The novel The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini is about a boy named Amir. Amir lives in Afghanistan with his father Baba, and their servants Ali and Hassan, who is also his best friend. The story revolves around Amir's troubles as they worsen. While Amir is born in Afghanistan, he flees with his father to America in the 70's when the country breaks out into war. The countries he lives in play a role in that they mirror the circumstances of Amir's life. The countries' condition mimicked the toll the events took on Amir in his life.
In the beginning of the novel Amir is living a comfortable life. His father is well off with money and therefore able to supply Amir and Hassan with expensive presents and kites for their annual kite battles. Similarly Afghanistan is depicted as a great place for Amir to grow. The land is green, with tall, supple trees. Hills dot the outskirts of Kabul, hills that Amir and Hassan climb to sit and read in the evenings. Life for Amir isn’t perfect though; he’s constantly struggling for his father’s affection. He tries playing soccer but he’s awful at it. The only thing he’s very good at is writing, which his father rejects. Afghanistan is not perfect either, there is constant discrimination towards Amir’s best friend as well as all the other Hazaras which is a constant theme throughout most of the book.
Right before the winter of 1975, the main conflict of the book, Hassan and Amir had an encounter with a boy named Assef. He threatened Amir and Hassan with brass knuckles only to be saved when Hassan pulled out a sling shot. As fall is the foreshadow to winter, the encounter is the foreshadow to the main conflict. Winter is a very cold, dark, and because of that, often used to represent dreary times. The Shining, by Stephen King is an example of a horror book set in the winter to give it more of a gloomy tone. The winter in The Kite Runner is also the time when the most tragic moments in both Amir and Hassan's lives: Amir witnesses Assef raping Hassan. Hassan soon falls silent and Amir is filled with guilt. He tries anything to make himself feel better, usually trying to provoke Hassan to hit him. One day Amir frames Hassan by placing money in his bed. His plan backfires though when Ali, Hassan's father, insists they leave. Afghanistan agains follows suit when, in the late 70's, the Soviet Union invades. Afghanistan, which had been relatively peaceful, now breaks out into a power struggle between the warlords, the Taliban, and the Soviet Union. Just as Amir's life had come unravelled, Afghanistan and imploded before his eyes. The breakout of war cause Baba and Amir to flee to Pakistan then to America.
They arrived in Freemont, California where Amir learned English and attended high school while his father worked at a gas station. Amir tried to use America to forget the horrors that happened in Afghanistan. He doesn't forget. They still haunt him from time to time when he says, “It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out” (Hosseini,1). In this America, Afghanistan never went way. It's almost as if the people of Afghanistan packed up a little portion of it and brought it to southern California. Afghani culture still presented itself in Amir's life. Even though he wanted to move passed his tragic experiences in America , it's almost as if he never left Afghanistan. This allows the tragedies he experienced in Afghanistan to follow him to America.
In the final third of the book, Amir returned to Afghanistan to meet his old friend Rahim Khan. When he arrives he is shocked to seen the carnage up close. Buildings are gone, his childhood neighborhoods are barely recognizable, and the orphanage his father built is destroyed, he starts one paragraph with, “Rubble and beggars. Everywhere I looked, that was what I saw” (Hosseini, 244). Most of Afghanistan is in chaos or so destroyed that there's nothing to support the chaos. Not only is the country in ruin, but everything Amir left behind is too. Ali had stepped on a land mine, Hassan and his wife were killed in the street leaving an orphan boy, Rahim Khan was dying, Baba had died of lung cancer, everything that Amir knew in his childhood had died with Afghanistan.
Throughout the entire book however Amir feels or what his condition mimics the condition of the country he resides in. When he’s great Afghanistan is peaceful and prosperous, when he moves to America and can’t escape he memories he’s surrounded by Afghani culture, and when he’s lost almost everything Afghanistan is in ruins. This does a couple of things, it strengthens the sense of the joy or despair that Amir feels by making not only him show these feelings, but all of his surroundings show them too. It also constantly brings up a theme that he’s always connected to Afghanistan. The book really highlights the Afghani's pride for their country and culture and this subliminal connection between Amir and Afghanistan, and that you can always relate the two, highlights that nicely.
Evaluation:
This essay was very rough to be frank. It was first essay of the year so it’s always going to be a little choppy. After reading it, I can already tell what biggest issue was. My organization of thoughts wasn’t very good. My topic sentences were not evident. I tended to describe a scene and its significance then put the actual topic sentence in towards the middle of the paragraph instead of the other way around. This made it hard to have a fluent transition from one topic to another because the reader didn’t know what I was talking about until half way through the paragraph. Since this paper is unorganized and disoriented from the main thesis, I get off topic in a few spots. Like in Paragraph Three I move from talking about how the conditions of the countries relate to the characters, to how the seasons and weather relate to the characters. There was nothing about the seasons in my thesis statement. Almost like a spiral effect: bad topic sentences to bad transitions to rambling. This essay is a great example of one with lack of organization that I’ve been trying to fix throughout the semester. By making every part of the supporting paragraph relate to the topic sentence and the topic sentence relate to the thesis I can write a better essay. Another thing that adds to the messy feel of the essay is the lack of editing I did. Editing is fixed by changing habits. By rereading a few times out loud I can cut down on the amount of spelling and grammatical mistakes and awkward sentences. This essay overall was a very good platform to start my progression because it gave me a few distinct things to improve on.
