Worksheet for The Kite Runner
By Khaled Hosseini
Chapter 1
1. What facts do you learn about the narrator on Page 1?
2. What does the narrator say he has learnt about life? Write this in your own words as well as copying the quotation.
3. What personality traits are suggested by “it’s wrong what they say about the past…my past of unatoned sins”
Chapter 2
1. Compare the two young boys. Note similarities and differences in two columns. E.g. different attitudes to sling shots, ethnicity; similarities like enjoyment of tree-climbing…
2. List 5-6 important features of the setting.
Chapter 3
1. Vocabulary building: List 10 or more words you do not know. Use dictionary to find meaning.
2. Character: Baba
a) Describe his appearance using quotations
b) What kind of relationship does Amir have with his father? Give evidence.
c) Baba built an orphanage. Describe what kind of man he is. Give at least two descriptions with quoted evidence.
d) Quote the explanation he gives to show there is only one sin. What is that sin?
3. What activities did Baba use to try to develop Amir’s character towards the boy he wanted in his own image?
4. Explain in 150 words why Amir is deeply upset at the end of Chapter 3.
Chapter 4
1. Do you agree that Amir and Hassan were not friends? (p.24) Explain.
2. List 5 words which are not familiar to you. Use a dictionary. Write the word, the page, and a meaning which fits.
3. How did Amir use his ability to read in his relationship with Hassan?
4. How does Hassan feel about words?
5. In what ways is there a parallel (similar pattern) between these (Q3 and 4 above) and what happens about Amir’s writing?
Chapter 5
1. What is going on at the start of the chapter? Give details.
2. What effect does this have on the way the country is governed?
3. List briefly what you are told of Assef p.35-6.
4. P.37. What attitudes does Assef have about the new regime and about Hitler? What vision does he have about the future of Afghanistan? Use quotations as well as your own words.
5. How do Hassan and Amir react? Why?
6. P.40 Two years have passed. What happened to Hassan on his birthday? Why is it unusual?
Chapter 6
1. Who is kite-flying important to and why?
Chapter 7 Triumph and Sacrifice
Head up two pages for character notes, one for Amir, one for Baba or Hassan. Note how the character develops, changes, learns. For each point you make support with quotations. Use note form, not sentences. At the end of the observations for each chapter, write HOW the author has shown the character development in that chapter (e.g. by using…metaphor, telling of actions, using comparisons between characters, by telling us what to think in the narrator’s voice, by word choices to create our emotions etc).
1. Hassan’s dream shows unity between the two boys. What servant’s duties does Hassan do on p.56-7?
2. How does the writer create the mood in the city? Technique: By using the details of music, laughter, action, snowballs, colour. Quote some.
3. How does the writer make Amir sound nervous? Technique: He uses rhetorical questions e.g.
Amir is knowledgeable about what to do p.56, persistent, nervous with his father watching. He is intoxicated with success p.61 shown in the technique of using sentence fragments. “All I smelled was victory. Salvation. Redemption.” Lots of sentences begin with “I” to share his feelings, quote some:
We are told the narrative details of the final success. The technique of ellipsis adds a dramatic pause p.62: “And then…I didn’t need to hear the crowd’s roar to know.”
Hassan gives the whole victory to Amir: “You won, Amir agha! You won!” (Technique=dialogue)
p.63 Flash forward technique “The next time I saw him smile unabashedly like that was 26 years later, in a faded Polaroid photograph.” This warns the reader of the seeds of trouble sown at the height of celebration.
p.64 Amir’s excited feelings are expressed in imagining how his father will react with deep pleasure and pride. Amir just wants to live up to expectations. Quote:
p.65 Hassan “never missed any of the five daily prayers. Even when we were out playing…” showing his dedication, routines, certainty in his faith.
