The Kite Runner Overall Book Review

1. What was the author's purpose(s) in writing this book, and how can you tell? How well was this purpose achieved?
• Hint: If your book has an introduction, it's a good place to look for direct clues about the book's intended purpose and good quotes to include in your review.
3. What are the weaknesses of this book, in your opinion?
8. Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth. You can also analyze a relationship between two different characters.
• Hint: If you just retell the events that happen to your character, that's not "in depth." You will need to zoom in on certain critical moments that truly show your character's nature, and explain how they do.

I think Khaled Hossei’s purpose of this book was to expose the life of an unfortunate Afghan family, and how they dealt with their constant problems. He wrote about Afghan children being bullied, raped, and even killed.  Innocent people were massacred throughout the story just because they were a disliked ethnicity, Hazara.

“They called him “flat-nosed” because Ali and Hassan’s characteristic Hazara Mongoloid features” (Page 9) and “His blue eyes flicked to Hassan. “Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns. It always has been, always will be. We are the true Afghans, the pure Afghans, not this Flat-Nose here. His people pollute our homeland, our watan. They dirty our blood.”” (Page 40)

Hassan, one of the main characters in the story, is a Hazara, and was made fun of it. He was always put down just because he was a different ethnicity. Hassan had no one to be his friend. Not even his only friend, Amir, backed him up. Amir just watched Hassan get raped since he was too much of a coward. Assef, the person who raped Hassan, joined the Taliban, killing hundreds and hundreds of Hazara people.This book really opened my eyes to the world of a Afghan. They would be judged by what they are instead of their actions, and would be scared to express what they felt. I can tell by how he writes about Baba, Amir, and Hassan’s problems in life.

I think that Khaled Hossei did a wonderful job int he story. It has plenty of suspense, setting, history, and emotions. It has nice ending, not too happy, since nothing stays good forever in real life, and not too sad, which would lead to a unfinished book. The reader would want to know more about what happens, so a sad cliff hanger would be a terrible ending. The Kite Runner, however, end with high hopes for a better future towards a child that was saved from the evil forces of the Taliban’s power. I think that the weakness in the book was probably the length of the setting. It took a few chapters for me to get into the book since the characters were described and discussed in detail and through specific events. For example, Assef was drawn as the antagonist in this book by the way he were portrayed as the big bad boy of the neighborhood.

“Of all the neighborhood boys who tortured Ali, Assef was by far the most relentless. He was, in fact, the originator of the Babalu jeer, Hey Babalu, who did you eat today?” (Page 38)

There were many events in the book where Assef totally abuses  Amir and Hassan like how he ambushed them when Amir and Hassan were walking to read at a tree, and the time Assef sexually raped Hassan. Personally, I dislike a lot of setting and characterization since it isn’t very catchy, but I can see how it can be good. It did allow the middle and the end to flow better, making more sense, but I didn’t really enjoy the introduction of the book.

I didn’t really get interested that much when Amir narrated about how the Talibans destroyed and terrorized the streets in Afghanistan, but I guess it might of added to the visualization of how much of a fascist Assef was. Reading descriptions really bore me out since I don’t really find suspense in the location, but more of the story. I would like a good story over a good description any day. This is why I liked the middle to end of the book. It talked a lot about actions and what physically happened.

I think that Baba’s love to Amir and Hassan was not unfair considering that they were both his sons, but in this situation I think the love shared was pretty even.

“It wasn't fair. Hassan hadn't done anything to earn Baba's affections; he'd just been born with that stupid harelip.” (Page 46)

This quote evidenced how Baba's gifts to Hassan angered Amir. His jealousy of Baba's kindaness towards Hassan felt unfair, and undeserving to him. Amir thought that Baba should love and care more about his own son, and not some servant they had. I don’t really blame him for this action since he didn’t know Hassan was Baba’s son, but I think that he should have showed a little more consideration that Hassan was not just a servant. Actually, I think that Baba’s choice of laying low on Hassan being his son was a good idea. If people knew, Amir wouldn’t of grown up any better. He would have been made fun of more, and he wouldn’t have had Baba’s greatness to guide him.

I don’t even think that Hassan would gain from having everyone know he had Baba as his father. He would have been raised by a family that is nearly ashamed to be related to him. I know that Amir would totally avoid Hassan more than he already did acknowledging how much of a coward he is, and Hassan would not only be abused and confronted all the time by Assef, more children and even adults would try to shoo him away.

