Courtesy Photo | 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini is a highly praised story of redemption and the...... read more read more
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I was a bit dubious to read the highly recommended book "The Kite Runner," but I found myself pleasantly surprised and thoroughly engrossed in the story of Amir that well lives up to the praise it received.
The story is structured around the Afghan culture and the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban, but it is not a story focusing on the war. It focuses on the humanity of the Afghan people. It is very brief as it is told through the eyes of a child, now grown into an adult who reflects on the mistakes he made and his quest to find the "way to be good again."
Details are filled in later when Amir, the main character and oh-so-humble narrator, returns to his home in Kabul at 38-years old after fleeing to the United States with his father 20 years prior. He finds the city in ruins, the people not far behind.
The transfer from young Amir to the adult Amir changes the tone of the story greatly. He sees the world for what it is: unclean and imperfect. People, including his bear-wrestling father, are revealed to be what they truly are: human beings with flaws. He sees these revelations and the imperfection in his own life and how his culture, just like people, can be destroyed by disease, war and humanity.
He learns no one is perfect, and even his wonderful home is nothing more than a frame of his once happy existence that was filled with wealth and material goods. Now it is empty. Without the possessions that were so important to him as a child and the love of his friends and family, it is a shell like most of the people he meets, hollowed out by the ravages of war and life.
Much like the cancer his father suffers from, he returns to Kabul to find it equally decimated. Throughout the story most of his friends and family are ruined by the Taliban, old age, bad medicine, or simple human failures.
Part of his maturity and growing up is accepting these facts and dealing with them while accepting his cultural roots.
The story does a good job introducing the culture of Afghanistan without it being a history lesson. There is a good description of a wedding ceremony, but it doesn't detach itself from the reading; everything it says is important to the plot, and I was invested in the characters and what they were going through at the time.
Religion in the book is also a factor, but not in the way I expected it to be. Amir's father doesn't believe in a God and doesn't follow a lot of the societal norms. He drinks and scoffs at customs others ardently follow. Amir himself only prays twice in the book, both near-death situations. He only turns to his religion when things are out of his control, not the customary five times a day. The rest of their customs, beliefs and traditions are interspersed throughout the book as well as key phrases and words, slowly painting a picture of a culture most service members may look past.
One of the main themes of the novel is redemption. Amir redeems himself in his own eyes because he has been carrying the guilt with him forever.
A close friend writes him in America and tells him, "there is a way to be good again," prompting him to return to Kabul and make up for his shortcomings earlier on.
In the end of the story, the roles are reversed among Amir and his friend, and he reverts back to his childish joy of flying kites. The book ends, similar to how it begins, with the flying and running of kites.
Most books that come down as necessary military reading do not interest me but there are exceptions, and this is one of them. The book establishes the Afghan people as individuals, very similar to myself, and introduced me to a side of their culture I was unfamiliar with. I was concerned I would not like this one at all, but the pacing and characters lead to an enjoyable and insightful read.
| Date Taken: | 08.05.2009 |
| Date Posted: | 08.11.2009 17:21 |
| Story ID: | 37385 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 287 |
| Downloads: | 162 |
This work, Book Review: The Kite Runner, by Cpl Tyler Barstow, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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