The Kite Runner Discussion Questions

The Kite Runner - Discussion Questions must pay attention to what angle the story is told from as the time period and place change and comes full circle at the end historical knowledge of Afghanistan is important Hosseini uses many images, metaphors and powerful descriptions (some of which recur) look for parallel incidents, and characters as foils Chapter One 1. Why do you think the story begins where it begins? 2. How might the description of the kites be relevant to the speaker’s situation? 3. What is implied about the past? Relevance? Chapter Two 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. What is Hassan like according to the description at the beginning of this chapter? What is our narrator like? How would you describe his friendship with Hassan? How is the mirror symbolic? What was home life like? How was Amir’s relationship with his father? Rahim Khan? Compare and contrast Amir and Hassan’s heritage. What is the historical background of the Pushtans and Hazaras? See p.9 Chapter Three 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. What is the significance of Baba’s nickname, the bear? Comment on the language used to describe Baba in the first three paragraphs. Describe the jealousy between Amir and Hassan. What do you make of the quote on the bottom of p.16? Why does Baba criticize what the Mullah teaches Amir in school and what does he say sin is? Do you agree? Why does Amir feel that his father hates him? How might this be important to how Amir sees the world? What’s Baba’s attitude towards his son? Can we blame Amir for the way he is and what happens to him? Discuss the comment made about children of p. 23. Chapter Four 1. What is Ali’s background? Compare and contrast the relationship between Baba and Ali and Amir and Hassan. To what extent are Amir and Baba comfortable with relations with those of a lower class? 2. What did the boys do together and what do you think of how they read together? 3. Pay attention to the story Shahnamah, the tenth century epic of ancient Persian heroes. Who were the main characters and what the essence of the plot? 4. What was Amir’s first short story about? Significance? p.33 5. What was Rahim Khan’s reaction and why did Amir later vomit with guilt? Chapter Five 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What change occurred in Afghanistan that ended the monarchy? What is Assef like and what is his vision for Afghanistan under the new republic? What happens between the boys and how does Hassan come to Amir’s rescue? What was Hassan’s birthday gift that year and how did Amir react? Significance of the last line of this chapter? Chapter Six 1. Metaphor of the kite for the history of Afghanistan and the relationship between Amir and his father. 2. How was kite running important to the relationship between Amir and his father? 3. On p.57 Amir speaks of asking Hassan to eat dirt. What do you make of the question and the response? 4. What did Amir’s teacher say about Iranians? What was the connection with Hazara’s? 5. What did you think of the card game that the boys were playing at the end of the chapter? Chapter Seven 1. What did Hassan have a dream about? Could there be a connection between it and the novel? 2. “For you a thousand times over!” p.71 3. What was Amir’s vision of how his father would greet him after the competition? Connection to the story he loved? 4. The events of the alleyway. 5. What do you make of the memories and dreams? 6. Amir describes how Hassan looked as like a lamb. Then the scene shifts to a discussion of Eid, which celebrates how the prophet Ibrahim almost sacrificed his son for God. Connection? 7. How does Amir justify his inaction to himself? What do he and Hassan discuss at the end of the chapter? How do you feel about Amir at this point? Chapter Eight 1. Why do you think Amir asks to go to Jalalabad? What upsets him about how the trip takes off? 2. Is Amir feeling any guilt at this point? 3. “I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.” p.91 4. What is the connection Amir makes between the events and the dream Hassan had earlier? 5. Has the relationship between Amir and his father changed much? 6. How does Hassan manage to upset Amir now? 7. Discuss the incident when Amir hits Hassan with the pomegranate. 8. Baba throws a thirteenth birthday party for Amir. Assef shows up bearing a book as a gift: biography of Hitler. 9. What was the story of Rahim Khan’s lost love? What lessons can be learned from it? Chapter Nine 1. Trace the use of the word blood. 2. Why and how does Amir try to frame Ali and Hassan as thieves? 3. What was Hassan’s final sacrifice for Amir and what did it indicate? Chapter Ten (March 1981) 1. 2. 3. 4. Why did Baba and Amir flee their home? Discuss the incident with the Russian soldier. What had happened to Kamal (one of Assef’s group)? Why does Kamal’s father kill himself? Chapter Eleven (Fremont, California 1980s) 1. 2. 3. 4. Describe Baba’s politics. How might you describe Baba’s adjustment to life in California? Compare this with Amir. p.136 How has their relationship changed? How are they described? 5. What was Baba’s sacrifice for Amir? 6. “But I would stand my ground, I decided. I didn’t want to sacrifice for Baba anymore. The last time I had done that, I had damned myself.” 