Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
The Kite Runner Quotes by Theme - Coggle Diagram
The Kite Runner Quotes by Theme
Sin and Redemption
"I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake."
"I was a liar, a cheat, and a thief."
"I wanted to be able to breathe again."
His guilt has become a physical form of suffering
“Hassan’s cry was pregnant with surprise and pain”
“I wished baba would just let this woman get raped”
"Because the past claws its way out"
"Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba"
"come there is a way to be good again"
Baba
“Lore has it that he wrestled a black bear with his bare hands”
"Mr hurricane"
“people look at him like sunflowers looking at the sun”
“real men- real boys play soccer just like baba had when he was young”
The irony of this is through Baba’s frustration at his masculinity, he is turning Amir into a meaner lying character
“If I hadn’t seen the doctors pull him out of my wife with my own eyes, I would never believe he was my son”
“I had seen many others do before. He kissed Baba’s hand”
"a boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything"
Nature
Pomegranate tree "hadn't born fruit since"
Ecocritical undertones, absence of nature in Kabul
"wall of ailing corn"
The wall of ailing corn never grows alludes to Ali’s infertility and the underlying unhealthy relationship
“overcast morning”- pathetic fallacy
“Hike up the hill”, aspirate alliteration breathing sound
Friendship
"Then I was screaming, and everything was colour and sound, everything was alive and good"
“You won, Amir agha! You won!”
“We won! We won!”
“For you a thousand times over!” he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared around the corner."
“A loyal Hazara. Loyal as a dog,” Assef said."
"we" and "our"
creates a sense of co dependency
“Hassan never wanted to but if I asked, really asked, he wouldn’t deny me”
Ali
Ali is the opposite of Baba, he does not demand anything, provides a moral code, he refers to the devil but that links to Amir’s behaviour not Hassan
"
Aseef
“He had the wit to joke with an adult but to me it was his eyes that betrayed him”
"
Context
Afghanistan in the 1960s was flourishing, new constitution was ratified to create democratic legislature.
1973 coup against the king.
1979, soviet afghan war begins
When soviet troops pulled out Afghanistan was left to civil war involving extremist groups like the Taliban
Afghanistan is metaphorically raped by the Taliban
Memory/ storytelling
Writes in adulthood about childhood
"memory was hazy"
before the rape uses foreshadowing
after the rape no longer chronological, narrative jumps about
Hosseini wants us to understand that the rape is why he is the way he is
the rape is the epicentre of the novel
"I ran"
Ends with Amir kite running, cyclical narrative, also has cleft lip
change in narrative voice
pre rape events are described in a childlike voice with emmotion
after rape voice changes to state events with little explanation
Allegory
Aseef as an allegory for the Taliban