided to help Amir find him, saying, “I will drive you because I am a father like you.” They found Sohrab sitting in front of the giant Shah Faisal Mosque. Amir sat on the grass with Sohrab, who told him about his memories of his parents. Amir gave him the photograph that Rahim Khan took.

Sohrab asked Amir if he would go to hell for taking out Assef’s eye. Amir told him that Assef was a bad man who had hurt Hassan many years before. He assured Sohrab that Hassan would have been very proud of him. Sohrab was tormented by a feeling that he was dirty because Assef and his men had molested him. Amir told him that he was not dirty and after some coaxing, Sohrab let him hold him in his arms. He asked Sohrab if he would come to America with him, but Sohrab only sobbed.

The issue of America lay dormant until a week later, when Amir and Sohrab took a day trip to a hill. There, he revealed to Sohrab that he and Hassan were half-brothers. Sohrab asked if Baba had loved him and Hassan equally, and Amir replied, “he loved us equally but differently.” Back at the hotel, Amir promised to show Sohrab the Golden Gate Bridge and drive him up the steep streets of San Francisco. He promised Sohrab that he would never have to live in an orphanage again.

At last, Amir called Soraya. After fifteen years of marriage, he finally told her about Hassan’s rape. She told Amir to bring Sohrab home. The next day, Amir took Sohrab to the American Embassy to see an official named Raymond Andrews. Amir told him he wanted to take his half-nephew to America, omitting all the information about Assef. Raymond Andrews told him that his chances of getting a visa for Sohrab were slim. He would have to prove that Sohrab was legally an orphan by providing death certificates for Hassan and Farzana; this would have been impossible even in pre-Taliban Kabul. Before leaving, Amir snapped at Raymond Andrews, “They ought to put someone in your chair who knows what it’s like to want a child.” As he and Sohrab left, the receptionist told Amir that Raymond Andrews’s daughter had committed suicide.

It turned out that Soraya’s cousin, Sharif, might be able to get Sohrab a visa because he worked for the INS. In the meantime, a lawyer named Omar Faisal came to consult with Amir at the hotel. He grew up in Berkeley but spoke perfect Farsi. Amir told him the unedited story of what happened with Assef. He repeated what Raymond Andrews had said about death certificates, but said there was some hope of adopting Sohrab if he was placed in an orphanage temporarily.

After Omar Faisal left, Amir told Sohrab that he might have to spend a little time in an orphanage. Terrified, Sohrab sobbed and begged Amir not to put him in an orphanage, but Amir could not bring himself to promise. He knew that an orphanage might be their best hope. Finally, Sohrab cried himself to sleep and Amir fell askeep as well. A call from Soraya awoke him; she gave the good news that Sharif would be able to get Sohrab a visa. Amir knocked on the bathroom door to tell Sohrab that all their fears were over, but he would not answer. Then Amir opened the door to the bathroom and began to scream; an ambulance took him and Sohrab to the hospital.

Chapter Twenty-Five The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Amir is at the hospital, waiting for Sohrab. He finds a bedsheet and kneels on it to pray for the first time in over fifteen years. He mumbles the phrases of prayers he still remembers, his belief in God suddenly renewed. In his prayers, he begs God to let Sohrab live; he will do anything to ensure the boy’s safety, saying, “My hands are stained with Hassan’s blood; I pray God doesn’t let them get stained with the blood of this boy too.” He recounts what he saw when he opened the bathroom door; Sohrab lay dying in the bloody bathwater, having slit his wrists with Amir’s razor. Finally, a doctor tells Amir that Sohrab will live. When he finally gets to visit Sohrab in the intensive care unit, Amir sees how hopeless he is. At Fayyaz’s request, Amit stopped staying in his hotel. He barely said a word, even when Amir read him the story of his namesake from the Shahnamah. Finally, he told Amir, “I want my old life back” and that he wishes he was dead. Amir told him the good news from Soraya and asked Sohrab to forgive him for going back on his word. Sohrab just said he was tired and fell asleep.

Eventually, Amir did bring Sohrab home with him to San Francisco. We discover that Amir has been narrating the story in 2002, seven months after they arrived. Sohrab had not spoken a single word since then. He showed no interest in the books Soraya had bought him or any activity they suggested. They did not tell the Taheris the story of why exactly they were adopting Sohrab or how Amir had gotten injured. One day, General Taheri said, “People will ask. They will want to know why there is a Hazara boy living with our daughter. What do I tell them?” Amir, angered, told the general that Sohrab was the son of his illegitimate half-brother and told him never to call him a “Hazara boy” in front of him again.

The political landscape had changed in the interim since Amir and Sohrab arrived home. The Twin Towers had fallen in New York City and The United States had bombed Afghanistan, compounding the damage done by decades of fighting. Amir found it strange to hear non-Afghan Americans discussing the cities of his childhood. He and Soraya began to get involved on Afghanistan’s behalf, trying to restore a hospital on the Pakistani border. Amir had kept his promise to pray after Sohrab had survived his suicide attempt.

Amir explains that four days earlier, a miracle happened. He and Soraya took Sohrab to an Afghan picnic in the park, along with Khanum Taheri. General Taheri was not there because he had finally gotten his wish; he had been offered a post in the Afghanistan ministry. By now, people had gotten used to Sohrab’s silence and even Soraya could not bear trying to engage him anymore. Only Amir kept trying. Suddenly, Amir noticed kites flying over the park. He bought one and brought it to Sohrab. He told him that Hassan was the best kite runner he had ever known and asked Sohrab to fly the kite with him. Sohrab remained silent, but Amir knew what to do; he ran as fast as he could to launch the kite. As he stared up at it, he noticed that Sohrab had followed him and handed him the string. Sohrab soon gave it back to him. They stood in silence once more until they noticed a green kite closing in on theirs. When the kite came close enough, Amir performed Hassan’s favorite kite-fighting trick, “the old lift-and-dive” as Sohrab watched, mesmerized. The green kite fell out of the air. When Amir looked down at Sohrab, he witnessed a half-smile steal over Sohrab’s face. He asked, “Do you want me to run that kite for you?” Sohrab nodded, and Amir told him, “For you, a thousand times over.” Amir ran among the children, after the kite.

Analysis The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Amir’s recovery is the second time in the novel The Kite Runner Cliff Notes that Hosseini uses broken images to convey a sense of detachment from reality. The first was when Amir witnessed Hassan’s rape in the alleyway. The most important image from Amir’s recovery time is his dream about Baba wrestling the bear, in which he is Baba. The story about Baba and the bear was a neighborhood legend, which Amir had later taken to represent any trouble Baba went through. When Baba died, Amir called his cancer “the Bear he could not defeat.” The dream is full of symbolism on many levels. One one level, Amir is Baba and Assef is the bear. Amir describes how “Spittle and blood fly; claw and hand swipe.” He even says, “They fall to the ground with a loud thud,” which also describes the moment just before Sohrab saved Amir. Amir knows that by escaping, he has bested Assef just as Baba supposedly killed the bear. On another level, the dream is about Amir coming to terms with his guilt, which the bear represents. When he puts himself in grave danger on Sohrab’s behalf, Amir is challenging his guilt-challenging the bear. It is important that the dream ends with Amir beating the bear but not killing it. Just as he does not kill the bear in his dream, Amir has not yet defeated his guilt. Only when he runs the kite for Sohrab is he redeemed.

In Islamabad, Amir finds out that he is not the only one living in a cycle of guilt; like many victims of cruelty, Sohrab feels responsible for what has happened to him. Sohrab’s fears make it clear that he took his fathers life lessons to heart. Like Hassan and Ali before him The Kite Runner Cliff Notes, Sohrab believes in God and does not believe that people should use violence to solve their problems. Sohrab does not feel safe with Amir, and rightfully so since he has been abused by so many adults. He believes himself to be “so dirty and full of isn.” However, that is not the only reason Sohrab’s fears are justified. Amir is still putting his own needs in front of Sohrab’s because he is acting out of his guilt. When Sohrab disappears from the hotel, Amir says, “I imagined Sohrab lying in a ditch. Or in the trunk of some car, bound and gagged. I didn’t want his blood on my hands. Not his too.” Because Amir is not yet acting selflessly towards Sohrab, it is ironic when the hotel manager says, “I will drive you because I am a father like you.”

Hosseini takes us into the mundane yet necessary world of bureaucracy to show how international policies often compound people’s experiences of trauma. Raymond Andrews is a figurehead for the red tape that one finds throughout American, or any, immigration policies. Amir has spent weeks feeling like a privileged American in compassion to the Afghans. Now, he feels like an Afghan speaking to a privileged American who does not understand him. Amir’s feeling of separation from Raymond Andrews is particularly clear when he describes the way Andrews “press[es] his hands palm to palm, as if he were kneeling before the Virgin Mary.” He knows that Raymond Andrews is a “typical American,” and he interprets his gesture as such-his gesture reminds Amir of Christianity instead of Islam.

Amir is shocked, as perhaps we are, to discover that even the sharpest image of hardship is not enough to cut through America’s red tape. The fact that Sohrab has been raped, enslaved, and possibly seen his parents slaughtered still does not exempt him from procedure. Amir suddenly finds himself identifying with Afghanistan more strongly than he has in years. He has authority in his voice when he tells Raymond Andrews, “This is Afghanistan we’re talking about. Most people there don’t have birth certificates.” The moment when Amir leaves the Embassy is doubly significant. In the first place, it serves to reconnect Amir to his American identity, from which he has felt estranged while talking to Raymond Andrews. When Amir finds out that Andrews lost his daughter in a violent way, he is reminded that violence exists everywhere in the world, even in privileged societies and situations. In the second place, the moment uses one of Hosseini’s favorite techniques, foreshadowing.

Sohrab’s suicide attempt breaks up the calm that falls over the story in Islamabad. Once Amir knows that he and Sohrab are in a safe place, he assumes that they are free from violence. Despite the massive injuries he has sustained, Amir still does not understand what it means to be wounded in one’s soul, to be a true victim of war. He also is not yet the father that the hotel manager thought him to be because he has trouble understanding just how young and vulnerable Sohrab is. Amir has not yet learned that breaking a promise to a child makes that child feel unsafe. And with the terror that Sohrab has withstood, not feeling safe takes on a whole new meaning. Most children are afraid of pretend monsters, but Sohrab has faced real ones. The way in which Sohrab tries to kill himself speaks volumes about the guilt he himself feels. Not surprisingly, Amir’s assurances that he is not “dirty” do little to comfort him. Not only does he die in the bathtub, but he drains the blood from his veins as though dying that way will clean him of his guilt and all his painful memories.