Amir is very fearful for the missing Hassan, shown by his asking people to help him, putting up with racial insults. Quote:
p.67 The confrontation. Hassan is defiant as shown in the detail p.67 “fist curled, legs slightly apart”. Skilled, clever – he had caught the blue kite, “my key to Baba’s heart”. Staunchly loyal, unwilling to give up the kite for Amir despite Assef’s threats.
p. 68 Assef insults Hassan and his race with a simile: “A loyal Hazara. Loyal as a dog.” Racial prejudice and contempt.
Hassan remains loyal despite this insult: “Amir agha and I are friends”
p.69 Hassan is attacked by three thugs. The author avoids the details of the indecency using the technique of switching to a memory, written in italics. The remembered fortune teller saw something unpleasant in Hassan’s future, perhaps this attack. The remembered snowstorm is a time he was rescued by Hassan.
p.70 The author describes the scene in detail (quote some) – junk, garbage. Hassan is linked as he has been treated as garbage, a Hazara cast-off, a used commodity without an identity: “It’s just a Hazara”
The narrator tells the reader that Hassan is resigned and is raped. The watching Amir escapes again into a memory as he cannot face this reality in front of him. This memory is of Ramadan, the last month of the Muslim calendar, and a biblical Old Testament story of sacrifice: Ibrahim’s preparing to kill his own son. Baba takes part in the Ramadan ceremony (financially) but resents the time for prayers and rituals.
Technique of comparisons: Amir sees the same look in the sheep’s eye, the victim, as he saw in Hassan – italics show this is a later reflection. The last section of the narrative tells of emotions and inner conflicts. Key moment = indecision to stand up for Hassan or run, “I ran because I was a coward”. Worse than this: “Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world”. The unspoken words at the end have a strong impact.
Technique: Rhetorical questions show how worried and uncertain he is: “Did he know I knew? And if he knew, then what would I see if I did look in his eyes? Blame? Indignation?”
Note the hollowness of the anticipated triumph when he presents the blue kite to his father, but Amir enjoys being in his father’s arms.
What could Amir have done? What difference would it have made?
Chapter 8
Amir lies to Ali and Baba. Hassan avoids Amir, lies to his father, withdraws.
Technique: recurring image of “corduroy pants discarded on a pile of old cricks in the alley.”
Amir has achieved respect from his father for his success with the kite so finally has the attention he has sought.
Technique: Contrast between how he should feel (triumphant, enjoying the attention, feeling worthy of love), and how he does feel: “I felt like sticking a knife in my eye”
Technique of visual image to shock the reader so that we see how serious he is. He feels unworthy of life, totally to blame for the rape of Hassan.
Technique of reminding the reader that this is a memory: “that was the night I became an insomniac” p. 81
Hassan’s attempts at rekindling the relationship with Amir fail. They cannot communicate. Neither can share the truth. Hassan again takes the blame: “I don’t know what I have done, Amir agha.” Amir pushes Hassan away and asks Baba to get rid of him and his father Ali. Baba is deeply upset (we later understand why better) and refuses because of tradition.
p.86 Amir writes to Hassan to retaliate as he hits him with pomegranates. His way for Hassan to “give me the punishment I craved”, links to the idea on p.1 when he says you cannot bury the past. He cannot cope with the guilt.
Question: Boys often fight to solve their differences. Would that have helped? Justify your opinion.
p. 87 Baba is paying less attention to his son in the evenings, and is not involved in Amir’s stories. A birthday party for 400 shows Amir that the party is really about his father, not him. Baba is show as having been generous to others who want to repay him during the party.
CLIMAX of ch 8 = confrontation between Amir and Assef and his father. Baba does not notice anything, emphasising the distance between them.
Note that Amir does not accept Assef’s invitation to volleyball, a small moral victory which shows he has some methods of standing up for himself.
Techniques: Symbol of the book on Hitler from Assef reinforces Assef’s racial hatred for Hazara’s and is a direct attack on Amir which the parents do not understand. Sign of hope: Rahim Khan’s opening the topic of race relations with Hazaras by recalling his own warm feelings for the Hazara woman he loved. He described widespread family shock at his relationship and the lesson: “In the end, the world always wins”. She would have suffered.
