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Dave Melsness

June 19, 2009

Innocence and Experience: Kite Runner

The novel Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a powerful story about a childhood

friendship between two boys, Amir and Hassan. Hassan is unbelievably loyal to Amir,

and is treated as one of the family by Amir’s father, even though he is a servant. The

theme that I found to be the foundation of the novel is innocence and experience. We see

this theme echo throughout the text, and significantly alter the lives of all the characters

in the story, particularly Amir. This story reflects on innocence and experience across the

spectrum- from sacrifice, to blindness, to love, to an environment shattered by warfare.

The lamb is a powerful classic example of innocence. This story has a

metaphorical lamb, Hassan. He was sacrificed so Amir could show his prized kite, the

last one to fall during a kite fighting tournament, to his father. As Amir watched in terror

just before Hassan was raped he stated “…I caught a glimpse of his face. Saw the

resignation in it. It was a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb” (66). It was

the look of innocence that haunted Amir, ever since he witnessed a lamb sacrificed

during the Eid-e-Qorban ritual for the prophet Ibrahim. Shortly after he decided he would

not stand up for Hassan he thought to himself “…Hassan was the price I had to pay, the

lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” (68). Because of his loyalty, Hassan’s innocence was

sacrificed so Amir could prove his value to Baba. This decision to sacrifice Hassan’s

innocence would haunt Amir for the rest of his story.

Amir was also innocent because he was oblivious. He was oblivious in the sense

that he did not know that Hassan was also his half brother. Baba had told Amir that the
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only sin was to steal, and all other sins were a variation of that. Lying was one of these

sins. Lying stole a man’s right to the truth. It was much to Amir’s surprise when he

learned that his father, Baba, had lied to him his entire life. But, like Oedipus, Amir was

metaphorically blind. Like Oedipus, all of the clues were in plain sight, but he failed to

interpret them correctly. Oedipus had been told the truth but refused to believe it; Amir

had been shown the truth but failed to understand it. Throughout his childhood Baba had

treated Amir and Hassan equally. He took them places, bought them things, and showed

affection for both of them. Hassan was Baba’s dark secret. Hassan had to be kept secret

because Baba, had him with a female servant who was of the Hazara ethnicity. He was

Baba’s illegitimate son, which was not socially acceptable. This shows us that Baba is not

so different than the husband in the play “A Dolls House,” who feared his wife leaving

him, not because the relationship was over, but because he was afraid of what his peers

would think. Had Amir known that Hassan was his half brother he may have defended

him more and he may have been more loyal to him. Unfortunately, the information came

too late for him and he had to live with regret for his cowardly act of abandoning Hassan

that day that Assef raped him.

Amir was not only oblivious to Hassan being his half brother; he was also

oblivious to what life in Afghanistan was actually like. All his time living in Afghanistan

he had not seen or known how much poverty was in his country. Baba was a powerful,

wealthy man, who helped the poor every chance he had. Because of seeing Baba help the

poor by building an orphanage and giving beggars’ money, Amir had a false sense that

poverty levels were relatively low. He was awaken from this false, sheltered view of

Afghan life when he returned twenty years later. As he was riding to Kabul with Farid he
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stated “I feel like a tourist in my own country” (203). Farid then pointed to “an old man

dressed in ragged clothes trudging down a dirt path, a large burlap pack filled with scrub

grass tied to his back” (204). While this was an unfamiliar sight to Amir, Farid stated

“That’s the real Afghanistan… That’s the Afghanistan I know. You? You’ve always been

a tourist here, you just didn’t know it” (204). It wasn’t until twenty years later that Amir

learned what life was really like for most of Afghanistan. What he was seeing now was

the Afghanistan Farid had known all his life. The poverty was all around him, he just

failed to see it.

However, not all of Amir’s experiences took place in Afghanistan. After he had

moved to the United States, he and Baba frequented a bazaar. It was there that Amir

experienced his first notable crush, Soraya. Like “Araby,” and “On Seeing the 100%

Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning,” Amir was afraid to speak to her at first. Like

the narrator in “100% Perfect” Amir knew that she was perfect for him. It was love at

first sight. The big difference was, like the narrator in “Araby,” he did eventually talk to

her, and was able to watch her on multiple occasions. He found ways to get away from

his father’s table go past hers, until one day he suddenly found himself “standing at the

edge of [Soraya’s] white tablecloth, staring at [her]…” (127). He tried to impress her as

the narrator in Araby had, except he did not have to bring her something back from the

bazaar since they were already there. Instead, he noticed that she was reading a book; he

tried to impress her by offering to bring in one of his stories. Amir had experienced, and

gotten the attention of his first crush.

When Amir went back to Afghanistan he experienced the horrors of a war-torn

environment opposed to the safety of his California residence. This is like Hyder from the
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audio recording “This American Life.” Both men were unaware of the horrors in

Afghanistan. Amir was a refugee, and Hyder was the son of a former refugee. While

Amir had been in Afghanistan when the Taliban were still in power he witnessed a very

different type of violence. He witnessed a reign of terror, and oppression, that appeared to

be chaos. Hyder witnessed post-Taliban Afghanistan. He witnessed an Afghanistan

terrorized by the rebellion of Taliban. Many of the buildings were still in ruin, and

gunfire was still a common sight. For both of them, it was their first time in an actual

war-zone. Amir had escaped when he was younger before most of the fighting broke out

with the soviets, and returned under an oppressive rule. For Hyder, he was experiencing a

completely new environment that he had only read about and seen pictures of. Both of

them experienced culture shock with the violence while the locals went on with everyday

life as if nothing happened. The violence was a drastic change for both of them, who

were used to the cozy lives they had in California.

The novel Kite Runner was a fascinating tale about innocence and experience

across the board, from sacrifice, to blindness, to love, to an environment shattered by

warfare. Even though it is a story about a friendship between two boys growing up in

Afghanistan, Amir is the focal point. He sacrificed his best friend, and as he later learned,

his half brother, like a lamb, so he could impress his father with his trophy from the kite

fighting competition. He learned that he had been blind all his life, too blind to see all of

the warning signs indicating that Hassan was his half brother even though it was never

spoken until after his fathers’ death. He was too blind to see what life was really like for a

majority of Afghans outside of the upper-class realm he grew up in. He also experienced

his first notable crush, with the love at first sight phenomenon, she proved to be the one
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that he would later marry. Amir also experienced the horrors of war, and its affect on his

homeland, and former peers. Innocence and experience is the foundation for Kite Runner.