In several ways The Kite Runner Cliff Notes, Sohrab’s suicide attempt teaches Amir how strong an influence fear has over people’s lives. It is fear and panic that drive him to pray after fifteen years and convince him that God exists. Amir suddenly understands that people who are afraid need to believe in God in order to maintain their hope. He says, “There is a God, there always had been. I see Him here, in the eyes of the people in this corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him … There is a God, there has to be.” Believing in God makes Amir resemble Hassan more, because he is suddenly pious like his friend. However, as Amir acknowledges, his prayers flow from a selfish locus. He is bartering with God, promising to be a more devout Muslim in exchange for Sohrab’s life. He is still acting out of his long-held guilt, praying, “My hands are stained with Hassan’s blood; I pray God doesn’t let them get stained with the blood of this boy too … I pray my sins have not caught up with me the way I’d always feared they would.” From these words, it is clear that even though Amir desperately wants Sohrab to live, the person he is most concerned with is still himself.

In the end The Kite Runner Cliff Notes, Rahim Khan is the one who knows the true path to redemption. He tells Amir in his letter, “I know that in the end, God will forgive. He will forgive your father, me, and you too. I hope you can do the same. Forgive your father if you can. Forgive me if you wish. But, most important, forgive yourself.” Rahim Khan understands that Amir takes pleasure in torturing himself with his guilt. As long as he is directing his remorse inwards, he cannot truly help anyone else. Only when he forgives himself and stops feeling the pain of guilt can Amir direct his full focus on repaying his debt to Hassan and Baba’s debt to Ali. As he puts it, true forgiveness involves “pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.” Once Amir has stopped merely ‘not wanting to have blood on his hands,’ he can make use of those hands. He does just that when he teaches Sohrab about kite fighting.

When Amir and Sohrab fight the blue kite, the story finally comes full circle. The sport takes Amir back to the moment before everything changed, when Hassan had not been raped and they were just two boys having fun together. He says, “I was twelve again.” Now that Amir has forgiven himself, kite fighting reminds him of pleasure instead of pain. His memories no longer being painful, he shares them with Sohrab: “Did I ever tell you your father was the best kite runner in Wazir Akbar Khan? Maybe all of Kabul? … Watch, Sohrab. I’m going to show you one of your father’s favorite tricks, the old lift-and-dive.” In the ultimate moment of circularity, Amir runs the kite for Sohrab just as Hassan ran his last kite for him half a century before. Finally Amir understands what it is like to be as loyal and loving as Hassan, and can truthfully repeat Hassan’s words, “For you, a thousand times over.” The kite is a symbol of Amir’s good, fatherly wishes for Sohrab. He wants to bring him joy, opportunity, a sense of security, and the will to live again, if only this were as easy as bringing him the kite. The last time Amir went to find a kite, he ended up turning his back on Hassan for good by running away from the scene of his rape. This is why the novel’s last words, “I ran,” are so meaningful. Even though Amir’s story has made a circle metaphorically speaking, it has not ended where it began. Amir is running in a positive way, away from Sohrab physically but toward him emotionally. He is finally running with freedom in his heart instead of fear.

Chapter Twenty The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

The devastation in Kabul took Amir’s breath away. The buildings and streets had turned into rubble, and fatherless children begged on every street corner. When a red truck full of Talibs drove by, Amir was mesmerized by them for a minute. Farid warned him never to stand at the Talibs again, because they welcomed any chance to start a conflict. An old beggar overheard them, asked for change, and started a conversation; while chatting, he quoted a line from a poem Amir recognized. It turned out that the man was a professor who used to teach at the university alongside Amir’s mother. It was now Amir who was begging the old man-for any details about his mother. He gave Amir just a few small details about her, which amounted to more than he had ever learned from Baba. Amir was deeply grateful. The old man directed him and Farid to the orphanage in Karteh-Seh.

A skinny man answered the door at the orphanage. He pretended not to know who Sohrab was until Amir begged, “I’m his half uncle.” Once he trusted the men enough to let them in, he told them Sohrab was fantastic with his slingshot, from which he was inseparable. In the man’s makeshift office, he explained that they had no heat or hot water and very little food or supplies. The Taliban refused to pay for renovations or improvements. The man did not seem to want to talk about Sohrab. When Amir insisted, he revealed that a Talib official had taken Sohrab a month earlier. This official came every few months and paid to take a child with him; the man had no choice but to consent, or he knew he and all his children would be shot. This news so enraged Farid that he tackled the man and tried to strangle him to death until Amir intervened. The man told Amir that he could find the Talib official at Ghazi stadium, where the national team played soccer.

Chapter Twenty-One The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

After Amir visited the orphanage in Karteh-Seh, the horrifying truth about Afghanistan fell upon him more and more rapidly. As he and Farid drove away, he saw a forgotten corpse hanging in front of a restaurant. He saw a man selling his artificial leg, no doubt to buy food for his children. When they reached the Wazir Akhbar Khan district where Amir grew up, he was relieved to see that it had weathered somewhat better than the other neighborhoods.

The chapter The Kite Runner Cliff Notes is interrupted by Amir’s memory of finding a turtle in the backyard with Hassan. They painted its shell red and marched it around as though they were discoverers of a wondrous new species. Even though they were children, they felt as though they were world-renowned explorers.

Amir walked up the driveway to Baba’s house and saw that it had fallen into disrepair. He longed for it to be as it once was. Despite Farid’s protestations, he insisted on staying for as long as possible. Amir climbed the hill with the pomegranate tree as he had with Hassan so many times. Although the tree was now decrepit, he could still make out the carving from their childhood: “Amir and Hassan. The Sultans of Kabul.” After he sat for a while in contemplation, he and Farid drove off and checked into a nearby hotel.

The hotel was just as run-down as the rest of Kabul and there was even a bloodstain on the wall near the bed. Before going to bed, Farid told him stories about fighting the Soviets. In return, Amir told Farid about American conveniences, such as being able to receive over five hundred television channels; Farid explained that Kabul had not even had electricity for days. Finally, the men bonded over jokes about the bumbling cleric, “Mullah Nasruddin.” Before he fell asleep, Amir thought that perhaps Kabul was as “hopeless” as people said.

The next day, the men attended a soccer match at Ghazi Stadium. It was nothing like Amir remembered, the lush green playing field now turned to dry dirt with two deep holes behind the goalpost. Talibs walked up and down the aisles, whipping anyone who made too much noise. During halftime, Amir discovered the horrifying reason for the two deep holes in the ground; they were to be the graves of two accused adulterers, who would be stoned in front of the thousands of attendees. A cleric announced to the crowd that the “will of Allah and the word of the Prophet Muhammad” said death by stoning was a just punishment for adulterers. As he listened to this distortion of Islam, Amir e what Baba had said years before: “God help us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands.”

The Talib official they had been waiting for appeared on the field. He personally stoned both of the accused to death, after which other Talibs buried them. Afterwards, Farid told a Talib that they wanted to arrange a meeting with the Talib official; it was very easy for them to get an appointment for the same day.

Chapter Twenty-Two The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Farid and Amir parked in front of a large house in Wazir Akhbar Khan where the meeting would take place. Farid waited in the car while a terrified Amir went into the house. After being frisked by armed Talibs, he was ushered into an empty room. The Talib official entered the room and sat down opposite Amir, who noticed he had blood on his sleeve from the executions. He ordered one of his men to rip off Amir’s false beard, then described with relish his role in the mass execution of the Hazaras. He derided Amir for leaving Afghanistan, saying he should have him shot for treason. Then he ordered Sohrab to come into the room. Sohrab’s resemblance to Hassan shocked Amir, who saw that the boy wore bells around his ankles and makeup on his face. The Talib officer put on music, banned to everyone but the Taliban, and made him dance. Then he said to Amir, “Whatever happened to the old Babalu, anyway?” Horror filled Amir as he realized that the Talib official was Assef.

When Amir offered to pay for Sohrab, Assef explained that he did not need money; his wealthy parents lived on an Australian beachfront. Besides, he joined the Taliban not for money but because he felt it was his divine task. When he was in prison in the 1980s, there was a guard who beat one prisoner each night in order to terrorize the others. One night, when Assef had a terrible kidney stone, the guard decided to beat him. He was wailing in pain as the guard beat him until one kick to his side dislodged the kidney stone and made it pass so that he laughed through the rest of his beating. Assef believed it to be “a message from God.” Years later, he found the same man injured on the battlefield and shot him in the genitals. Ever since, he had been “on a mission” to get rid of those he considered unworthy of living in Afghanistan.

Assef said Amir could have Sohrab, but he would have to kill Assef in order to leave the house. He told his guards to wait outside the room and not enter no matter what they heard. If Amir killed him, he would be able to go free. Then Assef told Sohrab to stay as a “lesson.”

The chapter The Kite Runner Cliff Notes  is interrupted briefly by Amir’s memory of the doctor who helped nurse him back to health.

Amir describes the fight with Assef. Assef had used brass knuckles, his favorite weapon from childhood, to beat Amir and knock out his teeth. He remembers his ribs, a bone in his face, and his nose breaking. He remembers that at one point, he began to laugh uncontrollably; even though Amir’s body was broken, his spirit finally felt healed. It was Sohrab who saved him in the end. Amir was lying on the ground with Assef on top of him, preparing for another blow, when Sohrab begged him to stop. He was aiming his slingshot at Assef’s eye, just as his father had done half a century before. Assef tried to jump on Sohrab, who shot him and in doing so, gouged out his eyeball. As Assef rolled on the floor in pain, Sohrab helped Amir to the car. Farid drove away as fast as he could as Amir lost consciousness.

Analysis The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Chapters Twenty through Twenty-Two The Kite Runner Cliff Notes showcase the devastation that reigns in Kabul under the Taliban. The theme of violence has been central to the novel all along in the context of Hassan’s rape. However, in Taliban-controlled Kabul, Amir’s personal nightmare erupts into a public reality. We already know that a single rape has influenced Amir’s life immeasurably. When Amir and Baba were fleeing to Pakistan, they found out about a second rape, Kamal’s. Now, we discover that under the Taliban, even government officials are raping children. The government’s appetite for violence is insatiable; they not only jump on any existing chance to enact violence, but provoke people so they can beat them. As Farid explains, merely staring at a Talib is reason enough for him to injure someone. Both Hassan and Rahim Khan have described beatings by the Taliban merely for talking too loud. The Taliban have created a culture not only of violence but of humiliation.

Baba, General Taheri, and many other Aghan immigrants to America suffer humiliation because they are in an unfamiliar environment. Their job status is taken away from them because they are unfamiliar with American ways and the English language. He describes how “former ambassadors, out-of-work surgeons, and university professors” who had obviously worked hard to gain their status and wealth in Afghanistan reduced to selling at the flea market. As Baba’s incident with the Nguyens shows, even small differences in custom can cause humiliation for an immigrant. Yet once Amir returns to Kabul, we see how much better the difficult lives of American immigrants are compared to those who stayed. Baba may have to sell other people’s junk for money, but he is far luckier than the amputee in Kabul who is trying to sell his artificial leg. Above all, those who emigrated to America are alive, whereas most of the men in Kabul are dead, as evidenced by the countless fatherless children begging on street corners there. Once Amir sees how devastated Afghanistan has become, he understands what Farid said about him being a foreigner in his own homeland. It is as unfamiliar to him as “an old, forgotten friend [whom] life hadn’t been good to … Homeless and destitute.”

