Full transcript of “‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini: context, themes, characters! | Narrator: Barbara Njau”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 [Music] hello and welcome to a video summarizing all you need to know about the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini this video will examine everything that you need to know when it comes to understanding the context of this book the summary the key characters and themes as well as important symbols this video is really useful if you're studying this novel either for your course works or as part of your upcoming exams now when it comes to understanding the context the first is to understand the author himself Khaled Hosseini he was born in Kabul Afghanistan in 1965 to an upper middle-class family it's important to remember that at this time he Kabul was a major city and it had a mix of Western and Afghan culture it was
0:46 a very westernized very liberal City however they moved to Iran when he was a child when the Afghanistan war broke out in the 70s and then they moved on to Paris then San Jose in the USA where Khalid went to school and then later on became a doctor Afghanistan is another important country to know about in the Middle East because this is where the novel is set and a substantial amount of the novel is set here as well as obviously USA so firstly it's important to understand that Afghanistan of the 1960's was a flourishing time many attended University there was a new constitution that was created - in order to institute a Democratic legislature which in other words means people had
1:31 free voting they could vote without any fear of government attacks and during the 1960's when this novel begins times in Afghanistan were very peaceful and this was a very prosperous country however in 1973 there's a coup against the king a coup in other words means an uprising people decide to march against the king and I try and overthrow him and in 1979 there were the soviet-afghan war which began so this is a war which internally hit Afghanistan substantially but also the Soviets which is the leadership from Russia at the time tried to enter Veen in order to protect the monarchy so
2:17 there were lot of insurgent groups are basically rebel groups who backed by the u.s. the most notable of it being the Mujahideen which later run in the late 90s became al Qaeda and this group was backed by the USA Saudi Arabia and Pakistan at this time whilst the Communist Party so the government was backed by the Soviet Union and the monarchy of course was backed also by the Soviet Union however the king and the government lost and the Soviet troops pulled out in 1979 and the country was left to a civil war and it was eventually controlled by extremist groups most notably the Taliban so this therefore led to a reversal in what was
3:02 in the 1960s a really westernized country so there were no more free elections women for instance who were able to attend University who were able to dress how they wished became very restricted and also this state of the Afghanistan become became very Islamic now when it comes to a summary of the novel itself the novel begins with Amir the main character who looks back on his childhood in Afghanistan he lived with this father baba and the two servants ali and his son Hasan and they were the two servants that worked for a mayor and his father father his father's close friend Faheem Khan visits them often the novel then develops and we learned that
3:49 Afghanistan's King is overthrown and Amir and Hassan are playing one day when they run into three boys who threatened to beat up a mayor for playing with an ethnic minority like his son Hasan then uses his slingshot to scare the boys off then winter descends and everyone is at a kite-flying tournament when a kite falls the boys chase after it to retrieve it which they call kite running and hence this is where the novel has taken its name from Amir during this time wins a tournament and his son runs after the other kite and Mei goes after him and finds him being held down in an alley by three billy boys reaping him a mayor on witnessing this runs away he doesn't step in to help his friend his son and when her son returns
4:35 it may pretends like he doesn't know what happened the two boys then began to drift apart and Mayor feels really guilty about what he did and what happened to her son however he wants her sand to leave he hides money under her sands pillow and tells his father that her son stole it and his father confronts her son who admits to doing it although we know he didn't ally and her son so the two people who work for their father are then sent away the story then skips forward to many years later to a mayor and his father who then escaped Kabul as the Soviet troops invade and Afghanistan is in the full throes of war they escape first to Pakistan before moving on to California once they reach the US barbar worse it's a gas station and a mayor
