Mrs. Talley Name: ___________________

Humanities Date: ____________________

The Kite Runner Chapters 1-8

Due September 1, 2017

Chapter 1

1. How does the use of Chapter 1 to introduce the flashback establish the overall mood of the novel?

2. What does the reader know about the narrator’s present life, and how do we know it?

3. What mood does the image of the two kites create? How does Hosseini create this mood?

Chapter 2

4. What are the reader’s first impressions of Hassan based on Hosseini’s description of him?

5. Why have Amir’s teachers not said very much about the Hazaras?

6. What is unusual about the relationship between Amir and Hassan?

Chapter 3

7. Describe Baba. What type of a man is he? What type of a father is he? DO NOT SAY

GOOD/BAD!

Chapter 4

8. What does the pomegranate tree symbolize to Amir and Hassan? How does Hosseini create this

symbol?

9. How and why does Hosseini create in Amir a complicated character, someone with whom the

reader can sympathize while despising at the same time?

Chapter 5

10. Describe Assef. What does this indicate about him?

11. Why does Assef admire Hitler? What does this say about his personality

12. How does Hassan’s harelip foster Amir’s jealousy of him? Explain this irony.

Chapter 6

13. What is the importance of the kite fight for Amir and Baba?

Chapter 7

14. Explain why this is much more than a kite fight for Amir. What concrete details from the text

make this clear, and how do they do this?

15. What is the purpose of the memories and the dream included in this chapter as Amir peeks into

the alley?

16. Why is Amir’s memory of the sheep important? Explain the effect that Hosseini creates by

revealing this bit of exposition at this moment in the plot.

17. Why does Amir run instead of help Hassan? Point to the many details in the text that try to make

sense of this decision. What does this action reveal about Amir?

18. How does this scene reveal the primary conflict of the novel that first appears in Chapter1 before

the flashback?

Chapter 8

19. The image of Hassan’s brown corduroy pants haunts Amir for years after the day of the kite fight.

What does the image symbolize? What is its purpose?

20. Why does Hassan’s friendship and loyalty bother Amir so much?

21. Why does Rahim Khan tell Amir the story of how he was almost married? What does this story

foreshadow?