In incorporating the stonings at Ghazi Stadium into his story, Hosseini brings to life something about which most non-Afghans have only heard. The event is all the more significant because we experience it through Amir’s eyes-American eyes-eyes that are unaccustomed to this type of unchecked violence and injustice. Beyond their sheer violence, the deaths of the accused adulterers in Ghazi Stadium embody what is happening to the Afghan people under the Taliban. The victims are accused of being adulterers, but from what we know about the Taliban from Rahim Khan, Hassan, and Farid’s accounts, they may just have looked at a Talib the wrong way. They are killed in public, supposedly to make an example for others; in truth, their public murders are meant to intimidate the masses and bring them under even closer control. Not just the two victims in Ghazi Stadium, but the Afghan people as a whole, are being dragged into a pit of hopelessness from which there is no escape, degraded, and killed cruelly and unjustly.

From the moment Amir makes a commitment to return to Afghanistan, things in the story begin to come full circle at an accelerated pace. In the moment when he hides money under Wahid’s mattress, he is atoning for doing so fifteen years earlier. This time, instead of plotting to ruin one child’s life, he is trying to make sure that three other children do not starve. Amir acknowledges the circularity of his journey when he ponders, “Once, over those mountains, I had made a choice. And now, a quarter of a century later, that choice had landed me right back on this soil.” Once Amir finds out that the Talib official is Assef, the story’s sense of circularity crosses over into the near impossible or even slightly magical. Amir himself cannot believe it. As he remembers, “The moment felt surreal-not, not surreal, absurd-it had knocked the breath out of me, brought the world around me to a standstill …What was the old saying about the bad penny? My past was like that, always turning up.”

Just like Amir’s and Hassan’s, Assef’s childhood tendencies were a good predictor of how he would turn out as an adult. Amir seemed harsh when he called Assef a “sociopath” early in the story, but now we understand that he was not exaggerating. Assef has become like his idol, Adolf Hitler. He takes joy in massacring innocent people in the name of his own supremacy. Just as Assef raped Hassan so many years before, he is now raping and humiliating Hassan’s son. The fight between Amir and Assef is surreal not just because Amir does not remember everything clearly, but because it is an echo of his confrontation with Assef when they were children. Years before, Hassan saved him with his slingshot and now, Sohrab saves him with his. Even the way Sohrab defeats Assef is eerily similar to the way Hassan threatened him-Hassan had aimed the slingshot at Assef’s eye once before, and now Sohrab finishes what his father began.

When Amir feels his blood running down his face and his bones breaking, he feels gleeful. Throughout the story, Amir has done everything in his power to avoid violence. As a child, he let Hassan do his fighting for him and refused to stand up for himself, much less someone else. Despite Assef’s taunting and promises of violence, Amir stands up for Sohrab and in doing so, for Hassan as well. When Assef rains violence down on Amir, it is as though every blame and injury that Hassan took for him is being returned to him all at once. When Amir demanded that Hassan throw a pomegranate at him, he had refused. Now, Assef is the one who gives Amir not only “what [he] deserve[s]” but what he longs for. Finally, he is being punished for what he did to Hassan. Even though Amir is aware that he could die, he feels “healed” of his decades-long affliction.

Chapter Seventeen The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

After Rahim Khan finished telling the story about him and Hassan, he handed Amir a letter and a photograph. The photograph was of Hassan and Sohrab. In the letter, Hassan described the violence and injustice in Afghanistan. One day, Farzana spoke slightly loudly in the market and a Talib beat her so hard that she fell down and was bruised for days. Despite the terror, Hassan said, Sohrab was a healthy and smart boy; Hassan had made sure he was literate and knew how to shoot a slingshot as well as his father. Hassan ended his letter by expressing his wish to see Amir in Afghanistan again. Rahim Khan explained that the letter was written six months before. A month after he had arrived in Peshawar, he received news of Hassan’s death from a friend. After he left Kabul, word spread that a Hazara family was living alone in Baba’s house. One day, the Taliban came to the house and demanded that they leave. When Hassan protested, they took him out to the street, forced him to kneel, and shot him in the back of his head. Farzana ran out screaming and they shot her dead as well. The news devastated Amir, who could only whisper, “No. No. No.”

Rahim Khan explained that the Taliban now occupied Baba’s house and they were not held accountable for Hassan and Farzana’s murders. Then he told Amir that he real reason he made Amir come to Peshawar was to bring Sohrab there. An American couple named Thomas and Betty Caldwell ran a goodwill organization there and would take care of him. When Amir protested and suggested Rahim Khan hire someone to find Sohrab, Rahim Khan was insulted. He told Amir, “I think we both know why it has to be you, don’t we?” Then he asked Amir if he had become what Baba feared so many years before, a person who “can’t stand up to anything.” He said it was his dying wish for Amir personally to bring Sohrab to Peshawar. When Amir continued to refuse, Rahim Khan revealed a monumental secret. Amir and Hassan were half-brothers. Ali was infertile, as evidenced by the fact that his first wife bore him no children, but bore her second husband three daughters. It was Baba who had gotten Sanaubar pregnant, making Hassan his son. Rahim Khan explained that no one but himself, Baba, Ali, and Sanaubar had known about the matter in order to preserve their honor. Hassan never found out. Amir was furious at all of them for keeping the secret. He screamed at Rahim Khan and left the apartment.

Chapter Eighteen The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

After storming out of Rahim Khan’s apartment, Amir had tea at a local café. He felt like a foreigner in his own life. Now that he knew Hassan was his half-brother, it seemed absurd that he had not realized it before. Baba had always treated Hassan like a son not just because he cared for him, but because Hassan was really his son. Amir wondered how Baba could have broken his own cardinal rule about not lying, how he could have lived with himself after shaming Ali.

Suddenly, Baba did not seem like such a shining example of righteousness. Amir now understood that Rahim Khan had called him to Peshawar to pay not only for his betrayal of Hassan, but for Baba’s betrayal of Ali. Amir wondered if he was to blame for Hassan and Ali’s deaths because he was the one who drove them out of the house and split up the family. Finally, at thirty-eight years old, Amir was ready to take responsibility for his actions. He returned to Rahim Khan’s apartment to find him praying and told him he would bring Sohrab to Peshawar.

Chapter Nineteen The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

A driver named Farid was driving Amir from Peshawar to Kabul. He was a Tajik man of twenty-nine, who looked much older because of all he had experienced, fighting against the Soviet forces. Farid had two wives and seven children, two of whom had been killed by a landmine. Farid himself was missing toes and fingers from his years of combat. Farid was suspicious of Amir because he saw him as a defector; whereas Farid had stayed and fought for his homeland, Amir had fled to the privileges of America. He had abandoned his watan, his homeland.

Amir felt awkward in his traditional Afghan clothing and long fake beard, both necessary for him to blend in to Taliban-controlled Kabul. He told Farid, “I feel like a tourist in my own country,” who replied, “You still think of this as your country?” Amir said he did because he had grown up there, but Farid explained to Amir that he had never been a true Afghani because he grew up with so many privileges. Amir did not try to argue with Farid. At last, they arrived in Jalalabad, where they would spend the night with Farid’s brother, Wahid.

Unlike Farid, Wahid received Amir warmly. When he found out Amir was a writer, he suggested Amir use his writing to “tell the rest of the world what the Taliban are doing to [Afghanistan.]” Amir explained that he was “not quite that kind of writer.” When Wahid asked Amir why he had returned to Afghanistan, Farid interrupted. He ranted about how people returned their only to be greedy and milk money out of their old properties. Wahid scolded Farid for his rudeness. Then Amir explained why he was really in Afghanistan. At this, Wahid called him, “An honorable man … A true Afghan.” Farid was ashamed at his own presumptuousness. Later he apologized to Amir, who told him, “You were more right than you know.”

One of Wahid’s wives brought dinner to Amir and Farid, saying the family had eaten earlier. As he ate, Amir noticed that Wahid’s three boys were staring at his watch. After asking for Wahid’s permission, he gave it to them. To his surprise, it did not impress them very much. Amir slept restlessly, dreaming about Hassan’s death. He imagined that he himself was the Talib executing Hassan. When Amir woke up, he paced outside and pondered the fact that Afghanistan really was his homeland. His loyalty to the country surprised him, since he had built a new and full life in America. From inside, Amir heard one of Wahid’s wives scolding him for not leaving any food for the children; Amir realized that the boys had been staring not at his watch, but at his food. Before he and Farid left the next morning, Amir tucked a wad of money under a mattress for them to find.

Analysis The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Chapter Seventeen  The Kite Runner Cliff Notes brings the subject of literacy into clearer focus. The ability to read and write divided Amir and Hassan when they were boys. Being literate when Hassan was not gave Amir a feeling of superiority over him, causing him to abuse his privilege by playing tricks and being secretly cruel. Hassan’s illiteracy does not mask his intelligence; for example, he points out the major plot hole in Amir’s story. But as an adult, Hassan realizes that not being literate puts him at a disadvantage and makes him depend on others. For this reason, he makes sure that Sohrab can read and write even though it breaks his family tradition. Even though Hassan feels entitled to very little all his life, he does feel that he has a right to knowledge; as usual, what matters to Hassan is intangible and enduring. The letter is of course significant because of its content, but it is perhaps more noteworthy because of the simple fact that it is written. Hassan is communicating with Amir on an equal level, something he could never have done when they were boys. Hosseini gives a nod here to the power of the written word, which endures and has an effect that transcends even death-after all, Hassan is long dead by the time Amir reads his correspondence. This also gives legitimacy to Amir because, coward though he may be, he is a writer, an ambassador of the written word.

The topics of secrets and family ties converge and come to a climax in Chapter Seventeen, when Rahim Khan finally reveals to Amir that Hassan was his half-brother. Amir is furious because suddenly the way he treated Hassan and Ali seems all the more wrong. The concept of “brother” is much stronger to him than the concept of “servant-best-friend” whereas Hassan had treated him like a brother no matter what. As Amir says, “Hassan had loved me once, loved me in a way that no one ever had or ever would again.” Amir’s reaction to the news reveals how important family ties are anywhere, but in Afghanistan particularly. As General Taheri says in Chapter Thirteen, “People [in America] marry for love, family name and ancestry never even come into the equation. But we are Afghans.” Among Afghans, one’s family line determines much about how one’s life will proceed, from whether one will be literate to whom one will marry. For instance, the reason the Taheris give Soraya to Amir so easily is because of Baba’s good standing and ancestry. Hassan’s not knowing his identity meant he missed many of the things to which he was entitled. Amir now feels as though his entire life has been “a cycle of lies, betrayals, and secrets,” and not just his own. He finally understands that Baba was as much of a betrayer, liar, and secret-keeper as he is. He also understands that this makes the importance of his redemption twofold, saying, “Rahim Khan had summoned be here to atone not just for my sins but for Baba’s too.”