5:21 goes to school and the work on a flea market on weekends to really make ends meet said life in the u.s. is far less blissful than the life that he left behind in Afghanistan one day they run into an old friend at the market general - Harry and a man notices his daughter sir Riya and he tries to speak to her then baba is diagnosed with lung cancer and Amir proposes to Surya and hold the wedding quickly so that Babar can attend and later on a month later Babar dies Amir then hairs from Rahim Khan who wants him to visit him in Pakistan he goes and for him tells him that Afghanistan has gotten much much worse he also followed her son after he was
6:06 kicked from their home Hasan ended up married with a son in Kabul and years later he hears that the Taliban kills Hassan and his wife and put this on in an orphanage he asks Amir to go to Kabul and find the son Sohrab and bring him to Pakistan so that Rahim can at least look after sir AB he also tells Amir that Babar was her son's father his brother and he ghosts the orphanage but is told that they have moved the boy so Amir who now realizes that her son was his half-brother fills a real risk possibility towards her son's child who's now in the orphanage he then goes to soccer game the next day where a Taliban official supposed to be and there he witnesses a stoning at halftime
6:52 and realizes just how bad Kabul has gotten he meets official and tells him that he's looking for syrup and they bring him in and it looks as though syrup much like his father had been sexually abused Amir realizes the official was one of the bullying schools boys from childhood they the officials attack them and syrup shoots them with his slingshot so that he an American escape amid then asked him to come and live with his wife and him in the US and Sarab agrees the faced difficulty getting some rubber to the US as he has no papers so Rob tries to kill himself he lives but then refuses to ever speak again they managed to move to California or one day they go flying kites when they win and a mayor runs off
7:37 to fetch the losing kite for syrup the key characters are really important when understand in the novel and the first is the mayor who is Inari turned the protagonist he came from a wealthy background in Afghanistan and he feels his father does not like him and he becomes jealous when his father often lavishes attention on others like his son his son is our other key character so unlike Amir he doesn't change at all throughout this story he's always loyal forgiving and well behaved he's not envious though Amir has much more than him and he symbolizes innocence in the story but by is another important character so MAF sees Babar as a distant but good man and he tried to set an example of good morals for Amir and mayor doesn't see his father's conflicted nature though he feels guilty
8:23 for never acknowledging his son as his son he stays distant so that he is not giving one son more attention than the other and when they moved to America baba has real difficulty adjusting to life as a poorer man but his relationship with the mayor improves now when it comes to the themes the first is the past this is an important theme because we learned that the characters in the story really cannot escape their past they've really shaped by it so Rob's past was very traumatizing and this causing it causes him to flinch and often be withdrawn when he thinks they might be sent back to the orphanage he tries to kill himself but also learned that a mere haunted by his past and his guilt from it drives almost all of his actions he even feels responsible for her son's death
9:09 since the son was kicked out of his home because of a mere political events are also another important theme so in this story political events in the country directly affect characters in their lives Amy and Bob are forced to flee their home because of political events and her son is killed because of the Taliban a mayor in a way becomes symbolic of Afghanistan he's been put through difficult times but in the end redeemed sends himself and perhaps Afghanistan will also redeem itself one day redemption is another important theme so Ameer constantly feels like he has to redeem himself he wants to impress his father because he thinks baba is angry that his wife died during childbirth he's guilty his guilt about Hassan drives him to search for his son in hopes of redeeming himself in
9:56 terms of symbol the first is her sans cleft lip so this lip signifies his poverty and his class in Baba fate pays for it to be fixed because now we learned that he is secretly his father a mayor gets his lips split in a white and his thence God and his identity shifts because of this bonding him with her son he learns to stand up for himself and eventually redeems himself kites are another important theme so there were happy thing for a mayor growing up he loves flying them and the reminder of Baba who's a great kite flyer after her son's rape the kite becomes a symbol of this betrayal of her son he never flies a kite again until he brings her sons her son home with him the kite then evolves
10:44 into a symbol of a father-son connection that him of a bar once had and that now him and her sans son have that's all if you found this video useful dear subscribe and give us a thumbs up but also if you are seeking model answers on this book as well as revision sheets visit w-w-w areas which features all of this material that you will find really useful if you're sitting this a spot of your exams all your coursework thank you for listening