“Did your father,” he began, eyeing his food, “did your father love you and my father equally?” I thought of a long ago day at the Ghargha Lake, when Baba had allowed himself to pat Hassan on the back when Hassan’s stone had outskipped mine. I pictured Baba in the hospital room, beaming as they removed the bandages from Hassan’s lips. “I think he loved us equally but  differently." (Page 322)

I agree with the road Baba chose for Hassan and Amir, but still, he should have at least tried to keep the secret with Hassan and Amir, not allowing them to spread it out. I understand how hard it might be to break such news to two young children, but I think it should of been necessary. This might of relieved some of the jealousy Amir had when he was growing up since he would know the reason why Baba acted in such a way. I agree with how Amir said he and Hassan were loved differently. Amir had all of Baba's riches while Hassan had Baba's pride. Baba would buy Amir expensive thing, but Hassan was the one Baba had faith in.

Kite Runner 3

The novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is about a child, Amir, that has always been bullied by another boy, Assef, throughout his life. Assef always abused Amir and his half brother, Hassan, in stronger numbers of people like when Amir and Hassan were peacefully going to climb a tree, but Assef and his two friends, Wali and Kamal, decide to attack them. Another time in their childhood where Assef raped Hassan with Wali and Kamal holding him down. This shows how much of a bully he was when he was young, but by the time he got to adulthood and he meets Amir again, he challenges Amir to a one on one fight.

“If it’s him, you let him pass!” Assef screamed. The two men flinched but nodded again. They turned to go. One of them reached for Sohrab. “Let him stay,” Assef said. He grinned. “Let him watch. Lessons are good things for boys.” The guards left. Assef put down his prayer beads. Reached in the breast pocket of his black vest. What he fished out of that pocket didn’t surprise me one bit: stainless-steel brass knuckles.” (Page 287)

This quote shows the arrogance Assef has. He is positive that he will win just because he has the advantage of some brass knuckles over Amir’s bare and wimpy fists. He would of won if not for Sohrab’s advantage over Assef’s brass knuckles, a slingshot. Sohrab’s slingshot gave him more attacking range, allowing him to shoot Assef from afar. The brass ball shot by Sohrab would blind one of Assef’s eyes, letting Amir and Sohrab to flee. This shows how the one time Assef is fought with in an unfair advantage towards him, he loses.

This also shows how mentally disturbed Assef is. He wants Sohrab to experience a bloody fight to the death. This would damage Sohrab’s life mentally no matter if he shot Assef to save Amir or not. Assef always had a problem with killing or hurting innocent people. Assef did nothing but worsen the lives of thousands. He deserved way more than a metal ball in his eye, but I did enjoy it when it happened.

Irrational Fears

Everybody has their likes and dislikes of different foods, but my dislikes are a little bit weird. I have a few weird hates for foods, and a few popular ones. A vegetable that I have found at least a bunch of people hating on is onions.

    Onions are foul tasting ringed slices of bitterness. Their pungent smell reeks in your mouth after consuming them. It emits such a strong odor that it makes people cry. They absorb the genuine flavors of other foods in the dish and replace them with the onion's sour and bitter taste. They have a horrible crunchy texture followed by astringently rancid juices squirting out. Whenever I accidentally bite on one that is inside my food, my whole body freezes with disgust and I feel an urge to puke. I have always been told by my mother that I wouldn't even taste the onions, but now that I think about it, why use the onions in the first place if they are tasteless. When cooked, the onions look like thick strands of hard noodles that haven't been boiled enough, or like long mealworms or maggots that have been rotting in your dish so long, they have stopped wriggling. They have a dreadful taste, texture, stench, and appearance, so I don’t really know why people would eat them.
    I have one really weird food that I would try to avoid biting into, an apple. I really like the taste of apples, but I have a problem with them. Hearing people bite into juicy and crunchy apples is like listening to someone scrape their fingernails on a chalk board for half an hour, but compressed in a minute. I am not sure what is causing me for this to happen, but it has been happening ever since I was little. I would shiver, curl up in a ball, make scrunched up faces, and turn extremely paranoid. I could withstand it for some time, but when it is prolonged, I would turn crazy. Now, even if I think of apples and their sounds, I would shiver and turn cold. I could hear an apple bite from across the room, and start getting goosebumps. This irrational fear of apples has destroyed a great fruit in my life, but I have found replacements for them, like pears.
    I know that the people that read this might go to buy and eat an apple just for me, but I guess I will just try to live through it. I don’t want to feel like the only person with weird and irrational fears of things, so respond to this and tell me what you are afraid of.

