Characterisation

Question 1

Why do we as a reader have any love for Baba and Hasan?

Answer 1

It is the examination of Amir’s love for these characters as the narrator which creates any affection that we as readers hold for them and which drives the story- having only Amir’s perspective to rely on

Question 2

How may Amir be a fallible narrator?

Answer 2

as he does or says things which might undermine our trust of his narration such as his attempts to justify his actions towards Hassan or exaggerated descriptions of his fathers greatness

Question 3

The Kite Runner is a novel which examines the turbulent history of Afghanistan between what years?

Answer 3

1970-2001

Question 4

What quote from the second chapter suggests that Amir has always felt distanced from Hassan due to their ethnicity and statuses in life?

Answer 4

“I never thought of Hassan and me as friends”

Question 5

Why can Amir be perceived as fallible due to the fact early in the novel he claims that he “never thought of Hassan and me as friends”?

Answer 5

as it is clear from the tales he relates that Hassan was indeed his closest, and possibly only friend

Question 6

Why may Amir desire to distance himself from Hassan early in the novel by stating in Chapter 2 that “I never thought of Hassan and me as friends”?

Answer 6

possibly as a result of his childhood jealous and of his later guilty colouring earlier events

Question 7

Why can it be inferred that Amir’s relaironship with Hasan was the defining relationship in his life despite the fact he claims to have “never thought of Hassan and me as friends?

Answer 7

as the novel itself is named after Hasan and the way the novel centres around the terms of their great friendship or in terms of Amir’s guilt over his betrayal of that friendship such as on his wedding day when he wonders if Hassan has married and “whose face he had seen in the mirror under the viel”

Question 8

What is a clear example of how Amir always thought of Hasan due to their defining relationship?

Answer 8

the fact that on his wedding day when he wonders if Hassan has married and “whose face he had seen in the mirror under the viel”

Question 9

What does Amir tell us in the opening line of the novel?

Answer 9

that the person he is was formed on the day in the alley in 1975

Question 10

How is it clear that his feelings fro Hassan were a positive force in his life?

Answer 10

as his desire to write is formed by his time spent reading, and changing stories to Hassan

Question 11

How can Amir’s desire for marriage and his yearn for children be seen as a link to Hassan?

Answer 11

as this can be seen as his way to recreate his own childhood with the chance to redeem himself

Question 12

How does Amir become the man his father wanted him to be?

Answer 12

by retrieving Sohrab from Kabul and literally fighting for his possession

Question 13

How is it clear that Amir uses his writing to escape his guilt?

Answer 13

as it was first used to hide from the lack of love from his father and later in the novel we learn that he admits he is not currently writing about the country, hiding again from the reality of which he fled.

Question 14

How can the Kite Runner be seen as Catharsis for Amir?

Answer 14

as he attempts to make sense of his various actions and emotions by arranging them into a coherent story

Question 15

How does Hassan exist in most of the novel?

Answer 15

as a presence looming over the narrative rather than as a character taking parts in events

Question 16

In what chapter is Hassan’s cleft lip corrected?

Answer 16

chp.5

Question 17

Hassan was born into servitude but does not appear to resent this. Why does he not suffer the same need as Amir to strive for his father’s affections?

Answer 17

as Hassan receives the warmth and love from Ali

Question 18

How may Amir have self-edited the hardships faced by Hassan prior to the rape?

Answer 18

his 30 years of guilt may have coloured the reality of Hassan’s treatment as a Hazara and a servant in order to remember his friend as happy and carefree

Question 19

What suggests that actually Hassan’s life was not carefree and happy?

Answer 19

he would greet Amir’s question about eating dirt and the pomegranate attack with a willingness to take on whatever is forced upon him which shows a child who is used to carrying burdens and coming off second best

Question 20

How does Hassan open and close the letter to Amir?

Answer 20

with religious invocations

Question 21

Hassan opens and closes the letter to Amir with religious invocations- how else does Hassan show religious qualities?

Answer 21

during Amir’s pomgerante attack, Hassan literally turns the other cheek

Question 22

How is it clear that Hassan does not hold a grudge against Amir for his past actions and is not weighed down by those actions as Amir is?

Answer 22

in his letter he uses such phrases as “I pray that this letter finds you in good health”

Question 23

How is it clear that Amir did not deal with the Hassan situation right after Sohrab’s molestation by Assef is clear?

Answer 23

as it is only then that Amir finally understands what Hassan had suffered and how his one-sided guilt caused more damage to their relationship than the rape itself.

Question 24

How does Amir describe his father?

Answer 24

as “a towering Pashtun specimen”

Question 25

How is it demonstrated throughout the novel that Baba has a powerfully charismatic personality which affects the people around him?

Answer 25

Rahim Khan describes him which a black glare that would “drop the devil to his knees begging for mercy”

the reaction of the man who kisses Baba’s and after protecting his wife from the rape of a Russian solider

From the men in the bar in Hayward who became friends and admirers of Baba in a single evening after Amir’s graduation

Question 26

Why does the story which Amirs tells of his father wrestling with a black bear give us an example of the high regard in which he holds his father?

