Kite Runner Compare And Contrast Essay

`Of Mice and Men, and To Kill a Mockingbird; what do these novels have in common? Both show childlike innocence, and how it is annihilated in society by adults. However, Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, thinks the exact opposite. His novel encompasses the topic of growing up, and how it is fueled by making and fixing mistakes that prompt mature decisions in the future. Throughout the novel, Khaled Hosseini depicts coming of age through the main character, Amir, a boy living in Afghanistan with his best friend and servant, Hassan. As a child, Amir makes bad decisions that end up hurting Hassan. The decisions he makes when he is more mature reflect Amir nearing completion on his path to manhood. In The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini portrays that coming of age
When a child encounters a problem, it usually leads to an err, but being able to learn from these mistakes is an essential part of being an adult. When Amir is a boy in Kabul, he is jealous of Hassan because of the attention he gets from Baba, Amir’s father. One day in 1975, Amir wins a kite tournament, and when Hassan goes to retrieve the winning kite for him, he is ambushed. The attackers give Hassan a choice: give up the kite, or be physically assaulted. Hassan is too loyal to give up the kite as it is the trophy that Amir gets for winning the tournament, and so the attackers rape him. When Amir sees this happening, he chooses not to intervene, and thinks, “Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba¨ (Hosseini 77). Hosseini puts Amir in this situation to show the difference between a man and a boy. Amir makes a childlike decision when he abandons Hassan for his own selfish reasons. Once Amir decides that he cannot slay that lamb, is when he will grow up. However this does not happen in the alley, as Amir’s childish brain is plagued by selfishness and cowardice. These are qualities that