"The Kite Runner" reading notes

The reading notes of "The Kite Runner" are as follows:

I recently read "The Kite Runner". I thought I had seen the movie and had some familiarity with the novel. But after reading the novel, I still felt shocked, and it was indeed much better than "Fireflies in Naples".

This novel is not so much about the friendship between two men as it is about the bond between a master and a servant. After all, our protagonist, the master, Amir, does not really regard the servant Hassan as an equal friend from the heart. Although when he heard Hassan say that he was his friend, he didn't really feel that they were friends.

This novel is also a person's self-salvation. After Amir witnessed Hassan being raped and he chose to escape, he began to self-condemn and have troubled conscience. In order to make himself feel better, he used despicable means to force Hassan away. Always one wrong step, one wrong step after another.

However, Amir was only 12 years old at that time, and most of us reading the book now are adults. Is it too arbitrary to judge a 12-year-old boy based on the moral standards that adults know and the Afghan beliefs that you are unfamiliar with?

Although Amir is selfish and cowardly, he is also kind. He knew the despicability of what he had done, so in the rest of his life, whenever Hassan was mentioned, it would be a blame he could not bear. Hassan became a gap that cannot be mentioned, and Amir also chose to forget. However, the past will not be erased from your mind just because you actively forget it. One day, it will creep into your mind by itself, even if twenty-six years have passed.

When the veil was finally torn apart, Amir's grief and anger reached its peak when he discovered that Hassan turned out to be his biological brother. He once thought that what he lost was just a servant or a friend, but twenty-six years later he realized that what he had lost was his brother. But, looking back.

If Amir had known that Hassan was his biological brother twenty-six years ago, perhaps their relationship would have become worse. After all, being a servant made him feel jealous. If he knew that Hassan was his father's other son, and Hassan fulfilled his father's expectations for a son in every aspect, Amir might not do anything else. The matter of forgiveness.

Some people say that chasing a kite is just a metaphor. The "kite" Amir chased when he was a child was his father's attention and love, and what he "chased" when he grew up was peace of mind. There must always be a goal that makes you feel that you are alive, that you still have things to do, and that there is something else waiting for you, even though you also feel that it may be illusory.

When Amir did something wrong as a child, he could choose to forgive. What about when you grow up? At the age of thirty-seven, he had clearly promised Sohrab not to send him to the orphanage. But for the sake of visa, he still chose to speak up. He may not really understand what Sohrab's life was like in the orphanage after his parents died.

A child won’t understand that much, he just doesn’t want to go back to the past. Sohrab's suicide plunges Amir into despair again. Why couldn't Amir wait one more day before confessing to Sohrab? Wait one more day and he will get a call from his wife telling him that the problem can be solved without going to the orphanage. If this were the case, Sohrab would not have committed suicide, and the trust they had just established would not have collapsed so quickly.

There is no if, people are like this. If it were us, we might not be able to do better than Amir. The first thing to communicate between people is trust, and trust first requires honesty. Amir chose to truthfully tell Sohrab some of the things they needed to do to immigrate to the United States, but his notification was a hard notification instead of solicitation and inquiry.

He said he wanted to be friends with Sohrab, but in this matter, he failed to do so. He just told Sohrab as an elder that when we immigrate to the United States, there is a procedure that requires you to stay in an orphanage for a period of time. After so many years, he still has not learned how to treat servants who should be friends and communicate as equals.

After this incident, he finally woke up. For Sohrab and the hometown where he once lived, he began to get in touch with the past and work hard for Afghanistan. The thing was not as difficult as imagined, but the growth he had achieved in the past half of his life was obtained by Hassan and his son with their lives. It must be said that the price of growth was really high.

At the end of the novel, Amir finally said "for you, thousands of times" for Sohrab. That was Hassan, the promise that once haunted him. Hassan did it, Amir will do it too.

Excerpt:

Many years have passed, and people say that old things can be buried. However, I finally understand that this is wrong, because the past will creep up on its own. Looking back, I realize that for the past twenty-six years I have been peering down that deserted trail.

There is only one crime, only one. That is theft, and all other crimes are variations of theft. Do you understand? ”

“When you kill a man, you steal a life,” Dad said. “You steal his wife’s rights as a woman, and you take away the father of his children.” When you lie, you steal other people's right to know the truth. When you defraud, you steal equity. Do you understand? ”

Words are a secret door, and the key is in my hand.

Maybe I stood there for less than a minute, but to this day, it is still the longest minute of my life. Time passed by second by second, and there seemed to be an eternity between one second and one second. The air became dull, humid, even solid, and I struggled to breathe. Dad continued to stare at me without any intention of taking a look.

For most of my life, I revered my dad like a god. But at that moment, I wished I could tear open my own blood vessels and let his damn bloodline flow out of my body.

But he is not my friend! I almost blurted out. Have I really thought about this? Of course not, I didn't think about it. I treat Hassan well, like a friend, or even better, like a brother. But if that's the case, then why do I never call out Hassan when I play games when my dad's friends come to visit with their kids? Why do I only play with Hassan when no one else is around?

He called Assef young master, and a thought flashed through my mind: What is it like to live in a hierarchical place with such a deep-rooted consciousness?