Answer 26

as it is the kind of story which appears more like a myth or a fable than a true anecdote and suggests that Amir’s regard is almost a form of worship of his father as a a god or idol

Question 27

What is another example of Amir’s poor self-esteem and guilt?

Answer 27

the death of Baba’s wife, Sofia upon Amirs birth

Question 28

When does Amir finally see Baba’s treatment of Hassan as fair rather than an insult whereby he is seen to be of no more importance to his fetter than the servants son?

Answer 28

when it is revealed that hassan was Baba’s son

Question 29

How is it clear that the ethnicity of Afghans was a prominent social indicator through the construct of Ali?

Answer 29

Ali was named after the brother in law to Myhammed, the believed true inheritor of the Islamic faith by Shi’a muslims

Question 30

What is the function of Rahim khan?

Answer 30

he acts as a surrogate parent for Amir providing the support, guidance and understanding that he fails to get from his father

Question 31

When Rahim Khan reappears later in the novel- what is he the figure for?

Answer 31

redemption

Question 32

What does the name Rahim mean?

Answer 32

compassionate

Question 33

How does Amir describe Soraya’s hair which demonstrates her feminity?

Answer 33

“smelled like apples in her hair”

Question 34

Who does Amir reserve his most colourful and poetic imagery for?

Answer 34

his wife, Soraya

Question 35

What does the name Soraya mean?

Answer 35

Princess

Question 36

Where does the name Soraya come from historically?

Answer 36

Soraya was the name of the wife of King AManullah Khan, the reforming king of Afghanistan who was the first ruler of the country following the final Ango-Afghan war.

Question 37

What is the effect of using the name Soraya which derives from the wife of King AManullah Khan, the reforming king of Afghanistan who was the first ruler of the country following the final Ango-Afghan war. ?

Answer 37

as by using her name, Hosseini connects the story back to a more hopeful and peaceful time in Afghanistan’s history

Question 38

How are we shown that the treatment of the Afghan people by the Taliban is a form of bulling itself on a larger and more comprehensively violent scale?

Answer 38

by the connection from Assef as childhood bully to high ranking member of the Taliban

Question 39

What suggests that Assef does not hold to a struct moral and religious code that the taliban espouse which has the effect of demonstrating the hypocrisy of the Taliban and their use of religion for their own twisted agenda for power?

Answer 39

the fact that Assef wears Western-styled sunglasses and has a sexual preference for children

Question 40

What can be suggested from the fact that Assef wears a Western-Styled sunglasses and has a sexual preference for children?

Answer 40

this suggests that Assef does not hold to a struct moral and religious code that the taliban espouse which has the effect of demonstrating the hypocrisy of the Taliban and their use of religion for their own twisted agenda for power

Question 41

By placing Assef, whom Amir describes as a ‘sociopath’, at the centre of the most violent and disturbing parts of the novel-bullying, rape, mass murder, execution-how do we see how the problems in afghanistan over the time period covered by the novel are as a result of?

Answer 41

as a result of the pervasive violation of rights and laws by and against many different groups

Question 42

Sohrab continues a dynasty of discarded children, starting with Ali who was made an orphan, moving down through Hassan who was illegitimate and abandoned by his mother, and finally Sohrab who was orphaned due to the Taliban. In this way, how can these three characters be seen as representative of their ethnic group?

Answer 42

as Hazaras, they could be said to have been similarly orphaned and abandoned by the Afghan state

Question 43

Sohrab continues a dynasty of discarded children, starting with Ali who was made an orphan, moving down through Hassan who was illegitimate and abandoned by his mother, and finally Sohrab who was orphaned due to the Taliban. As Hazaras, they could be said to have been similarly orphaned and abandoned by the Afghan state. How could it be said metaphorically that Hosseini gives hope for their drawing back into the mainstream?

Answer 43

the fact that Amir, an ethnic Pashtun, rescues Sohrab suggesting a potentially positive future for the remaining Hazara’s

Question 44

Sorhab is, at least for Amir, a subsistute for Hassan. How is it clear that Sohrab has had a far more traumatic upbringing in his childhood?

Answer 44

the fact that he attempts to end his own life

Question 45

Who are Sofia and Sanaubar?

Answer 45

they are the absent mothers of Amir and Hassan

Question 46

How is Sofia, Amir’s mother, absent in his life but also present?

Answer 46

through his love of books, reading and writing

Question 47

What moment of the novel suggests that goodness can prevail even through the hardest of times?

Answer 47

When Amir later meets a beggar in the debated Kabul who knew his mother who is a symbol of goodness and purity

Question 48

How is Sanaubar depicted?

Answer 48

in very earthly terms as a sexy and sexually active woman who Amir describes as a “beautiful but notoriously unscrupulous woman who lived up to her dishonrouabel reputation”

Question 49

How does Amir describe Sauaubar?

Answer 49

as a “beautiful but notoriously unscrupulous woman who lived up to her dishonrouabel reputation”