Amir’s interactions with Farid and Wahid call into question the idea of homeland and national identity. Once he reached America, Amir clung to Afghan customs but insisted on forgetting his memories of Kabul. He welcomed America not for its idealism, as Baba had, but for the simple fact that it was not Kabul. To him, everything in Afghanistan was tainted with memories of Hassan, his “harelipped ghost.” Amir’s youth when he arrives plays a large role in his feelings about homeland and nationality. Because he is still growing up when he arrives, he is not as mired in Afghan traditions and attitudes as his father’s generation. Over the course of fifteen years Amir has come to consider America his homeland, whereas General Taheri is still awaiting the moment when he will be called back to his beloved watan. Amir’s opinion of Hassan has changed now that he knows they were brothers, but his connection to America is stronger than his feeling of obligation to anyone in Afghanistan. As he tells Rahim Khan, “I can’t go to Kabul … I have a wife in America, a home, a career, and a family.” When he finally consents to find Sohrab, Amir acknowledges his lack of loyalty to his fatherland. He admits, “I knew I had to leave as soon as possible. I was afraid I’d change my mind. I was afraid I’d deliberate, ruminate, agonize, rationalize, and talk myself into not going. I was afraid the appeal of my life in America would draw me back, that I would wade back into that great, big river and let myself forget.”

Amir’s disconnect from Afghanistan becomes even clearer when he is driving with Farid. Firstly, Amir is in disguise; in addition to his fake beard, he is wearing traditional Afghan clothing for maybe the first time in his life. Amir struggles with his separation from Afghanistan, because he still feels some entitlement to it; he says, “My mother had died on this soil. And on this soil, I had fought for my father’s love.” Farid quickly dispels any illusions of Afghan nationality that that Amir has when he says, “You’ve always been a tourist here, you just didn’t know it.” He points out that because he grew up with so many privileges, he never experienced the life of a typical Afghan. Farid sneers, “You probably lived in a big two- or three-story house with a nice backyard that your gardener filled with flowers and fruit trees. All gated, of course. Your father drove an American car. You had servants, probably Hazaras.” Amir has to admit, albeit privately, that all of this is true. He grew up in one of the nicest houses in Kabul. Baba had driven a Mustang and proudly so. He did have a gated backyard, and it was Hassan and Ali who did their chores and tended the garden. It is only when Amir truly begins to reclaim his and Baba’s honor that he also reclaims some of his Afghan identity. Wahid proclaims him, “an honorable man … A true Afghan” only when he discovers that Amir is going to Kabul to honor his family ties.

Chapter Thirteen The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Chapter Thirteen The Kite Runner Cliff Notes begins at the Taheris’ house with “lafz, the ceremony of “giving word.” Even though Baba is very ill, he proclaims it “the happiest day of [his] life.” Baba made a speech and General Taheri welcomed Amir into his family. Then Soraya joined the celebration and kissed Baba’s hands. Traditionally, lafz is followed by an engagement party called Shirini-kori and an engagement period, but everyone agreed that they should skip it because Baba was so close to death. Baba spent almost all the money he had left on the traditional Afghan wedding ceremony, called awroussi. According to the ceremony, Amir and Soraya were left alone together under a veil to gaze at each other’s reflections in a mirror. There, Amir told her he loved her for the first time. Amir could not help wondering whether Hassan had gotten married and what his wife was like. The party continued until the early morning, after which Amir and Soraya made love for the first time.

Soraya moved in with Amir and Baba after the wedding so that Amir could spend his father’s last days with him. Soraya cared for Baba as though he were her own father, bathing him, reading to him, cooking for him, and giving him anything else he needed. One day, Amir came home to find Soraya hiding Rahim Khan’s notebook under Baba’s mattress. Baba admitted that he had coaxed Soraya to read him Amir’s stories. Amir left the room to cry tears of joy, since he knew Baba disliked seeing him cry. A month after the wedding, Soraya’s family came over to Baba’s for dinner. Amir could see how happy Baba was to see him happily married. At the end of the night, Soraya and Amir helped Baba into bed. He refused his morphine, saying, “There is no pain tonight.” He died in his sleep.

Baba’s funeral took place at a nearby mosque. The men’s and women’s sections of the mosque were separate, so Amir sat next to General Taheri while Soraya and her mother were in another room. Amir acknowledged that Baba was his obstinate self until the end; he even died “on his own terms.” Countless people whom Amir had never seen shook his hand and told him how Baba had helped them in one way or another. As he listened to their remarks, Amir realized that he no longer had Baba to define him or guide him; he felt terribly alone. After the burial, Amir and Soraya walked through the cemetery together and Amir cried at last.

After Baba’s death, Amir got to know the Taheris much more closely. General Taheri was a complicated man. He did not work and collected welfare because he considered this more dignified than taking on a blue collar job as Baba had. He suffered from terrible headaches lasting days, and spent the rest of his time waiting for the liberation of Afghanistan. He felt sure that he would be called back to serve in the government at any time, so he always wore his grey suit and watch in preparation to leave. Khanum Taheri was a talented singer, but the general forbid her to sing. Instead, she focused her energies on homemaking. Now that Soraya was married, Khanum Taheri focused much of her attention on Amir. She adored him especially because he listened to her long list of imagined ailments; ever since her stroke, she became convinced that every small disturbance in her body was a serious ailment. Amir knew that Khanum Taheri was grateful to him not only for this, but for relieving her of her greatest fear-of Soraya becoming a spinster.

One night, Soraya told Amir the story of how the general forced her to end her affair. He came to her lover’s house and told him he would kill him and himself if Soraya did not come home. Soraya told her father she wished he was dead, but she came home with him. At home, he made her cut off all her hair. Ever after, Soraya heard derogatory whispers everywhere she went. After Soraya told Amir the story, he asked her never to mention it again. He understood too well the torment of guilt and betrayal, but he also pitied Soraya for being a woman in Afghan society; even in America, she was subject to a double standard regarding sexual behavior.

Amir and Soraya moved into their own apartment. The Taheris helped them furnish it, and the general gave Amir a typewriter. They both enrolled at San Jose University, where Amir worked toward a degree in English and Soraya, in teaching. In 1988, Amir finished his first novel, “a father-son story set in Kabul.” Soon after, he got a lierary agent and became a published writer. Amir’s feelings of success were tempered with his guilt; he felt himself to be undeserving. That same year, international politics were particularly fraught. The Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, but a new conflict erupted between the Mujahedin and the remaining communist government. The Berlin wall was destroyed and the Tiananmen Square riots occurred. In their safe American abode, Amir and Soraya began trying to conceive a child.

After months of trying to conceive, Amir and Soraya consulted fertility doctors. Neither of them had any detectable fertility problems, but they were still unable to have a child. When they told Soraya’s parents, General Taheri and Khanum Taheri were disappointed. The general urged them not to adopt, most of all because Afghan society depends on the line of succession, which the act of adoption obliterates. Amir thought privately that his and Soraya’s infertility was punishment for his betraying Hassan so many years before. Soon after they discovered they could not have a family, Amir and Soraya bought a house. Despite their newfound material comforts, the absence of a child tormented them both.

Chapter Fourteen The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Chapter Fourteen The Kite Runner Cliff Notes opens in June of 2001, when Amir received a call from Rahim Khan. He told Amir he was very sick and asked him to come visit him in Pakistan. Amir considered what Rahim Khan had said before hanging up, “Come. There is a way to be good again.” Suddenly, he understood that Rahim Khan knew, and had always known, what he did to Hassan. Amir was comfortable leaving Soraya with her parents; her relationship with them had improved in the years since the wedding. The General no longer insisted that Soraya change her career path away from teaching; sometimes he sat in on the classes Soraya taught and even took notes. That night, Amir dreamt of Hassan as he had seen him right before the rape, shouting, “For you, a thousand times over!” A week later, he left for Peshawar, Pakistan.

Chapter Fifteen The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

As Amir rode through the streets of Peshawar in a cab, he remembered being there in 1981 as a refugee. The city was bustling with vendors, families, and children. Rahim Khan was staying in the Afghan section. Amir had last seen him the night before he and Baba fled Kabul, and has barely spoken with him since. When Rahim Khan answered the door, Amir saw how emaciated his illness had made him. Still, Rahim Khan’s face brightened in Amir’s presence and at the news of his marriage fifteen years earlier. He did not remember the notebook he gave Amir.

Rahim Khan described how the Taliban was terrorizing Afghanistan, though they had been received initially as heroes. Once, at a soccer game, a man next to him cheered too loudly. A Talib pistol whipped Rahim Khan, thinking he had made the noise. People in Kabul were afraid to leave their houses because of frequent shootings and bombings. Even Baba’s orphanage had been destroyed, with many children inside it. Then Rahim Khan told Amir that he did not have long to live. He laughed at Amir’s offer to take him to America, saying he accepted his fate. Then he revealed to Amir that for all the years he lived in Baba’s house after 1981, Hassan lived there with him. He told Amir that he needed a favor of him, but first wanted to tell him about Hassan.

Chapter Sixteen The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Chapter Sixteen The Kite Runner Cliff Notes is in Rahim Khan’s voice; he is telling Amir the story of what happened to Hassan. He went searching for Hassan in 1986 because he was dreadfully lonely, so many of his relatives and friends having been killed or fled since 1981. He was managing to take care of the house and himself despite his age and arthritis, but when the news of Baba’s death reached him, he felt the weight of it all was too much. He drove to Hazarajat, where Ali and Hassan had been living, and was directed to a village outside Bamiyan. He found Hassan, now in his early twenties, and his pregnant wife, Farzana, living in a small hut. Hassan was overcome with joy when he saw Rahim Khan. He told him that Ali had been killed by a land mine two years before. He asked many questions about Amir. Initially, Hassan and Farzana refused to move to Baba’s house, but then Rahim told him of Baba’s death. Hassan cried all through the night and in the morning he agreed to move in with Rahim Khan.

