Kite Runner Response #3

            In the last section of The Kite Runner everything happens.  Amir meets Sohrab, he adopts Sohrab, and most importantly, Amir is able to let go of his very troubled childhood.  The first thing that he is able to use to get over his cowardly ness is payback.  This comes when Assef fights him and basically destroys Amir’s face.  After fighting Assef, Amir is also left with a scar going up his upper lip.  This symbolizes the pain and suffering of Hassan, and how now it is brought where it belongs, upon Amir.  Amir knows that he was always the weak one, and as a result of this feels that he should be in Hassan’s shoes taking everything Hassan was forced to go through. 

            In this last part of the story, we get our first real look at the Taliban.  They came with Afghans under the impression that they would rebuild the country to be a safer, better place.  This is not what happened at all.  The Taliban massacred Hazaras, and destroyed the lives of many innocent Afghan children like Sohrab.  All the things the Taliban did were justified by them by saying it was all done in the name of god.  This is simply how it is justified; they really did it because they were power hungry, psycho, pedophiles that simply wanted to see others suffer.  I said in another post that the reason people want to harm others is they think that the ones they harm are responsible for their suffering or their countries problems.  People choose to blame these things on others because they don’t wish for the fault to be theirs. This is why the Taliban came to power.  They were strong because they had the support of many people who didn’t want to accept a partial responsibility for the state of Afghanistan.

            On a different note, Amir is finally able to move on with his life in the end.  He does everything he needs to make up for his sins, even if he does these in a way that doesn’t necessarily make things better.  Because of a simple mistake Amir made, Sohrab almost killed himself.  In the end Amir saved Sohrab life, which in a way makes up for the mistake, but Sohrab is still scared with the horrors of an Afghan child, and unlike Amir, can’t be happy.