Response to Tiffany

Everyone uses abbreviations on the internet, but Tiffany’s quote has got me thinking about the uses of them. I found her amazing quote from Tiffany’s blog:

Many people know me as a person who has random questions in my mind that does not even connect to the topics we discuss. During lunch, a question randomly popped up and I asked if everyone actually LOLs(Laugh out loud) when they are chatting?
Honestly, I usually use LOL incorrectly. I do not laugh out loud. I just smile or have an content face as my expression. Why must we use LOL? Is it because it's shorter than "haha" Why must we use LOL?
Not a freewrite :D so give me some answers why we use LOL

Personally, I use LOL only when I am smiling. When I am actually laughing, and I want to show my laughter, I use LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL or just a simple ROFL(rolling on the floor laughing) and LMFAO(laugh my fat ass off). I find that the longer the LOL I use, the stronger the laughing Impression i would show to the receiving person. Usually, I use a short lol when I am not laughing out loud, but smiling out loud.

On the other hand, I have seen people using LOL when the opposing person told a bad or insulting joke that the person didn't want to embarrass. The person might also send a LOL to try to drop and bypass a demeaning joke that could result in an argument. Sometimes, I use a short LOL to show that I enjoyed a joke or a funny comment, but I have to do something else like pick up a phone call that needs immediate attention. The LOL could suffice for the moment since it isn’t too boring of a feedback, but isn’t too long that there isn’t time to go and do that sudden business.

Another alternative for LOL is a simple haha. I find this more effective since I feel that LOL is too overused and childish. For some reason, I have a feeling that if the LOL is capitalized or lower cased, it would show a level of the humor for feedback. A lower cased lol would be comsidered a weak laugh, and a capitalized LOL would be a solid laugh. In the end, I think that different people have different approaches to giving feedback, but for me, LOL isn’t a very effective one.

The Kite Runner 2

The novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is about a child, Amir, with a middle class father, Baba, that has a stubborn way of not accepting other people's help. He did not want help so he wouldn't show a sign of weakness.

“I work always. In Afghanistan I work, in America I work. Thank you very much, Mrs. Dobbins, but I don't like it free money.” and “...alleviated one of his greatest fears: that an Afghan would see him buying food with charity money.” (Page 130) and (Page 131)

These quotes show how Baba didn't want the free food stamps even when it could be useful. The food stamps could of saved Baba a lot of money from working so hard, but he returned it just because he was such a prideful person. He could of worked less with those food stamps, and he could use the saved time to spend it with his son, Amir. This also shows how self-conscious he is about himself and his actions with wealth. He doesn't want to be seen as a poor person, even thought he is. I think that he is too prideful and determined, and this is why he later dies of cancer.

“He hated doctors and hospitals. To my knowledge, the only time Baba had ever gone to a doctor was the time he'd caught malaria in India. Then, two weeks later, I caught him coughing a wad of bloodstained phlegm into the toilet. "How long have you been doing that?" I said. "What's for dinner?" he said.”(Page 153)

This shows how Baba does not want help, not even from a trained professional that nearly everybody goes at least once in their lives. This shows how his self-confidence in his health has ruined his own body. Even when he knows he is in trouble, he still plays dumb with Amir, trying to change to topic. This attitude shows that Baba is totally stubborn, and that his adamance is the reason he died. His death was deserving, but didn't have to happen. If only he was more open minded to different ways to show his strengths, he would have gotten treatments.

In the end, Baba's own stubbornness killed him in the long run, but if he was more submissive, then he might of lived longer and even happier.

Australia Is Not That Different

Ever since I attended school in the United States, I have gotten questions that have made me laugh, sigh, or even mad. For example I have been asked numerously, “Are there kangaroos jumping around your neighborhood like how we have squirrels?” I would laugh hysterically and in my mind wish that it was true, but sadly answer with a no. I would explain how kangaroos didn’t live in the cities and how we lacked in crazy squirrels, we had plenty of colorful, but noisy birds. Where I lived, Sydney, there were cockatoos, white parrot-like birds with yellow Mohawk-like hair, colorful parrots, black crows, kookaburras, and hundreds of other beautiful birds found nearly in every livable tree. One thing that started out fun, but is now annoying is when people walk up to me and ask me, “Speak some Australian” like Australian is another type of language. I would explain how there is no Australian language, and that it is just an accent that differs from different people. When I say this, people would disagree and say that they don’t have an accent when they obviously do, but they are just so used to this way of speaking that they do not know any different. Plus, I would tell people who ask me, “Are you Australian?” how being Australian is a nationality, and is not running through my genes. I would then compare how being Australian is like how they are American, it is not in your genes. 

