To many, the first conclusive word for the book "the Kite Runner" might be: redemption. It popped up in my head too together with many other when I finally turned the last page of the book at my bedside. But the more you sip the aroma of the story it lingers, the more you will find the main issue the book addresses is LIFE, and rather: FATE, the root cause of every sheer happening of the story.
"Life" or "fate" has many different interpretations, and connotations as well, to different people. Thus, it is a commonplace theme attended to in worldwide artistic works. The concept of it realises itself in different versions of representations. It is, in some sense, like religion. Christians believe in God, Buddhists believe in Buddhas, while the Muslims believe in Allah. In my innocent understanding, God, Buddha or Allah, are the assumed images of people's beliefs. It is not which of which of the images of the three that matters, it is the truth that you have an unwavering "belief" that matters. So in this light, belief or life or fate is the abstract core spirit which is represented into varieties of realities. The heroes in the book: Amir and Hassan, born and grow up together, go different ways of their lives. It is LIFE/ FATE that has decided it in the very first place.
It's when I met a friend in a good talk that I find myself seriously strange to reading for a long time. With his recommendation, I bought this book, its origional version. The time I came to its first page, I was so gripped by the story that I carried on to the last page whenever time is available in seven days.
I cried over and over, teardrops shedding in my quiet office, fearing this stupid embarrassment be discovered. I can't help my heart going for the heroes, even though I know the story is obviously a fictioned one.
Hassan, from a lower class of Afghanistan society, grows up with Amir (the first person of the story) in the same household, with Amir being the master and Hassan the servant. Amir refers to Hassan as "friend". To be exact, it should be "playmate" to its best, 'cause "friend" requires more. The title "friend" can be denied in the many descriptions of how Amir takes the lead and superiority in their childhood playing and how Amir countlessly humiliates Hassan by taking delight in his illiteracy and rendering him in dangers of rescuing him as such. In their teenage, they joined in the most important event, kite running, in their neighbourhood. The event is considered an important occasion by Amir to win his fahter's favour and approval since the father seems to love Hassan, his servant's son better. With every technical quality this requires, Amir finally wins. When Amir comes to find Hassan who runs to help him catch the defeated kite, Amir witnesses how Hassan, the teenage boy, is being sexually abused by a mob of wicked upper class boys. Naming himself a friend of Hassan, Amir does not stand to stop the horrifying sinned behaviour, but rather hides it to himself. Feeling ashamed and sinned at the same time, Amir frames a theft on Hassan and drives the family out of his territory. This then begins his journey of redemption. Due to wars, Amir and his family flee to Ameira for political asylum. But the torture of the sin never ceases. When he is summoned back to Afghanistan by a phone call of his father's best friend, he finally heals his wound and comes eternally to his redemption by fighting to save Hassan's orphaned son, Sohrab, who has experienced and endured all kinds of maltreations like his father.
It is easy to summarize the plots of the story, but honestly hard to verbalise the repeating effects the story leaves on the reader.
The story, I think, is layered into two paralleled levels: one is the author's pilgrimage to his own redemption, an obvious one; and the other is how fate and war have manipulated innocent people into disasters and tortures, the hidden one. The minute descripiton of the process of how Amir finally grows to find his redemption is actually introducing the main issue the book addresses: Life is fragile and fate determines.
When a life is born, it is by nature no different from any in terms of the importance as a life. But when it is presented into actual lives (different social realities), it carries different weights of social status, hierarchical classes, wealth, so that it weighs in different importance, then (so pls don't propagandize on that people are born equal, bla bla bla). You know why Hassan has undergone so many inhumane disasters: sexual abuse at teenage, betrayal and driveout by his only betrusted friend, shot dead in the street with his wife leaving behind his only son an orphan? And even worse, his beloved son Sohrab ironically endures the same and even more miserable illtreatments life grants him: eyewitnessing his parents being killed in front of him, being thrown to an orphange where food and safety is not covered, and bought by the abuser who did wrong to his father and got sexually abused by the same bastard. WHAT is this? It is not an coincidence. It is what is called FATE. Hassan and his son are not born to be doomed but born into that social class which defines their doomed fate. They do not choose to. In this sense, it is called fate. The fate has this interpretation in this Afghanistan world in that warring time and has other interpretations in other worlds in other periods. In this way, life carries itself on.