Despite Rahim Khan’s protestations, Hassan and Farzana stayed in the servants’ hut and did all the chores. Hassan also wore black for forty days in mourning for Baba. In the fall, their daughter was stillborn; they buried her and Hassan placed a flower on her grave every day. Then in 1990, Farzana became pregnant again and Hassan’s mother, Sanaubar, came to find him. She collapsed at the gate of the house; when they carried her inside and removed her burqa, they discovered that the former beauty was malnourished, had no teeth, and had grotesque scars all over her face from being cut. Hassan ran out of the house and was gone for hours, but when he returned he accepted Sanaubar as his mother. She became healthy and a part of the family; she even delivered Farzana and Hassan’s son. Hassan named him Sohrab, after the hero in his favorite story from the book Amir used to read him. Sohrab became inseparable from Sanaubar, whom he called Sasa. Four years later, Sanaubar died peacefully. Hassan tried to give Sohrab a good childhood despite the constant fighting and danger in Kabul. He even took him kite running in the winter. When the Taliban took over, most people celebrated, but Hassan knew Hazaras’ lives were in peril. He was right; in 1998 the Taliban “massacred the Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif.”

Analysis The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Just as the courtship had made Baba feel important again, so did the wedding. Knowing he is dying, he spends almost all his money on the ceremony, rings, and traditional clothing. Yet even had Baba not been dying, he would have wanted the wedding to be extravagant; it is his last chance to throw a grand party and feel as he once did in Kabul. The wedding also brings Amir back to Kabul momentarily, when he wonders about Hassan. Though Baba is reduced to having Amir and Soraya care for him in the last days of his life, his death restores his dignity once again. At the funeral, the Afghan community recognizes Baba for the man he was in Afghanistan. It is a small consolation for Amir, who feels more alone than ever before. Now he is alone not only with his sin and guilt but with all his decisions and his future. He says, “Listening to them, I realized how much of who I was, what I was had been defined by Baba and the marks he had left on people’s lies. My whole life, I had been “Baba’s son.” Now he was gone. Baba couldn’t show me the way anymore; I’d have to find it on my own.” Despite the fact that he and Baba were estranged for much of his life, it is only now that Amir realizes he must form his own identity, independent of Baba.

When Amir and Soraya try to have a child, the idea of retribution makes a grand re-entrance. Because no medical explanation exists for their infertility, Amir decides that it is a result of his betraying Hassan. The silence that grows between him and Soraya over their inability to conceive is filled with Amir’s feeling of responsibility for it. When General Taheri discourages the couple from adopting, he makes the case that adoption disconnects the family line and threatens the family’s security. He says, “Blood is a powerful thing … And when you adopt, you don’t know whose blood you’re bringing into your house.” What neither he nor Amir knows is that adopting will allow Amir to continue his family line and also redeem himself from having wronged family so many years before. When Rahim Khan calls from Pakistan, he sets Amir’s redemption into motion. Like Amir, Rahim Khan believes that life has certain inevitabilities; as he puts it, “There is such a thing as God’s will.” Just as certainly as he knows he is going to die, he knows that Amir must be the one to save Sohrab.

In Chapter Fourteen The Kite Runner Cliff Notes, we finally revisit the phrase that Amir mentions in Chapter One: “there is a way to be good again.” Now we understand its magnitude; for the first time, Amir discovers that someone, Rahim Khan, knows his secret and has kept it for all these years. What he does not realize is that Rahim Khan does not want to be saved; he wants to save Amir. From the moment Amir sees Rahim Khan, it becomes clear to us how irrevocably Afghanistan has changed. Amir says, “A thing made of skin and bones pretending to be Rahim Khan opened the door.” Their meeting is out of place-in Peshawar instead of Kabul-and so is Rahim Khan’s appearance. The old man does not even remember the notebook that has meant so much to Amir for the last fifteen years. Yet once they begin to talk, it becomes clear how close they still are and how much influence Rahim Khan has over Amir.

Because guilt has plagued Amir all these years, it is surprising that he does not seize the opportunity to redeem himself. Rather, he is evasive and keeps forcing Rahim Khan to raise the stakes for him. When Rahim Khan plays his best card and tells Amir that Hassan was his brother, and that he needs to redeem Baba as well as himself, Amir storms out like an angry child. Suddenly, he understands what it is like to be betrayed. Later we find out that Rahim Khan knows Amir better than the latter ever thought. He realized that Amir would resist bringing Sohrab to America, so he made up the story about the Caldwells. Amir does save Sohrab by bringing to America, but only after he is effectively tricked into doing so. This is why it is the act of running the kite at the end that truly redeems Amir; unlike all the other heroic things he does, it is of his own volition and out of the spirit of true selflessness and loyalty.

Through Rahim Khan’s words in Chapter Sixteen, we learn that Hassan remained a loyal and humble person until death. Even though he never found out Baba was his father, he still mourned for him the way a son does. He insisted on living in the servant’s hut and keeping house for Rahim Khan, presumably out of respect to Baba and also to Ali, who never asked for anything more. Hassan was as forgiving as an adult as he was as a child. When Sanaubar returned decades after abandoning him, he merely took time to collect himself and then returned to welcome her with open arms. And as Sohrab tells Amir later, Hassan even forgave Amir and considered him “the best friend he ever had.” In the end, Hassan died defending Baba’s house and honor.

Rahim Khan and Hassan bring the war stories from Afghanistan alive for us before we see them through Amir’s eyes. Both men describe public beatings at the slightest provocation. Sanaubar is forced to wear a burqa, as we know, on pain of death. The men’s firsthand knowledge of these things highlights their difference from Amir. Whereas they are Afghans to the very end, Amir seems to have lost his connection to his identity. As he stated before, he was ‘carried away’ by America’s promise of a fresh beginning without memories of Hassan or what he did to him. Amir had been exempt from violence the moment he boarded the plane to California, but Rahim Khan and Hassan remained surrounded by danger. They had come to know a new, though terrible, Afghanistan, while Amir had tried as hard as he could to forget all about it. Even before Farid points out the fact point-blank, we can see that Amir has become a foreigner in his own homeland. At the same time, he is very much the person he was. It is true that in America, Amir experienced suffering and hardship, from having to learn English to not having money to seeing Baba degraded to watching him get sick and die. But Amir returns to Afghanistan in many ways just as he left it: he is a person of privilege, a person who is afraid to stand up for others, and a person who does not want to take responsibility for his actions. Back on Afghan soil, he must finally learn to be what Baba wanted him to be, and what Wahid calls him later on - “a true Afghan.”

Chapter Ten The Kite Runner Cliff Notes
When Chapter Ten opens Amir and Baba are being smuggled out of Soviet- or Shorawi-occupied Kabul along with other Afghanis. Their goal was to reach the safer territory of Pakistan. Amir still has carsickness at age eighteen, which embarrasses Baba. The truck stops so that Amir can vomit on the roadside. Amir thinks of how secretly they had to leave Kabul, telling no one, not even their servant. The rafiqs, or Communist comrades, had taught everyone in Kabul how to spy on their neighbors and even their family.

The truck was supposed to have no trouble crossing through the Russian-Afghani checkpoints because of the driver, Karim’s connections. At a checkpoint, the Afghani soldiers would have let the truck pass without issue, but one Russian soldier demanded a half hour with one of the refugees, a married woman. To Amir’s dismay, Baba defended the woman, telling the Russian soldier that he had no shame and that he would “take a thousand bullets before [he] let this indecency take place.” Amir felt ashamed that while Baba would give his life to save someone, he did nothing to save Hassan. The Russian soldier aimed the barrel of his gun at Baba’s chest, but the shot that rang out did not kill him. It came from the gun of a more senior Russian soldier, who apologized for the first one, explaining that he was on drugs. The truck passed the checkpoint safely and in the darkness, the woman’s husband kissed Baba’s hand.

When the refugees finally reached Karim’s brother’s house in Jalalabad, he told them that his brother, Toor’s, truck had broken the week before and could not take them to Peshawar, Pakistan. Baba smashed Karim against the wall and began to strangle him, furious that Karim had lied to them in order to take their money. Only the married woman’s pleas stopped Baba from killing Karim. It turned out that there were many other refugees in the house, who had been waiting there for two weeks. Amir, Baba, and the others went into the basement to wait with them. Waiting there with them in the damp, rat-infested basement were Amir’s schoolmate, Kamal, and his father. Kamal had a sunken look in his eyes, and his father explained to Baba that his wife had been shot and Kamal had been raped.

Because it turned out that Toor’s truck was irreparable, the refugees departed in the tank of fuel truck. Before they left, Baba kissed the Afghani dirt and put some in his snuff box to keep next to his heart. Later, Amir awoke in the fuel tank feeling as though he was suffocating. He comforted himself with the memory of a spring afternoon he spent kite-fighting with Hassan. When they finally got out in Pakistan, they were thankful to be alive. Yet Kamal had suffocated on the fumes and died. In a rage, Kamal’s father put the barrel of Karim’s gun in his mouh and shot himself.

Chapter Eleven The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Chapter Eleven opens in the 1980s in Fremont, California, a year and a half after Amir and Baba arrived in America. Amir explains that Baba loved “the idea of America” so much that it gave him an ulcer. He believed that the only worthwhile countries were America, Israel and Britain, even though his support of Israel drew accusations from other Afghanis of his being anti-Islam. He was the only Republican among their blue-collar neighbors and even hung a framed picture of Ronald Reagan in their apartment. One day, Baba got into a fight with Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen, the owners of the small grocery store across the street. Mr. Nguyen had asked for Baba’s ID when he wanted to pay with a check and Baba was so insulted that he damaged their property. It was clear to Amir that Baba missed their old life in Kabul and was having trouble adjusting to America. Whereas in Kabul he had been wealthy and influential, in Fremont he worked long hours at a gas station and missed almost everything about home. He saw life in America as a gift he had given to Amir and something he would have to suffer. For Amir, America was an escape from his memories of Hassan.

Amir graduated from high school at the age of twenty, when Baba was fifty. After the ceremony, Baba took Amir to a bar, where he bought drinks for other patrons and became the life of his own impromptu party. When they drove home, Amir was shocked to find that Baba had bought him a Ford Torino to drive himself to junior college. When they went inside, Baba said he wished Hassan was there. Amir’s throat closed up with guilt. Amir also had to grapple with Baba’s disappointment that he wanted to be a creative writer instead of a doctor or lawyer. Amir found release from his guilt by driving his Ford for hours at a time and sitting by the ocean. He was grateful to be starting anew in America.

The next summer, when Amir turned 21, Baba bought an old Volkswagen bus. On Saturdays, he and Amir drove to yard sales in neighboring towns and then sold their wares at the San Jose flea market. The flea market was a cultural epicenter for Afghan families, who dominated the Used Goods section. One one such day, Baba introduced Amir to General Taheri, an old acquaintance of his from Kabul. The “casually arrogant” Taheri did not impress Amir, but his daughter, Soraya, entranced him. Baba told Amir that Soraya had had a relationship with a man that did not work out well and had not been courted since. This did not matter to Amir, who already thought of her as his “Swap Meet Princess.”

