Write About the Ways Khaled Hosseini Opens the Story in Chapter One of ‘the Kite Runner’.

The Novel ‘The Kite Runner’, written by Khaled Hosseini is a first person narrative. ‘I became what I am today at the age of twelve’ is part of the first sentence of chapter one and it tells us a lot, for one it tells us that ‘The Kite Runner’ is written retrospectively, which means that the past is being reviewed, as when Amir is talking he is in San Francisco, however he is talking about Afghanistan. I think that this is a good technique that Hosseini uses in ‘The Kite Runner’ because it helps the reader to engage with Amir, the protagonist narrator, and the mistakes that he has made in the past. The technique that Hosseini uses of writing retrospectively links to the idea of why he writes the novel in a disjointed and non-chronological manner. However I believe that this could be because of Amir and Hassan’s childhood and how that was never perfect. The first chapter ends with the repetition of ‘And made me what I am today’; this was also a good technique that Khaled Hosseini used as it does keep the reader focused on the running theme throughout the novel, however it could also be an excuse for Amir’s mistakes in a way, we now know that the novel will be based on this one event that made Amir ‘what he is today’.

Khaled Hosseini includes a lot of themes in ‘The Kite Runner’, and one of the main themes being Sin and Redemption, this theme constantly runs throughout the novel and is the main focus of the novel. The novel is opened by Amir telling us not exactly how he sinned but the consequences he has faced because of these sins, however if the story was chronological then we would not feel the same guilt as Amir does, and as the readers, we would not engage as much as Khaled Hosseini would have wanted us to. Another theme in the novel which comes up in the first chapter is Homeland and Nationality, but this is briefly touched on in chapter one, ‘San Francisco, the city I now call home’, Amir knows he is purely Afghan, but he and Baba flee to America under...