The Kite Runner

Reading Schedule:
Pages

Due Date

1-189
190-272
273-end

Tues. 2/2
Fri. 2/12
Mon. 2/29

This schedule is a guide. Many of you will find that you are reading aheadthat is fine.
However, please do not fall behind this schedule! You must have the assigned pages
completed by the date listed above.

While you read:

1. Instead of using sticky notes, for this text you will be making your notes/annotations in
your class notebook. We will be using the double entry notebook methodformatting
information is on the back of this sheet.
2. Keep track of the following:
a. Characterization of Amir, Baba, Hassan, Sorayaeach of them has hopes and
dreams for the future, yet a past of which they cannot let go. Locate at least two
quotes per section per character (as applicable) that represent each characters
ideals. Annotate what specifically you learn about each character through each
quote you have chosen.
b. Conflictkeep a list of the issues, people, circumstances, etc. that keep the above
characters from achieving their ideals. Annotate in regards to how the characters
deal with these conflicts, and the results of their decisions.
c. Themechoose one of the following themes and trace its development
throughout the novel.
i. Mans inhumanity to man
ii. Strength of character
iii. Discrimination and bigotry
Remember that theme is what the author is trying to say about a specific subject.
The three items above are NOT themes in themselves. What is the author trying
to say about the above subjects? THAT is your theme.

How to set up your double entry notebook

1. For each section of assigned reading, label each of your notebook pages with the pages you are
reading.
2. You will need a double page spread each for characterization and conflict and a single page
spread for theme.
3. Label your sheets as shown below:

I will check your notebook at the end of each section and this will count as you annotation
grade.

After Reading:
Read the following criticism of The Kite Runner. Highlight and annotate points with which you
agree, and points with which you disagree. Then, complete the prompt below.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

A review by Philip Spires

This is a book that will live for ever. In it Khaled Hosseini has accomplished what many writers, most
unsuccessfully, try to achieve. Its the big stories, those turning points in history, which often attract
us. They automatically have something to say, we might believe, something that needs to be aired,
perhaps explained. So wars, revolutions, social upheavals, periods of turmoil, internecine struggles,
ideological conflicts, all of these are the natural territory for the story teller. They are the backdrop
that adds potentially unlimited drama, the context that can involve, inform and enlighten.
But often writers are not up to the task. The attraction of that big issue is greater than the powers of
judgment needed to create the right balance when the smallness of the storys detail is pitched
against the vast potential dominance of its setting. The balance, therefore, is often a fine one and,
because of the power of the setting, the story is often belittled or, more usually, appears merely trite
against the overbearing importance and significance of the backdrop. In recent times I have read
several books which have revealed the limitations of the writers concept by falling into one or other
trap. Not so with The Kite Runner.
The plot is important, so suffice it to say that Amir and his family are in Afghanistan before the
Russian invasion. Their life is described. The Kite Runner of the title is the label for the role of the kite
handlers friend, who runs to retrieve the kites that have been cut from the sky in combat. Finders are
keepers and it is this booty that is mutually fought over.
With the arrival of the Russians, part of Amirs family flees to the United States, Amir among them. He
grows up there and we rejoin him years later, by which time he is well on the way to becoming a
creative writer and is about to marry. But his life in the US has its imperfections, some of which are
sourced in the guilt of memory. And so Amir returns to his homeland to rediscover some of those he
left behind. But now its an Afghanistan destroyed by war and dominated by the Taliban. Amir
desperately tries to uncover his past, to trace those he seeks, and he succeeds, but sometimes in
ways that he least expected, ways that further complicate an already tangled tale.
As Amirs country descends into chaos and then into new war, with the only hope apparently
continued uncertainty, his personal experience becomes both painful, taxing and trying. He stumbles
upon much that is unexpected, some of it perhaps not so surprising, but some of it terrifying in its
threat. But, despite the suffering, there is hope, even if eventually it might arise out of the spoils of
renewed conflict, perhaps just another severed kite to retrieve.
Where Khaled Hosseini succeeds in a simultaneously engaging and informative way is the blending of
his drama with its context. His narrative takes the reader on a journey of self-discovery, where
actions, memories, guilt are experienced at first hand, but also a journey where history unfolds in a
way that includes, never merely instructs.

The Kite Runner is not a work of politics, and neither is it a history. Its a novel, so any thought of
criticism on the grounds that it lacks analysis or completeness would be misplaced. The novel does
give a keen insight into the horrid and horrifying consequences of war without ever really trying to
confront why it arose, or the motives of those who perpetrated the conflict. But this, again, is not in
any way a criticism of what the novel achieves, merely a criticism in the literary sense, an attempt at
description and contextualization of the work. If there is still anyone out there who thinks that conflict
is about winning or losing, about one side fighting another until victory, then I would recommend The
Kite Runner as a both essential and essentially moving experience that would both inform and
educate.

Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/fiction-articles/the-kite-runner-by-khaled-hosseini317098.html#ixzz167MHmTLi

Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Prompt: Combining points from Spires article and concrete detail from The Kite Runner, do you
agree with Spires assertion that: This is a book that will live for ever. In it Khaled Hosseini has
accomplished what many writers, most unsuccessfully, try to achieve.