The Past Lingers On...

            Chronology plays a huge role in the dynamic of the Kite Runner as it is very much a story of life, detailing innocence to experience.  The past shapes and moulds the personality of the main characters of the story.  Amir says it better than any other character can “I became who I am today at the age of 12”.  The lesson here is akin to real life, everyone has dark secrets in their past, or at the very least surely things they aren’t proud of, but you have to learn to put your best foot forward and move on.  This can connect to our Week 4 lecture, when Desjardins raises some key issues and how some righteous people do suffer.  In this case true at heart righteous human beings suffer through torment of the past.  Amir and Sohrab however, have pasts not many of us cannot relate to.  Their pasts run undoubtedly unparalleled in comparison to their fellow story characters.  Amir’s is attached with him to the hip.  It is his identity, and he isn’t proud of it but wakes up everyday wearing it, through his behaviour.  It’s his chip on his shoulder.  Guilt is his gas that keeps him going striving for more.  He definitely has no shortage of motivation, channeling that incident when he was on top of the world at the age of 12 in Kabul before it came crashing down on him, it’s definitely something difficult to forget.  His paranoia plays tricks on his mind, leading him to believe he was even at fault for Hassan being gunned down by the Taliban, thinking he was the catalyst for events when they left Baba’s home and their lives turning into a downward spiral.       

In Sohrab’s short lifetime, he’s had to endure more physical, emotional and mental trauma than most adults do in a lifetime.  His character is portrayed to us as an extremely lonely and vulnerable and these emotions are emphasized initially as Sohrab shutters as he is touched by Amir.  A real lasting memory that will remain with almost every person who read the Kite Runner would be Sohrab attempting to commit suicide when he learns he faces the possibility of going back to an Orphanage.  This of course, a reaction cause by having to live through constant abandonment (parents being murdered) and a lack of intimacy with loves ones.  The wise words of a more experienced Hassan on the first page remain true: “the past can never be buried”.