The Interesting Writing Tactics of Khaled Hosseini

As I discussed last post, there are many factors taken in for a book to be considered AP worthy. One of the topics on that list is the level of difficulty that the author portrays through his/her writing style. Whether it is telling a story through literary devices, sentence structure or even the chronologic order, Khaled Hosseini does it all. Now, I didn’t go into great depth about it then, but in this post I will be talking about why Khaled Hosseini has chosen to right in the style that he does in The Kite Runner.

With a small portion of my book left, I feel that I have gotten a pretty good grasp on the writing style in the novel. The Kite Runner consists of a lot of symbolism, as the book has a heavy religious and cultural affiliation to it. With this in mind Hosseini uses both the cultural and religious aspect of his novel to build up his characters for the good and the bad. Because the book begins in Afghanistan, then transfers to the United States of America, and then back to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the culture plays a huge role in the symbolism in this book. For example, this is where Amir grew up, the Afghanistan culture will always be a part of him and the way he mistreats others such as Hassan before he leaves for the states could be because of the way he was raised within his culture. We see Hosseini's writing slowly move us in a direction to understand more about Amir's culture, his change in opinion towards Hassan is more of a negative stereotypical view. The beauty of this book is that it is consistently realistic. I have never been to Afghanistan or Pakistan but everything in this story is realistic to an event that happened to Amir.  

Hosseini is constantly using allusions and motifs throughout the novel to display his interesting writing style. As I mentioned before, this book is very realistic and is based on true events that have occurred in these countries cultures. With that in mind, it is important for Hosseini to provide the reader the right amount of allusions. For example, in the beginning of the book Hosseini sets out to set up the book by showing his knowledge of politics with allusions through the characters, “That’s Henry Kissinger” (pg 18). This man was a former security advisor for America, which foreshadows the move that Amir and Baba make to America later in the novel. Another allusion Hosseini uses is in reference to other authors, “Your khala’s medical charts are like the work of Rumi: they come in volumes.” (pg 155). Remi is another writer that is related to America and is referenced because Amir’s dad is inspired by some of his work as a poet.

Motifs are very closely related to theme in this book. You can tell that the work as a whole is related to betrayment, as Amir and Hassan have a relationship that ends up becoming disconnected and one could look at it as Amir abandoning Hassan. But this is a controversial topic as some might believe that Amir left to flee his problems or he left because of what I assume was the state of his country and need for better education. But this is the main motif and in the novel Hosseini does a good job bringing the reader back to realize why the characters are in the positions they are.

The structure of the book whether it be sentence structure or chapter structure is basically laid out in a similar way to each other. For instance, Hosseini spends the first chapter setting up where Amir is now which already gives the reader insight on his views of his childhood and what he gained from it. The very first line of the book is, “I became what I am today at the age of twelve…” (pg 1). This is an immediate flashback to the past and how Amir views it. This shows the chronologic order that Hosseini rights in. With his chapters and sentence structure being the same he likes to go back and forth from the present to the past, constantly showing the reader the effects the past had on the present. This is why flashbacks are so important in this book.     

My last piece of analysis on Hosseini’s writing style is his shift in point of view. Throughout the whole book until chapter 16, Amir was the narrator talking in first person. But in chapter 16 there was a sudden shift, where at the end of 15 Amir was talking about Rahim Khan and stated, “Then Rahim Khan sipped some more tea. Rested his head against the wall and spoke.” (pg 177). But then at the beginning of 16 Rahim Khan was narrator and said, “There were a lot of reason why I went to Hazarajat to find Hassan in 1986.” (pg 178). I believe this shift occurred to make a more personal connection with reader due to the fact that the story Rahim Khan was telling was important to the development of the novel. These shifts in point of view come back to the original narrator who is Amir after chapter 16.

It has been interesting to say the least, analyzing the writing style of Khaled Hosseini. This post has actually helped me understand the structure behind the novel better and has given me a greater understanding of the work as a whole. Which I will discuss next post, as I will wrap up my reading of The Kite Runner and have themes and more motifs ready to go.