The kite runner

My favorite coming of age story is the book, the Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini. It was a required reading for my English class during my junior year, and like a lot of the books in the selection for class readings, they seemed dull. Plus, I wasn’t really a fan of war novels. Reluctantly, I picked the book up and began reading it. From the moment I started the book, I didn’t want to put it down. (As cliché as that sounds). The main character, a young boy named Amir becomes friends with his father’s servant’s son, Hassan. Although they spent majority of their time together, they were more like frenemies (friends and enemies). Amir treated Hassan more than cruel, but never thought twice about it because he was higher up the social ladder. Amir only tried to make his father, Baba, happy, and win the kite competition.

                Further into the book, on the day of the kite competition Amir is only focused on winning. On that same day though, Hassan was raped by several other young boys. Although Amir usually torments Hassan, he is shocked. His innocence that day was lost, and winning the kite competition fell onto the back burner. Other controversial coming of age issues throughout the book included the war, the issue of race (Hassan was of different descent than the rest of the town of Kubal and therefore got bullied) and the death of Hassan’s “whore” mother.  Throughout these controversial years in the boys lived, not only did they grow up, but they lost their innocence and gained a view of the real world. The reason this I consider this to be my favorite story is because of the way that it was set in a completely different area, time, place, and situation that one I can relate too, and it still affected me emotionally throughout the trail of events.