9/9/12
Period 3
Mrs.Tierny-Fife
How Countries Play a Role in The Kite Runner
The novel The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini is about a boy named Amir. Amir lives in Afghanistan with his father Baba, and their servants Ali and Hassan, who is also his best friend. The story revolves around Amir's troubles as they worsen. While Amir is born in Afghanistan, he flees with his father to America in the 70's when the country breaks out into war. The countries he lives in play a role in that they mirror the circumstances of Amir's life. The countries' condition mimicked the toll the events took on Amir in his life.
In the beginning of the novel Amir is living a comfortable life. His father is well off with money and therefore able to supply Amir and Hassan with expensive presents and kites for their annual kite battles. Similarly Afghanistan is depicted as a great place for Amir to grow. The land is green, with tall, supple trees. Hills dot the outskirts of Kabul, hills that Amir and Hassan climb to sit and read in the evenings. Life for Amir isn’t perfect though; he’s constantly struggling for his father’s affection. He tries playing soccer but he’s awful at it. The only thing he’s very good at is writing, which his father rejects. Afghanistan is not perfect either, there is constant discrimination towards Amir’s best friend as well as all the other Hazaras which is a constant theme throughout most of the book.
Right before the winter of 1975, the main conflict of the book, Hassan and Amir had an encounter with a boy named Assef. He threatened Amir and Hassan with brass knuckles only to be saved when Hassan pulled out a sling shot. As fall is the foreshadow to winter, the encounter is the foreshadow to the main conflict. Winter is a very cold, dark, and because of that, often used to represent dreary times. The Shining, by Stephen King is an example of a horror book set in the winter to give it more of a gloomy tone. The winter in The Kite Runner is also the time when the most tragic moments in both Amir and Hassan's lives: Amir witnesses Assef raping Hassan. Hassan soon falls silent and Amir is filled with guilt. He tries anything to make himself feel better, usually trying to provoke Hassan to hit him. One day Amir frames Hassan by placing money in his bed. His plan backfires though when Ali, Hassan's father, insists they leave. Afghanistan agains follows suit when, in the late 70's, the Soviet Union invades. Afghanistan, which had been relatively peaceful, now breaks out into a power struggle between the warlords, the Taliban, and the Soviet Union. Just as Amir's life had come unravelled, Afghanistan and imploded before his eyes. The breakout of war cause Baba and Amir to flee to Pakistan then to America.
They arrived in Freemont, California where Amir learned English and attended high school while his father worked at a gas station. Amir tried to use America to forget the horrors that happened in Afghanistan. He doesn't forget. They still haunt him from time to time when he says, “It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out” (Hosseini,1). In this America, Afghanistan never went way. It's almost as if the people of Afghanistan packed up a little portion of it and brought it to southern California. Afghani culture still presented itself in Amir's life. Even though he wanted to move passed his tragic experiences in America , it's almost as if he never left Afghanistan. This allows the tragedies he experienced in Afghanistan to follow him to America.
In the final third of the book, Amir returned to Afghanistan to meet his old friend Rahim Khan. When he arrives he is shocked to seen the carnage up close. Buildings are gone, his childhood neighborhoods are barely recognizable, and the orphanage his father built is destroyed, he starts one paragraph with, “Rubble and beggars. Everywhere I looked, that was what I saw” (Hosseini, 244). Most of Afghanistan is in chaos or so destroyed that there's nothing to support the chaos. Not only is the country in ruin, but everything Amir left behind is too. Ali had stepped on a land mine, Hassan and his wife were killed in the street leaving an orphan boy, Rahim Khan was dying, Baba had died of lung cancer, everything that Amir knew in his childhood had died with Afghanistan.
Throughout the entire book however Amir feels or what his condition mimics the condition of the country he resides in. When he’s great Afghanistan is peaceful and prosperous, when he moves to America and can’t escape he memories he’s surrounded by Afghani culture, and when he’s lost almost everything Afghanistan is in ruins. This does a couple of things, it strengthens the sense of the joy or despair that Amir feels by making not only him show these feelings, but all of his surroundings show them too. It also constantly brings up a theme that he’s always connected to Afghanistan. The book really highlights the Afghani's pride for their country and culture and this subliminal connection between Amir and Afghanistan, and that you can always relate the two, highlights that nicely.
Evaluation:
This essay was very rough to be frank. It was first essay of the year so it’s always going to be a little choppy. After reading it, I can already tell what biggest issue was. My organization of thoughts wasn’t very good. My topic sentences were not evident. I tended to describe a scene and its significance then put the actual topic sentence in towards the middle of the paragraph instead of the other way around. This made it hard to have a fluent transition from one topic to another because the reader didn’t know what I was talking about until half way through the paragraph. Since this paper is unorganized and disoriented from the main thesis, I get off topic in a few spots. Like in Paragraph Three I move from talking about how the conditions of the countries relate to the characters, to how the seasons and weather relate to the characters. There was nothing about the seasons in my thesis statement. Almost like a spiral effect: bad topic sentences to bad transitions to rambling. This essay is a great example of one with lack of organization that I’ve been trying to fix throughout the semester. By making every part of the supporting paragraph relate to the topic sentence and the topic sentence relate to the thesis I can write a better essay. Another thing that adds to the messy feel of the essay is the lack of editing I did. Editing is fixed by changing habits. By rereading a few times out loud I can cut down on the amount of spelling and grammatical mistakes and awkward sentences. This essay overall was a very good platform to start my progression because it gave me a few distinct things to improve on.