Chapter Twelve The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Amir’s desire for Soraya tormented him. At the flea market, he made excuses to walk by the Taheris’ stand just to get a glimpse of her, but he could not muster the courage to talk to her. Finally one Sunday, he asked Soraya what she was reading. This was not a casual question in the Afghani community, because two single young people chatting invited gossip. Soraya knew that Amir was a writer and said she would like to read one of his stories. Just then, Soraya’s mother, Kamila (or Khanum Taheri), showed up and greeted Amir warmly. She was a nice woman with one peculiarity; one side of her mouth drooped. Khanum Taheri sent Amir off with fruit and asked him to visit again. Amir understood that Khanum Taheri, and perhaps the General, saw Amir as a suitor for Soraya.

Every week, Amir visited the Taheris’ booth when the General was away. He chatted with Khanum Taheri and Soraya. He found out that like him, Soraya was attending junior college. She wanted to be a teacher. She told Amir how, as a child in Kabul, she taught her illiterate housekeeper, Ziba, how to read. Amir was ashamed, remembering how he had lorded his literary over the oblivious Hassan. Just as Amir handed her a story to read, General Taheri arrived at the booth and Soraya was forced to hand him the story out of propriety. He dropped it into the garbage can. Then General Taheri took Amir aside and scolded him for having such an open conversation with Soraya in the marketplace.

Later that week, Baba caught a terrible cold but did not wan to go to the doctor. Amir convinced him to see a doctor when he saw that Baba was coughing up blood. The doctor told Amir that there was a suspicious spot on Baba’s lung that he needed to have checked out. That night, Amir prayed for the first time in a very long time. They finally got to see a specialist, Dr. Schneider, but Baba lost his temper when he found out the doctor was Russian-American. They found a new Iranian doctor, Dr. Amani, who discovered that Baba had terminal cancer. Baba refused to prolong his life with chemotherapy and made Amir promise not to tell anyone about his disease. After the diagnosis, Amir and Baba still went to the flea market on Sundays. As the weeks progressed, Baba lost weight and got sicker until one day, he fell on the ground and started having seizures.

At the doctor’s office, the doctor showed Amir Baba’s CAT scans. The cancer had spread to Baba’s brain and he would have to take medications and receive radiation. Once news spread that Baba was dying, many local Afghans came to pay their respects, including the Taheris. Baba refused radiation, so Amir took him home to die. Then Amir asked him to ask General Taheri to go khastegari, to ask for Soraya’s hand in marriage. Baba called and made arrangements to visit the Taheris the next morning. Amir helped Baba dress and drove him to the Taheris’ house, then went home to wait. Finally, Baba called and said that the general had accepted and then put Soraya on the phone. She was delighted but said she wanted to tell him a secret. When the Taheris lived in Virginia, she ran off with an Afghan man. When her father found her and dragged her home, she found out that her mother had suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of her face. Amir was slightly upset to find out that Soraya was not a virgin because he was. At the same time, he knew that he of all people could not hold someone accountable for her past mistakes, so he told Soraya that nothing could change his desire to marry her. Envy tempered Amir’s joy because Soraya was now free of her shameful secret whereas his still plagued him.

Analysis The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Beginning in Chapter Ten, Amir is yanked out of his predictable, privileged life and thrust into one of uncertainty and hardship. Knowing Amir and Baba as we have come to, it is difficult to think of them as refugees, leaving everything they have and know behind in order to save their own lives. Because we know Afghan history, we know that Baba might have lost everything anyway, had he stayed to see the Taliban rule and the United States bomb the land. In newspapers and on the news in recent years, we have seen pictures of refugees and of starving, injured Afghan refugees. It seems as though Hosseini chose to focus on the a wealthy family’s experience to show us what a good, prosperous life was like in Afghanistan. He makes the point that it was not always a wrecked country, even though it has been for as long as many Americans have known about it.

Amir is eighteen when he and Baba flee to Pakistan, meaning that it has been years since Ali and Hassan left. Indeed, he mentions that they have had several different servants in the intervening years. Still, Amir is not at all free from his guilt. Hosseini even introduces Kamal as a foil for Hassan. Like Hassan, Kamal has been raped and no longer smiles. His death and his father’s subsequent suicide suggest one horrifying possibility of what might have happened to Hassan and Ali without Baba’s protection. It is also a warning of what could easily happen to Baba and Amir. So much has changed since Amir was a boy, yet Baba still has the same unflappable courage. When Baba stands up for the married woman, it is the last time we ever see him in his element, in a position of power and defending those who are helpless. Once Baba and Amir come to America, Baba can never be the same because he is no longer in a position to help others.

The The Kite Runner Cliff Notes theme of sacrifice returns in Chapter Eleven, where we see how much Baba has given up in order to ensure Amir a better future. Once a party-giver and benefactor, Baba is now a gas-station worker in a country where he does not even speak the language fluently. He has gone from living in a large, luxurious house to living in a small apartment. Once the person everyone else could depend on, Baba now depends on Amir to help him navigate American life. The incident with the Nguyens makes it clear how out of place Baba is in California. As Amir explains, in Afghanistan the only ‘credit card’ they had was a branch into which a vendor carved a notch for each item bought. When Baba loses his temper after Mr. Nguyen asks him for ID, he is not being irrational; he comes from a place where such a request would have signified extreme distrust. While living in America is hard for Baba, it is a dream come true for Amir. Fremont, California is free of all the places and things that remind him of Hassan, his “harelipped ghost.” As he says, “America was different. America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins. Amir can set his mind on new goals and let the optimistic American spirit carry him as far away from Kabul emotionally as he is physically.

To Baba’s disappointment, Amir is the same person in Fremont as he was in Kabul. He still wants to be a writer. However, their relationship grows closer out of necessity; having lost almost everything familiar, they cling to one another. When Amir graduates from high school and Baba wishes Hassan was there, Amir feels a now-seldom pang of guilt. He does not realize that Baba is feeling worse guilt, because Hassan is his son and deserves the same opportunities as Amir. As Amir will surmise later, Baba may feel closer to Amir in America because Amir is more like Hassan there, struggling, no longer protected by privilege. As much as Amir wants to be swept up in the “river” of America, he is still rooted to Afghan tradition there because of the large community of refugees. From the moment he lays eyes on Soraya, he commits to preserving his roots because she comes from a traditional family.

Amir and Soraya’s traditional courtship creates a little Afghan oasis in the confusion of America, which Baba and the Taheris greatly appreciate. As immigrants, even “former ambassadors, out-of-work surgeons, and university professors” are reduced to selling used goods at the flea market. Baba is a gas station worker and General Taheri a welfare recipient, in the matter of their children’s courtship they feel like important Afghan men again. They are able to live in this reverie until Baba’s diagnosis. From that point on, Amir must watch his father go from a strong, almost legendary figure to a shrunken, weak ghost of his former self. As though to add insult to injury, the cancer spreads to Baba’s brain, the source of his intelligence and his trademark unapologetic opinions. In getting married, Amir restores Baba’s dignity by showing him how much he is needed. Amir needs Baba to go khastegari, to give word at lafz, and to sit with him at the awroussi. Even in his pain and weakness, Baba feels good again because he has an important role to play. Seeing Amir and Soraya’s traditional courtship and wedding also reassures Baba that Amir will not forget where he is from after Baba dies.

At the end of Chapter Twelve The Kite Runner Cliff Notes, Amir’s guilt reappears. As he listens to Soraya’s story, he pities her because he knows she is subject to a sexual double standard. But once Soraya is betrothed to Amir, her parents can stop worrying that no one will ever want to marry her. Amir envies Soraya for freeing herself from her guilt and for being a braver and better person than him. Her sin may be smaller than his, but she has the strength to admit to it at the risk of losing him. Amir himself does not reveal his sin until fifteen years later, when he calls her from Islamabad. Only when he has no choice can Amir admit out loud to what he has done because for him, “America [is] a place to bury [his] memories.”

Chapter Seven The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

The morning of the tournament, Hassan described his dream to Amir. In it, the two boys amazed the people of Kabul by swimming in a lake and proving it contained no monster. Then the boys were lauded as heroes and became the lake’s owners. When Amir said he didn’t want to fly a kite, Hassan told him, “no monster,” and convinced him to proceed. Amir and Hassan were a great team and theirs was one of the last two kites left in the sky. Their hands were bloodied from holding the sharp string, but their hearts were filled with hope of winning the tournament. Amir focused hard and to his surprise, he cut the last, blue kite and won. The true victory for Amir was seeing Baba hollering with pride. Hassan took off to run the blue kite and Amir followed after bringing his kite home. A merchant told Amir that he had seen Hassan running by with the blue kite. He finally found Hassan facing Assef and his two friends, who were trying to steal the kite from him. Assef told Hassan that even Amir considered him worthless, but Hassan defended himself and Amir, saying that they were friends. Amir stood frozen in shock as the fight began.

The chapter is interrupted with Amir’s memories, which appear in italics. The first is of Ali’s words about his kinship with Hassan because they had the same nursemaid. The second is of Amir and Hassan visiting a fortune teller who gets a look of doom on his face while reading Hassan’s fortune. Next is a dream, also in italics. Amir is lost in a snowstorm until he takes Hassan’s outstretched hand in his. Suddenly the boys are in a bright, grassy field, looking up at colorful kites.

Amir transports us back to the moment when he hid in the alley, watching Assef and his friends seizing Hassan. He remembers the blue kite and Hassan’s pants lying on the ground. Assef told both his friends to rape Hassan, but they refused. They consented to hold Hassan down while Assef raped him. Amir saw “the look of the lamb,” the look of defeat, on Hassan’s face.

The chapter is interrupted by another italicized memory. Baba, Ali, and their sons gathered in the yard to sacrifice a lamb for Eid-e-Qorban, in honor of the prophet Ibrahim’s near sacrifice of his son. A mullah makes the meat halal and the tradition is to give one third to family, one third to friends, and one third to the poor. Baba’s tradition is to give all the meat to the poor because he says, “The rich are fat enough already.” Just before the mullah slaughtered the lamb, Amir saw its look of acceptance, as though it understood that its death was for “a higher purpose.” The look would haunt him forever after.

We return to Hassan’s rape. Amir turned away, weeping, still hearing Assef’s grunts issuing from the alleyway. Instead of standing up for Hassan the way his friend had for him so many times, he fled. Amir tried to convince himself that he ran out of fear, but he knew that he felt Hassan to be his sacrificial lamb, the one to suffer for him so that he could live happily. In spite of himself, Amir thought, “He was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?”

Some time later, Amir found Hassan walking down the streets, holding the blue kite. He pretended that he hadn’t seen the rape, but he was terrified that Hassan would know or worse, would show him devotion despite knowing. Hassan said nothing about the rape even though he was bleeding through his pants. The boys returned home and proud Baba wrapped Amir in his arms. Amir was so overjoyed that he momentarily forgot that he had just betrayed Hassan.

