Comprehension
A. Answer these questions.
1. What was special about kite flying in Afghanistan?
2. Why should a kite fighter have an assistant? What was Hassan's role here?
3. Why did Amir want to withdraw? What was he afraid of?
4. Explain Hassan's favourite trick.
5. Amir kept looking at Baba during the kite-flying tournament. Why? What do
you think he wanted to prove?
noeuvre: a movement performed with care and skill
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Answers
Answer:
Have you ever heard a song that immediately reminded you of someone you hadn't seen in decades? Sometimes, it is not a song, but an object that transports you back to another time or place. In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, kites symbolize, or represent, some of the aspects of the most significant relationships. The novel begins with Amir, the narrator, in San Francisco as an adult thinking about the day that Rahim Khan called from Pakistan. Amir remembers, 'I glanced up and saw a pair of kites, red with long blue tails, soaring in the sky. They danced high above the trees on the west end of the park, over the windmills, floating side by side like a pair of eyes looking down on San Francisco, the city I now call home. And suddenly Hassan's voice whispered in my head: 'For you, a thousand times over.' The two kites symbolize an enduring unity between Amir and his childhood friend, Hassan. The kites as a pair of eyes indicate that Amir cannot escape his past no matter how far he runs from Afghanistan, the place where it all began. Let's find out more about the symbolism of the kite in this novel.
Bridge Between Amir and Baba
As a child, Amir has a distant relationship with his father, Baba. Amir assumes that the reason is that Amir enjoys books and writing while Baba hoped for a son who would play sports. One thing they have in common is that they both love kite fighting. Amir looks forward to the winter kite season 'mostly because, as the trees froze and ice-sheathed the roads, the chill between Baba and me thawed a little. And the reason for that was the kites. Baba and I lived in the same house, but in different spheres of existence. Kites were the one paper thin slice of intersection between those spheres.' The main reason Amir wants to win the kite fighting tournament is because in his estimation, the kite is 'my key to Baba's heart.'
Amir's desperation for his father's acceptance is so profound that Amir prioritizes the kite over his loyal friend, Hassan's, safety and well-being