7. Introduction to Soraya and her story. How does her past “intersect” with Amir’s? Chapter Twelve 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. General Taheri’s daughter and the double standard of the sexes. How did Soraya treat her servants differently than Amir treated his? How can you explain Baba’s reaction about taking drugs and food stamps? Baba’s reaction to the Russian doctor? Baba and Amir’s faith. What was Soraya’s secret? How did her ability to share it make Amir jealous? Chapter Thirteen 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. What was the significance of the wedding song they played? What was the real general like? Why? His wife? What double standard existed for men and women in Afghanistan? What changed politically in Afghanistan, the year Amir’s book was published? p.193 Why would Amir say that he would like to be a father like his father and nothing like him? 6. How is the discussion of adoption and blood significant to the main themes and issues of the novel? 7. What do you make of the description at the end of the chapter of Soraya’s infertility and the effect it had on her marriage with Amir? Chapter Fourteen (June 2001) 1. What suspicions that Amir had of Rahim Khan were confirmed? 2. How is the relationship between Soraya and her father similar to or different from Amir’s relationship with his father? Chapter Fifteen 1. What was life like under that Taliban? Chapter Sixteen 1. What had happened to Hassan all these years? 2. Significance of the Taliban banning kiting? Chapter Seventeen 1. 2. 3. 4. Note the simile used to describe Rahim Khan using Ali’s name. Description of Hassan. Significance of Hassan’s dream of the soccer fields? How did Hassan die? What other scene does this echo? Note the description and the metaphor of the kites. 5. Why does Amir resist going to get Sohrab? 6. What secret does Amir learn about his life at the end of this chapter? Can he ever forgive this? Chapter Eighteen 1. What does Amir realize about his connection with Baba? How is this connected to the issue of the past always being with you and a Marxist critique of the novel? 2. What were the cycle of lies, betrayals and secrets? How and why does Amir resolve to end them? 3. Baba as a thief of the worst kind? Or, can his actions be justified? Chapter Nineteen 1. Describe Farid? 2. What point does Farid make about the “real” Afghanistan? What is the essence of any place for that matter? 3. Because of their class, to what extent has either Baba or Amir inhabited the “real” Afghanistan? 4. Why does Farid resent Amir? 5. Note the description of American and Afghanistan (and Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban). 6. Examine the description of the real Afghanistan (p. 244). 7. Irony in the comment about writing to the world about what is going on in Afghanistan. 8. What is the attitude of Afghans to refugees? 9. Significance of the dream on p. 252. Is Amir sacrificing himself? 10. Significance of giving Wahid’s children the watch and planting money under the mattress at the end of the chapter? Chapter Twenty 1. What does Amir learn about his mother from Farid? Why or how? 2. What enrages Farid about the director of the orphanage? Compare Amir’s reaction to Farid’s? What moral calculus does the director use to justify his behavior? Is he right? Chapter Twenty One 1. What do you make of Amir’s memory of what he and Hassan did to the turtle? How might this be related to what the Taliban did to Afghanistan? 2. Note the description of Amir’s house and of Kabul. 3. What do you think of the incident in the stadium? Chapter Twenty Two 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. How does Assef explain what he and the other Taliban were doing? Should Amir and Baba stayed in Afghanistan? Note the description of Sorhab. Discuss how Assef came to believe in God and how his own past came back to him. Note the reference to sacrifice once more on p. 298. Examine the description of Assef’s beating of Amir. How is this beating similar to and different from Assef’s own beating at the hands of the Russian soldier? 7. In what way did Amir feel healed? 8. Sohrab rescues Amir just like his father had years ago. Thoughts? Chapter Twenty Three 1. Why does Amir dream of wrestling a bear? How does this memory replace an old one? 2. Amir injures his lip just like Hassan’s. 3. How does Rahim Khan hope to redeem himself? 4. What do you make of the letter Rahim Khan sends Amir? True redemption is when guilt leads to good? Chapter Twenty Four 1. Why does Sohrab run away? p.334-335 2. Why does Sohrab take so many baths? Chapter Twenty Five 1. When and why does Amir believe in God? 2. Amir is now the one who has to prove his worthiness (like Hassan did when he spoke of eating dirt), to convince Sohrab to go with him and continue to live. 3. What lessons can we draw from this story about life? 4. Why was Baba a man torn between two halves? Why does this thought no longer sting Amir? 5. Amir runs the kite for Sohrab at the end – for you a thousand times over. 6. Is this a satisfying end? Does it suggest that there is hope to overcome class hierarchy or political problems in Afghanistan?