Chapter Eight The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

After the rape, Hassan did not spend time with Amir although he still did his chores. A worried Ali asked Amir about Hassan’s torn shirt and bloodied pants the night of the tournament, but Amir pretended not to know what happened. That night, he asked Baba if they could go to Jalalabad; ever since Amir won the tournament, Baba had not denied him anything. When Baba suggested they invite Hassan along, Amir told him that Hassan was sick. Amir looked forward to having Baba to himself, but Baba invited three vans’ worth of relatives and friends along. As they drove along in the car, one friend’s twin daughters recounted Amir’s victory at the kite-fighting tournament. At this, Amir’s carsickness overwhelmed him and he vomited. As they aired out the van on the roadside, Amir saw Hassan’s bloodied pants in his head.

Finally, they reached Kaka Homayoun’s house in Jalalabad. Even though Amir finally had the intimacy with Baba he had wanted all his life, his guilt made him feel emptier than ever. As Amir, Baba, and everyone else slept in the same room, Amir confessed to the darkness, “I watched Hassan get raped.” No one heard him. He realized that he was the monster in Hassan’s dream and had dragged Hassan to the bottom of the lake. That night, Amir’s insomnia began.

A week later, Hassan asked Amir to climb the hill with him and read to him. When they reached their favorite spot, Amir changed his mind and the boys walked back down. After that incident, Amir’s memories of the winter of 1975 are unclear. He could not wait for winter to end and school to begin, even though he had fun with Baba. He made sure to never be in the same room as Hassan, although his loyal friend kept trying to make things better between them. One day, after Amir refused to walk to the market with him, Hassan asked Amir what he had done wrong. Amir told Hassan that he should stop harassing him. After that, Hassan left him alone. One day as they were planting tulips, Amir asked Baba if he would get new servants. Baba was furious and threatened to strike Amir if he ever suggested it again. Ali and Hassan were their family, he said.

When school started, Amir was relieved to have homework to keep him busy. Then one day, he asked Hassan to climb the hill with him to hear a new story. Hassan joined him eagerly. After they picked pomegranates, Amir asked Hassan what he would do if he threw a pomegranate at him. When Hassan said nothing, he threw the fruit at him and demanded that Hassan throw one back. As Hassan refused to fight back, Amir threw countless pomegranates at him until he was stained in blood-red juice. Finally, Hassan smashed a pomegranate against his own forehead and asked, “Are you satisfied? Do you feel better?” before leaving.

That summer, Amir turned thirteen. Even though the coldness between him and Baba had returned, his father threw him a lavish birthday party with a guest list of four hundred people. Assef showed up with his parents and charmed Baba. He invited Amir to come play volleyball at his house and to bring along Hassan, but Amir refused. Then Assef offered Amir his gift, a book he picked out himself. After awkwardly excusing himself, he unwrapped the present alone; it was a biography of Hitler, which he threw into the bushes. Rahim Khan found him and told him a story. He had almost married a Hazara woman, but his family was outraged at the proposition and sent her and her family out of town. Then Rahim Khan told Amir that he could confide in him, but Amir could not bring himself to tell his friend what he had done. Rahim Khan gave him his present, a notebook for his stories. Then they hurried back to the party to watch the fireworks. In one flash of light, Amir saw Hassan serving drinks to Assef and Wali. He saw Assef playfully punch Hassan in the chest before, to his relief, the light faded.

Chapter Nine The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

The morning after his birthday party, Amir opened his presents joylessly. To him, each gift was tainted with Hassan’s shed blood. He knew Baba never would have thrown him such an extravagant party if he had not won the tournament, and to him the victory was inseparable from Hassan’s rape. Baba himself gave Amir a coveted Stingray bicycle and a fancy wristwatch, but they too felt like “blood money.” The only gift Amir could stand to enjoy was the notebook from Rahim Khan. As he considered Rahim Khan’s story about his Hazara fiancée, Amir decided that either he or Hassan had to leave their household in order for them to be happy.

When Amir took his new bike for a ride, Ali and Hassan were in the yard cleaning up the mess from the party. Ali stopped Amir to give him a present from himself and Hassan, a new copy of the Shahnamah, the book from which he had so often read to Hassan. When he got home, Amir buried the book at the bottom of his pile of presents so it would not torment him with guilt. Then he began scheming how to get rid of Hassan. Before he went to bed, he asked Baba if he had seen his new wristwatch.

The next morning, Amir hid his wristwatch and a bundle of cash under Hassan’s bed. Then he told Baba that Hassan had stolen from him. Baba called a meeting with Ali and Hassan in his office. When they arrived, their eyes were red from crying. Hassan lied and said that he had stolen Amir’s wristwatch and money. Amir felt a pang of guilt because he understood that Hassan was sacrificing himself for him as usual. He also understood that Hassan knew everything about the night he was raped, that Amir stood by and did nothing to help him. To his shock, Baba forgave Hassan, but Ali and Hassan had already resolved to leave. From Ali’s cold glance, Amir understood that Hassan had told him about the rape and about Amir’s nonaction. Despite Baba’s begging, Ali and Hassan left. When they were gone, Amir saw Baba cry for the first time. As though echoing Baba’s grief, the skies opened up and it stormed during the dry season in Kabul.
Analysis The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

In Chapter Seven The Kite Runner Cliff Notes, we finally witness Hassan’s rape, to which Amir has been alluding since Chapter One. Hassan’s comparison to the lamb underscores the theme of sacrifice. Hassan is a very brave person, but in the fight with Assef and his friends he does not go down fighting. Rather, he accepts his fate-he gets “the look of the lamb” in his eyes-because his loyalty to Amir makes him willing to suffer even the terribly violent act of rape. Amir, in contrast, is not willing to sacrifice anything for Hassan. Amir is so selfish that he ends up forcing Hassan and Ali out of the house rather than risking the loss of Baba’s pride in him. The Kite Runner can be considered Amir’s journey of learning how to be unselfish and make sacrifices for other people. Even when Rahim Khan makes it his dying wish for Amir to bring Sohrab to Peshawar, Amir tries to make excuses. Ultimately, he goes seeking Sohrab not so much to save the boy, but to save himself from his lifelong guilt. As we have said, it is in the act of running the kite for Sohrab that Amir is finally unselfish. He transforms from the kite fighter, seeking personal glory and attention, to the kite runner, unselfishly bringing joy to someone else.

In Chapter Seven The Kite Runner Cliff Notes, Hosseini uses italicized memories to represent Amir’s emotional dissociation during the rape. In the alley, he is overcome by fear and he sees images. Some of them are of his and Hassan’s solidarity: their being nursed by the same woman, their holding hands, their looking up at kites together. Some of them are manifestations of doom: the sacrifice of the lamb and the visit to the fortuneteller. By breaking up the chapter with harried memories, Hosseini makes it clear that Amir was in a state of panic and internal conflict. Still, he makes a conscious decision to abandon Hassan, whom he feels on some level to be his “sacrificial lamb” and “just a Hazara.” In light of this, we can see the interruption of italicized memories as a representation not only of Amir’s confusion and panic, but the moment when he became a true coward. We could dismiss the act of running away because Amir was a frightened child, but after the rape, his fear of being discovered and his capacity for betrayal only intensifies. As Amir says in Chapter One, that moment in the alleyway defined the rest of his life and, twenty-six years later, sent him on a quest for redemption.

Amir’s guilt begins to consume him immediately after the rape. He becomes an insomniac. He cannot bear to be around Hassan, who reminds him of his guilt by merely existing. Instead of making him right his wrong, Amir’s guilt leads him into a cycle of wrongdoing. First, he lies to Ali and says that nothing happened to Hassan. Next, Amir begins to ignore Hassan, effectively torturing him with silence and compounding his injury. The only thing that sickens Amir as much as his guilt is the fact that Hassan will not do anything to stand up for himself. The incident with the pomegranates embodies Hassan’s insistence on ‘taking the high road’ when it comes to violence and anger. Instead of pelting Amir with pomegranates, he smashes one into his own forehead, as though he is truly incapable of hurting someone else. Later, we find out that even after Amir drove him out of Baba’s house, Hassan considered Amir “the best friend he ever had” and passed onto Sohrab his belief in nonviolence. Hassan’s name means “handsome,” which is ironic because people make fun of Hassan’s appearance; in another sense, it is perfectly fitting because Hassan’s inner beauty and purity of spirit is what makes him such a respectable and lovable character. When Amir throws the pomegranates at Hassan, he is begging for Hassan to absolve him by hurting him. Instead, his torture continues; he sees juice running down Hassan’s shirt like blood, reminding him that Hassan’s blood is on his hands. In the end it is Assef who “heals” Amir by hurting him.

Chapters Seven, Eight and Nine contain clues that Hassan and Amir are brothers and bring into question the idea of family. When Amir watches Hassan get raped, he thinks of Ali’s stories about the Hazara woman who nursed them both, and about the fact that they have a special connection because they “nursed from the same breast.” When Amir suggests to Baba that they get new servants, his father threatens to hit him for the very first time and says that Hassan and Ali are their family. Baba is quick to forgive Hassan even when he admits to stealing from Amir, begs them to stay, and weeps when they leave anyway. From one perspective, we cannot blame Amir for feeling disconnected from Hassan and Ali; after all, he was raised to know them as servants-cherished ones, but servants nonetheless. Amir’s name even means “prince,” making it seem as though he should hold such a view. From another perspective, Hassan and Ali are human beings and it is cruel of Amir to treat them as inferior. Amir’s actions toward his relatives, even though he does not know they are, call into question the importance of family ties.

In the story, there is a significant difference between being like family and being family. Even though Hassan is like a brother to Amir-”the person whose first spoken word had been [his] name,” he still betrays him. When Amir discovers that Hassan was indeed his brother, he feels he must make things right. For him, the blood connection gives new validation to their relationship because he realizes that they really were equals. Suddenly, all Amir’s feelings of entitlement-to his privileges and to Baba’s affection-change because he understands that Hassan deserved those things, too. Family ties also bring Amir a new sense of entitlement to Sohrab. When Amir visits the orphanage in Karteh-Seh, his being the boy’s half-uncle gives him legitimacy. Family ties also prove an obstacle; in order to prove that Sohrab is an orphan, Amir needs proof that the boy has no other family, that his parents are dead. It is ultimately family, Soraya’s cousin Sharif, who makes it possible for Sohrab to come to America.

