The Kite Runner (Chapters 1-6)

During the first few chapters of The Kite Runner, it started off with one of the main characters, Amir as an adult living in San Francisco and getting a phone call from an old friend in Pakistan. As he gets off the phone he starts to recollect times of his youth, starting up around 1960 into 1975. He was around 12 years old at the time when things went downhill for him and his country. The flashback starts with all the people that have impacted Amir at this age. Such as his father, who he calls Baba, Ali who was the servant of the house, Hassan who was the servant’s son, who Amir spends most of his time with, and the detail that his mother had died giving birth to him. Amir, doesn’t have a good relationship with his father and as a result every time his father, who treats Hassan almost as a son, shows Hassan a little more attention than Amir he resents it. I particularly don’t like Baba because he doesn’t pay the attention he should to his son. For example, in chapter 2 when Amir and Baba have lunch one day together , Amir told his father that he thought he had cancer, all Baba did was grunt and to go get a soda from the car. Amir desperately requests his father’s acceptance but rarely receives it. No child should have to endure that kind of unspoken abuse. Then book then goes on to speak about different activities that Amir and Hassan shared during their childhoods. During most of their time, Amir reads to Hassan, stories in his mother’s books. Amir likes to read so much that instead of reading to Hassan he makes one of his own stories, Hassan, after hearing it loves it. Amir, feels rejected by his father when he refuses to read his story. Toward the end of their discussion, gunshots are heard from the street for a little under an hour. The morning after the gunshots, the two boys decided to go climb a tree but are stopped by the neighborhood bully, Assef, who Amir refers to as a sociopath. Assef has the intention of beating the boys up but Hassan steps up and threatens Assef with a sling shot saying he will take out his eye if Assef didn’t leave them alone. Hassan’s birthday is in the winter and Baba always gets Hassan a gift. This year it was surgery for his lip, because he had a harelip. This part of the book foreshadows something about Hassan, and about an event that causes him to stop smiling. Also, from what I’ve read so far it seems that Hassan has a better character and more strength in him than Amir, which is showing more of Amir’s flaws. The season’s change in chapter 6 and it’s winter. Winter is the season for kite flying, and every year there is a kite flying tournament. The tournament started early in the morning and would only end when the last kite was out of the sky. This tournament was not just for fun, it was also for social order. They way Baba looked at it was, as his people could fight in war, they could fly their kites. Hassan was one of the best kite runners Amir had ever seen. Amir becomes nervous about the kite tournament and goes to Hassan in need of assurance. He feels comfortable with Hassan because he feels that Hassan can read his mind, since being so close to him.