The Kite Runner: Final Exam Themes

"Sometimes in the early evening, I parked the car and walked up a freeway overpass. My face pressed against the fence, I'd try to count the blinking red taillights inching along, stretching as far as my eyestould see. BMWs. Saabs. Porsches. Cars I'd never seen in Kabul, where most people drove Russian Volgas, old Opels, or Iranian Paikans.

Almost two years had passed since we had arrived in the U.S., and I was still marveling at the size of this country, its vastness. Beyond every freeway lay another freeway, beyond every city another city hills beyond mountains and mountains beyond hills, and, beyond those, more cities and more people.

Long before the Roussi army marched into Afghanistan, long before villages were burned and schools destroyed, long before mines were planted like seeds of death and children buried in rock-piled graves, Kabul had become a city of ghosts for me. A city of harelipped ghosts.

America was different. America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins.

If for nothing else, for that, I embraced America." (p. 136)


        This passage develops the idea of hope in the novel.  Hosseini uses imagery, metaphor, and contrast to illustrate this idea.  In the first two paragraphs of this passage, the description of the country's vastness gives us an idea of the interminable nature of the hope that the protagonist, Amir, feels.  When Hosseini says, "Beyond every freeway lay another freeway, beyond every city another city hills beyond mountains and mountains beyond hills..." an image of the boundlessness of hope that America presents is given to the reader.  The author contrasts this in the following paragraph with metaphor, calling Kabul "A city of harelipped ghosts."  The tone of this paragraph is dark and ominous, representing Amir's past of regret, loss, and sorrow in Afghanistan.  The idea of ghosts illustrates the happiness that Amir once felt about Afghanistan, and that the joy perished with his loss in friendship with Hassan, a harelipped boy.  It portrays Afghanistan as a hopeless place.  The last paragraph serves to unify the preceding paragraphs, culminating the contrast to give us a complete idea of hope.  Hope is the future, blissful and oblivious, and it lies in America.  Afghanistan is a place of darkness.