Nearly everything Amir does wrong, he does in order to win or keep Baba’s attention and affection. His actions come out of his deep-seated belief that Baba blames him for his mother’s death. He does not find out until many years later that Baba was blaming himself all along, for shaming Ali and not being able to treat Hassan like a true son. According to Rahim Khan, Baba was hard on Amir because he was trying to raise him to be like himself but more righteous. The irony is that in trying to redeem his own honor, Baba raised a child who felt neglected and who acted out in fear. When Amir wins the kite tournament, he bridges his and Baba’s worlds through a sport. His true wish, however, is for Baba to acknowledge his special talent for writing. He says, “Maybe Baba would even read one of my stories. I’d write him a hundred if I thought he’d read one. Maybe he’d call me Amir jan like Rahim Khan did. And maybe, just maybe, I would finally be pardoned for killing my mother.” From this statement, we also know that Rahim Khan is in many ways more of a father to Amir than Baba. Rahim Khan is the one who encourages Amir to write and buys him the special notebook that he keeps for so long. He is also the one who holds Amir accountable for his sins and for Baba’s. Not surprisingly, Rahim’s first name means “compassionate”; he is the person who understands people and protects them both by keeping their secrets and by making them atone.

Chapter Four The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Chapter four opens with the story of how Ali became a part of Baba’s family. In 1933, the same year Baba was born, two intoxicated young drivers struck and killed a Hazara couple. Only their five-year-old son, Ali, survived. Baba’s father was asked to decide the young men’s punishment. After sending the young men to serve in the army, he took Ali into his household. Baba and Ali grew up as quasi-brothers, just like Amir and Hassan a generation later. But despite their closeness, Baba never considered Ali his friend just as Amir never considered Hassan his. According to Amir, their ethnic and religious differences kept them from being true friends or family. At the same time, all these years later, Amir says Hassan is “the face of Afghanistan” to him. The boys played and got into mischief together like any other two boys, except that Hassan made Amir’s breakfast, cleaned his room, and did all his other household chores. While Amir went to school, Hassan stayed home to do housework with Ali. After school, Amir would read to Hassan, who loved books despite his illiteracy.

One day, Amir pretended to read to Hassan from a book but made up his own story to trick Hassan. When Amir finished, Hassan clapped and told him it was the best story he had ever read him. Amir was so happy that he kissed Hassan on the cheek, and that night he wrote his first short story. It was about a man who had a cup that turned his tears into pearls. The man grew greedy and tried to find ways to make himself cry as much as possible. It ended with him sitting on top of a mountain of pearls, holding his wife’s slain body. Amir took the story to Baba, but he refused to read it. Rahim Khan read the story and gave Amir a piece of paper on which he had written “Bravo.” The rest of his note explained that Amir had achieved irony in his story, which is something many writers never manage to master. He encouraged Amir to put his talent to use. In the letter, he called Amir his friend, and for a moment Amir wished that Rahim Khan was his father instead of Baba. He was so overcome with guilt that he vomited.

Amir rushed down to where Hassan was sleeping on a mattress with Ali and woke up his friend. After hearing the story, Hassan proclaimed that Amir would be world-famous someday. However, he also pointed out a plot hole in the story. He asked why the protagonist did not just smell an onion to make himself cry instead of killing his wife. Amir was speechless.

Chapter Five The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Before Amir could respond to Hassan’s criticism of his story, gunfire erupted outside. The boys huddled together with Ali until Baba came home. For the first time, Amir saw fear on his father’s face. He was even glad for the violence for a moment, because Baba held him and Hassan close. The events of that night, July 17, 1973, were a precursor to the end of life as Afghanis knew it. What would follow was the Communist coup d’etat of 1978, followed by the Russian occupation beginning in December of 1979. On that July night, the king’s brother, Daoud Khan, had seized Zahir Shah’s kingdom while he was away. Afghanistan had gone overnight from a monarchy to a republic. Tired of listening to the radio news, Amir and Hassan went to climb their favorite tree. On the way, a young “sociopath” named Assef and his friends confronted them. He taunted Hassan for being a Hazara; Assef also had a habit of taunting Ali, whom he called Babalu. He praised Hitler and then said that he wanted to finish what Hitler started and rid Afghanistan of Hazaras. He called Amir and Baba “a disgrace to Afghanistan” for taking in Hazaras. Just as Assef threatened to punch Amir with his brass knuckles, Hassan pointed his slingshot at the bully and threatened to take out his eye. Assef and his friends retreated, but promised to come back for Amir and Hassan later.

On Hassan’s birthday, Baba summoned him to the house as usual to collect his present. To Hassan, Amir, and Ali’s shock, Baba had hired a plastic surgeon to correct Hassan’s harelip. Amir was jealous that Baba was giving Hassan such special attention. The surgery went well and Hassan could finally smile an unbroken smile. Ironically, Amir explains, it was soon after that Hassan stopped smiling for good.

Chapter Six The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Chapter six opens in winter. Amir loved the icy season because the school was shut down for its duration. But he loved winter even more because then he flew kites with Baba, the only activity that consistently brought them closer. The pinnacle of winter for every boy in Kabul was the yearly kite-fighting tournament. Every year, Amir and Hassan saved their allowances to buy materials to make their kites, but they were not very good craftsmen. When Baba realized this, he started taking them to Saifo’s to buy their kites, always buying the boys equally good kites. In the tournament, contestants used their kites’ glass strings to cut others’ kite strings until only one triumphant kite remained in the sky. Hassan was Amir’s assistant. When kites fell out of the sky, especially the last kite to fall, those not flying their own kites would chase them and try to catch them-they were called “kite runners.” Hassan was an exceptionally good kite runner. Once, Hassan convinced Amir to run the opposite way that a fallen kite was floating and sit under a tree with him to wait. While they sat, Amir taunted Hassan a little. Amir was unsettled to see Hassan’s face change the way it sometimes did, as though there was an unfamiliar, sinister, hidden face behind his usual expression. After that uncomfortable moment, however, Hassan’s face changed back to normal and the coveted kite came floating into his open arms.

In the winter of 1975, Amir watched Hassan run his last kite. That year, there was to be the biggest kite tournament the boys had ever seen. Boys from several neighborhoods would be competing in Amir and Hassan’s neighborhood, Wazir Akhbar Khan. One evening, Baba suggested that Amir would win the tournament this year. After that, Amir became determined to win so that he could finally prove to Baba that he was a winner and a worthy son. The night before the tournament, Hassan and Amir huddled under blankets playing cards while Baba, Rahim Khan, and Assef’s father met in the next room. Upon hearing that Afghanistan might get television under president Daoud Khan, Amir promised to buy Hassan a television set one day. Hassan responded that he would put it on the table in his and Ali’s hut. Amir was dismayed than Hassan had accepted his fate of always living in the hut and being a servant. As though he read Amir’s mind, Hassan told him, “I like where I live.”
Analysis The Kite Runner Cliff Notes

Chapter Four brings attention to the theme of tragedy and violence that pervades the novel. We already know about Amir’s violent birth, in which his mother hemorrhaged to death. Now we learn that tragedy was the reason Baba’s father brought Ali into their family; he was orphaned by a terrible car accident. Hassan and Ali’s physical problems were not caused by violence. Still, Hassan’s harelip and Ali’s stunted leg and lazy mouth make them targets for ridicule and violence. The fact that they bear physical signs of suffering while Baba and Amir do not reflects that they are people whose lives are defined by violence and hardship. The source of Amir’s guilt is not so much the violence inflicted on Hassan, but his own exemption from violence. Indeed, it is only when Assef beats him almost to death that he feels “healed” of this guilt. Amir says, “…History isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pasthun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.” In truth, it is not religion but suffering that separates the boys. True, Amir is a Shi’a all his life and Hassan is a Sunni. Yet when Amir has a split lip and suffering to match Hassan’s, he can begin to reconcile their troubled history.

In Chapter Five, war and political turmoil enter the story. Even as a child, Assef is the bastion of this theme because he is a violent person who has no regard for others’ emotions or suffering. He reveres Hitler and thinks that Hazaras do not deserve to live, facts that influence his decision as an adult to join the Taliban and joyfully slaughter Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif. From the beginning of the novel, Amir understands that things beyond his control have great influence over his life. When war enters the story, this fact becomes clearer than ever. Suddenly, no one is safe, no matter what privileges they have or what they believe; anyone can be killed by a stray landmine, bomb, or bullet. The riots in 1973 were a comparatively gentle precursor to the devastation that would follow under the Russian occupation and then the Taliban.

Chapters Five and Six introduce kite fighting and kite running, activities that bring Amir and Hassan closer together but eventually cause a permanent rift between them. In kite fighting, as in any activity, the difference between Amir and Hassan is obvious. Even though Baba makes a point of buying the boys equally nice kites, Hassan relegates himself to holding the string and running the kites for Amir. Just as he is Amir’s household servant, he is his kite-fighting servant. His loyalty to Hassan extends so far that he puts himself in grave danger with Assef instead of running away. As we know, he ends up suffering rape because he is so intent on being a good servant and friend and retrieving the winning kite for Amir. At the same time, kite fighting is an activity that allows Hassan to show how special he is. We got a taste of Hassan’s almost eerie perceptiveness when he criticized Amir’s short story; though an illiterate boy, he was able to point out a major flaw in Amir’s writing. Just as Hassan did not need to see the words on the page to know that Amir’s story was flawed, he does not need to look at a kite or its shadow to know where it is going to land.

Kite fighting brings Amir closer not only to Hassan but to Baba. It is the only sport at which he is proficient, which matters greatly to strong, athletic Baba. Amir admits, “Baba and I lived in the same house, but in different spheres of existence. Kites were the one paper-thin slice of intersection between those spheres.” Amir feels so neglected by Baba that his longing for Baba’s love and respect lead him to betray Hassan not once, but twice. Amir’s victory brings him closer to Baba than ever before, a fact that Hassan’s rape would have overshadowed; because of this, Amir does not stand up for Hassan or tell anyone about the rape. Later on, when his guilt becomes unbearable, Amir prefers to drive Hassan and Ali out of the house rather than admit to what happened and risk losing Baba’s affection. The kite fighting incident underscores the sense in the novel that every action has a consequence or a price. In exchange for his newfound closeness with Baba, Amir must give up his closeness with Hassan.
Kite fighting occurs only twice in the novel, yet the title is devoted to it and it becomes synonymous with the themes of betrayal and retribution. After twenty-six years, Amir still remembers Hassan as “The Kite Runner” because the activity represents both the happiness he and Hassan once felt together and the incident that parted them forever. Amir feels “healed” when Assef beats him nearly to death and he pays retribution for his sin when he adopts Sohrab, but things are still grim because Sohrab will not speak or interact with anyone. It is when Amir runs a kite for Sohrab that things truly come full circle. Amir saves Sohrab from physical harm, but only very reluctantly; Rahim Khan has to trick him into bringing Sohrab to America. Amir is selfish in his charity, not wanting to have another person’s blood on his hands. Yet when he runs the kite for Sohrab, he shows true loyalty and selflessness because he is no longer trying to allay his guilt; he is trying to truly save Sohrab by restoring his faith in life.