The moment when Amir could have told Rahim Khan of his guilt passed. The horror returns, in another humiliating treatment of Hassan, the servant, by Assef, the guest, in the distance.
Chapter 9 p. 94 The Betrayal
Opening birthday gifts – the notebook from Rahim Khan was “the only one that did not feel like blood money”. Amir sets up Ali and Hassan, plants money and the watch his father has given him. Hassan takes the blame: “his final sacrifice for me”. Amir realises that Hassan knows that he knows of the rape p.98 “I loved him in that moment…I was a liar, a cheat and a thief.”
Baba forgives Hassan. Morally this is interesting to the reader but beyond Amir’s understanding. Amir realises that Ali has been told everything. Amir’s opportunity to confess passes as Baba, Ali and Hassan drive away.
Chapter 10 p.102 Escape from bad to worse
Now in 1981, Amir is 18. With Baba and many others Amir leaves Kabul at 2am with Karim, the people smuggler in an old Russian truck. They are promised a trip to Jalalabad, the Kyber Pass, and over the border to Peshawar in Pakistan. Vomiting, and very uncomfortable, but the emotional baggage is even worse.
Just as Amir has been a traitor to Hassan, informants in Kabul had been everywhere in the city they have left. No-one could trust friends or neighbours as people were paid by the Russians in power to spy on each other. Details of Russian patrols, tanks, corruption, blackmail, payments to soldiers at the checkpoints paint a frightening picture.
N.B. Baba is a victim in the truck BUT (p.107) challenges the authorities, risking his and everyone’s life, when the soldier wants to take the young woman as payment. “Ask him where his shame is…” “War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.” Baba is prepared to die rather than allow indecency. A second soldier kills the young attacker.
p. 109 Technique: literal imagery, sights and smells (quote some)
Baba takes some soil from Afghanistan as they leave his country. Travel in the fuel tanker is appalling. The sound of Baba’s watch is so small but a symbol of his reassuring love and protection drawing him into memories of happiness with Hassan. This brief pleasure is extinguished by the roadside death of Kamal and the suicide of his father.
Chapter 11 America
1980s. Baba is struggling with American politics. “Baba loved the idea of America. It was living in America that gave him an ulcer.” He criticised the lack of support for Palestinians, the boycott of the Olympic Games, the lack of American concern over Russians killing Afghanis.
Technique: Contrast Baba struggled with English. He was reduced from being a well-known businessman in Kabul to pouring petrol in America, fighting with elderly shopkeepers. “For me, America was a place to bury my memories. For Baba, a place to mourn his.”
p. 120 Closeness develops. America is Baba’s “one last gift for Amir”. Baba is still proud, returning charity coupons. His generous nature (p.123) makes him able to “start a party with strangers”. The gift of a car comes with a message to the reader who may have forgotten Hassan: “I wish Hassan had been with us today”.
Technique: metaphor of hope: “America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of the past”
Old bus, garage sales, flea market, Afghanis find a role in their new country. General Taheri clings to the past in his title, his manners, his belief that he will return home. Amir falls for his daughter Soraya.
Technique: irony Baba speaks of Soraya’s unwise past with another man, but Amir thinks of his own failings: “It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes a single day, can change the course of a lifetime, Amir” (p.131)
Chapter 12 Traditions, Folklore, Love p. 132-152
Tension of being in love, with the risk of rejection and offending Soraya’s family. Honour and pride are demanded knowing the acceptable ways to behave. Obviously Soraya's family have found out all about him.
Baba is unwell. Upset about having to see a doctor from Russia (the country which invaded Afghanistan, the reason for loss of life and families having to leave), he finds he has cancer. Amir is worried about a future without Baba. “What’s going to happen to you, you say? All those years, that’s what I was trying to teach you, how to never have to ask that question”.