Friday, May 9, 2008

Kite Runner Ch 20-25

If you have a discussion summary or additional comments to add from either of our last two Kite Runner discussion (May 8 or May 13), please post them here. This would also be a good spot to post any final, overall comments about the book.

3 comments:

ChipS said...

In chapters 20-25 were extremly eventful and had many twists to them. Amir goes on a trip through his fallen country of afghanistan to find hassans son. He travels with farid a counterpart of reheem khan to find this kid. they travel to an orphanage to find sohrab, hassans son, and figure out that to make ends meet the head of the orphanage sells kids to a man who is in high ranking of the taliban. The two of them have to travel to a soccer game to meet this man who buys children. At half time the man enters the stadium with a man and a woman that are blindfolded. he announces that the two have sinned and should be punished so in front of thousands of people he stones them to death. Amir aranges a meeting between him and the man that had just stoned two people to death. As he drives to his old neighborhood he finds his house and reflects on many memmories with hassan. Finally he reaches the meeting place of the man as he calls "john lennon" becasue of his glasses. he goes into a room and is questioned heavlily by this man and once he takes it to far and amir tells him off and the man removes his glasses and says i never forget a face. The man turns out to be assef, the boy who raped his half brother and somewhat destroyed his childhood and affected his life in a terrible way. Assef makes a deal with amir and says he can have the kid but first he has to walk out alive with him. assef brings out his famous brass knuckles and beats the life out of amir to the point where sorhab sayd stops and just like his father has a sling shot cocked and hits him square in the eye with a brass ball. One eyed assef he was called by hassan. The beating amir took was what he wanted from hassan and now releaved of not stoping the rape of his friend although he was once again saved by the son of hassan. Badly injured he wakes up in a hospital with to many injuries to count on two hands has to now find a way to get back to america not to mention figure out what to do with sorahb because there is no one to take care of him in afghanistan.

Kelly said...

I missed the discussion where we read up through chapter 23. Amir has arrived in Afghanistan and a lot has changed. The war has taken over the country and it is extremely unsafe there. Farid was Amir's driver and he was very judgemental about Amir's motives for returning to afghanistan again. He didn't think there could be any other reason for return other than to gain some money by selling old properties. Once Amir told him that he had come to save a boy, Farid gained more respect for Amir and they started to become friends. They ventured to the oprphanage as Rahim Khan had said to do to get Sohrab. The orphanage "leader" name was Zaman and he was very hesitant at first to let Farid and Amir in because they could have been talib and they talib take children when they come. They came to find that the talib had taken Sohrab and they had never returned him. Farid and Amir attented a soccer game and the half time show was mortifying. They dug hole and put a man and a woman who had comitted adultry in them and stoned them to death. The Talib are very messed up because they believe that God was calling them to punish the people who have commited sins. That is not their place thats God's job. Amir went to get Sohrab from the talib only to find that ASSEF was the talib that was holding Sohrab hostage! Assef knew it was Amir and was still mad about the incident as a child and said if Amir could beat him in a fight then he would get Sohrab. Only one man would come out alive. Amir was getting injured badly but realized he had finally stood up for himself; a part of him that was missing was filled. Sohrab caused the fight to stop by using the skills his father taught him with the sling shot. he shot a brass ball into Assef's eye and Amir and Sohrab escaped. Chapter 23 ended with Amir still being severely hurt and moving to a safer town. It confuses me why Sohrab wont open up to Amir. He is so quiet and will only play cards or look out the window when Amir talks. Hopefully Sohrab will become like a son to Amir. :)

Kelly said...

Here are my thoughts after finishing Kite Runner. At the begginging of the semester we talked about the power and peril of secrets, and this is shown in Kite Runner. When Amir goes back to visit Rahim Khan to make things right, he finds out many things from him. The most important was the secret Rahim Khan had to reveal. Rahim Khan told Amir that him and his supposed servant, Hassan, were half brothers. At first Amir didn't want to believe that his father Baba had lied to him all his life. If Rahim Khan hadn't of told Amir this secret, he probably would have gone back to America so he wouldnt have to deal with the unsafe streets of Kabul. He had a wife back at home and he didn't want to get killed. Amir knew he had to save Sohrab because Hassan would do anything for Amir. It was his nephew after all, and thats the powere of a secret shown in Kite Runner. I really enjoyed reading the Kite Runner, it was a really good book.