This is the style of those who make promises and believe that others are the same as them. But it’s better to be hurt by the truth than comforted by lies.

I don’t know why other guys fight kites, maybe it’s to brag in front of others. But for me, this was my only chance to be someone who was looked at rather than just seen, listened to rather than just heard.

If God exists, He will guide the direction of the wind and let it help me succeed. As soon as I pull the string, I can cut off my pain and cut off my desire. I have endured too long and have gone too far. . Suddenly, just like that, I was confident. I will win. It's just a matter of time.

His rubber boots kicked up snowflakes and he had already rushed to the corner of the street. He stopped, turned around, put his hands to his mouth, and said: "For you, a thousand times!" Then he smiled like Hassan and disappeared behind the corner of the street.

I want to be surrounded by thousands of people, and everyone is watching. Rostam and Sohrab looked at each other, and the silence was louder than the sound at this time. Then the older warrior would go up to the younger warrior, hold him, and acknowledge his excellence. prove. rescued. Atonement. Then what? Let’s put it this way, of course it will be happily ever after. Will there be anything else?

I would rather believe that I am out of weakness, because the other answer, the real reason why I ran away, is that I feel that Assef is right: nothing in this world is free. In order to win my father back, maybe Hassan was just the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slaughter. Is this a fair price? Before I could restrain myself, the answer came to me: He was just a Hazara, wasn't he?

I closed my eyes and turned my face to the sun. A small shadow appeared behind the eyelids, as if playing with shadows on the wall with one's hands. They twisted and blended into a picture: Hassan's brown corduroy pants, thrown on top of a pile of old bricks in the alley. .

I finally got what I had been dreaming of for years. But now that I have it, I feel very empty, like this swimming pool in which I dangle my legs.

Part of me longs for someone to wake up and listen to me so I can stop living with this lie. But no one woke up, and in the silence that followed, I understood that this was a spell that had been cast on me, and I would carry this lie for the rest of my life.

There are no ghosts there. He said there was only lake water. But he was wrong. There is a ghost in the lake. It grabs Hassan's ankle and pulls him into the dark bottom of the lake. I am that ghost.

We actually deceive ourselves into thinking that a toy made of tissue paper, glue and bamboo can bridge the gap between two people. Because whenever he's around, the oxygen in the room is depleted. My chest would contract and I wouldn't be able to breathe; I would stand there, gasping, surrounded by some airless bubble.

I hope he fights back. I wanted him to grant my wish and punish me well so I could sleep at night. Maybe then things will go back to the way we used to be. They stood in front of Dad, hand in hand, and I wondered at what point I had the power to inflict this kind of pain.

My body tightened, as if someone had slapped me in the face. My heart sank, and the truth almost escaped my lips. I knew immediately: This was Hassan's last sacrifice for me. If he said "no," Dad would believe it, because we all knew that Hassan never lied. If Dad believed him, then the blame would be turned on me, and I would have to argue that my true colors would eventually be seen through, and Dad would never, ever forgive me.

That made me realize something else: Hassan knew. He knew that I saw everything in the alley, that I stood there and watched. He knew I had betrayed him, but he still saved me again, maybe for the last time. I fell in love with him at that moment. I loved him more than anyone else. I just wanted to tell them that I was the poisonous snake in the grass and the ghost at the bottom of the lake.

I am not worthy of the sacrifice he made. I am a liar, a liar, and a thief. I would have almost said it, if it weren't for the vague happy thoughts in my heart. Be happy because it will all be over soon, Dad will get rid of them, it may be a little painful, but life will go on. That's what I want, to move on, to forget, to write off the past and start over.

I want to be able to breathe again.

His mouth twitched, and I saw his painful expression. It was at that time that I realized how deep the pain I had caused, how deep the sadness I had brought to everyone, and how deep the pain was. Even Ali's numb face couldn't hide his sorrow. I forced myself to look at Hassan, but he had his head down, shoulders slumped, his fingers tangled in a loose thread at the hem of his shirt.

To me, America is a place where the past is buried. For Dad, it was a place to mourn the past. Good, people need stories to distract them in hard times like these. "This may not be fair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even in a day, is enough to change a life, Amir." Moths fly to the flame because they are possessed, and they also know that wolves climb mountains to find the sun.

I am jealous of her. Her secrets were out, spoken out, and resolved. I opened my mouth and almost told her how I had betrayed Hassan, lied to him, kicked him out of the house, and destroyed Baba and Ali's forty-year relationship. But I didn't. I suspect that in many ways, Soraya Taheri is a much better person than I am. Courage is just one of them.

But I think a large part of the reason why I don’t care about other people’s pasts is because I have a past myself. I know it all, but I regret it so much.

I know that the United States has instilled in you an optimistic temperament, and this is what makes it great. That's very good. We are a melancholic people, we Afghans, right? We are always stuck in sadness and narcissism. We succumb in the face of failure and disaster, treating these as the essence of life, even as a necessity. We always say, life will go on.

Having something gained and then losing it is always more hurtful than never gaining something at all. A child who cannot stand up for himself will grow up to be a coward.