Even though I enjoy laughing at how ignorant some people can be, I do get tired of the same questions repeated over and over again like they are the only things people know about Australia. Just today I was asked, “Do Australians dress weird, like do they wear really funny clothes?” and “Is Australia just plain desert?”

This made me surprised, and I answered, “You do know that Sydney is just a city like San Francisco. It is really not that much different.” These questions have made me realize that some people really think Australians have different lifestyles just because it is in a different location as the United States.

Response to Luis

Lack of Attention and Respect Towards Substitute Teacher

I found the following quotes from Luis’s blog, and I am using them because I can really agree with what he is saying:

“I hate it when people try and take advantage of substitutes like if they do not even know the rules of the school... I admit it I also used to take advantage but sometimes there is a limit. Some people take it too far. Some people try and impress their friends to think that they are hard (as in tough).”

I also agree that this past week of substitutes at Alameda Science and Technology Institute(ASTI) have been abused by the students. For example, one of the substitutes that came to help out for numerous occasions has an overly nice attitude. They wait until a student finishes mindlessly distracting them, instead of having the student listen to the teacher first. This person is constantly being ignored when talking, and has been convinced that certain devices during class were allowed when they were obviously just a distraction. I am not saying that I dislike kind-hearted substitutes, but like Luis says, there is a limit. For instance, when the classwork is supposed be done individually, students should not blankly neglect the rules and start socializing just because the current person standing in the front of the class isn’t the normal teacher. I have also seen a few students take advantage of the substitute teacher’s kindness by arguing stubbornly to the substitute when they are obviously out of line to speak in such a way.

“Another thing that I find weird is when a person is concentrated at doing their work so much that they are alone or are not talking. This is weird to me because school is also about having some fun and not work all the time.”

I think that all students are supposed to be independent and quiet when doing individual work. That is why it is called individual work, and not group or partner work. Having students doing their work intensively should be a regular thing, and not something that is irregular and uncommon. I do agree that all work and no fun is not very interesting, but school is not made for children to have fun. Children go to school to learn and grow their intelligent minds, and a bit of fun is just added to lighten up this undesirable journey of education.

The Kite Runner

The novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is about a child, Amir, with a middle class father, Baba, that seems to show as much kindness to Amir as their servant, Hassan. Before Hassan gets abused by Assef, Wali, and Kamal, Amir doesn't fully realize how much Hassan means to him, and how closely bonded they were, but when it happened, Amir sees how loyal Hassan is to Amir.

“It wasn't fair. Hassan hadn't done anything to earn Baba's affections; he'd just been born with that stupid harelip.” (Page 46)

This quote evidenced how Baba's gifts to Hassan angered Amir. His jealousy of Baba's kindaness towards Hassan felt unfair, and undeserving to him. Amir thought that Baba should love and care more about his own son, and not some servant they had. In total, this shows how Amir thinks that Baba's dislike towards his behavior and preferences has made Baba favor Hassan, a nobody, more.

“Even from where I was standing, I could see the fear creeping into Hassan's eyes, but he shook his head. “Amir agha won the tournament and I ran this kite for him. I ran it fairly. This is his kite.”” (Page 72)

This shows how even when Hassan could have been safe just by giving Assef Amir's kite, Hassan didn't do it because he is that devoted to Amir. When this is happening, Amir is listening to this whole thing, but he doesn't stand up for Hassan. On the other hand, he just runs away, and admits he is a total coward. This section of the book shows how Amir takes Hassan's kindness and trust for granted.

“He knew I'd seen everything in that alley, that I'd stood there and done nothing. He knew I had betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time. I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone... I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, and a thief.” (Page 105)

This quote shows just how much Hassan will do for Amir. It showed how Hassan gave more love and care than anybody that Amir knew, even Baba, his own father. Amir that Hassan is way beyond his expectations of what a servant would normally do, and how much Hassan really meant to him. He also gets the picture that Hassan will sooner or later give up on him if he kept taking advantage of him and his faithfulness. He admits to himself that he isn't treating Hassan the way he should, and how if he regrets what he did.