91 pages • 3 hours read
Khaled HosseiniThe Kite Runner
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
When drunk drivers hit and kill Ali’s parents, Baba’s father takes in the orphaned Ali as a servant in Baba’s house. Although Baba becomes attached to Ali, said to have wandered the house crying when sick with polio, Amir reflects that “[...] in none of his stories did Baba ever refer to Ali as his friend. The curious thing was, I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either” (22)
Hassan is illiterate but loves words, so Amir reads to him often, especially from the tenth-century Persian epic the Shahnamah, which is Hassan’s favorite. Hassan’s favorite story from the collection is the epic tale of Rostam and Sohrab, a tragedy in which Rostam unknowingly and fatally wounds his own son Sohrab in battle. When Amir begins to make up his own story while reading the Shahnamah, Hassan tells him that it is the best story Amir has read to him “in a long time” (26). This response fills Amir with the confidence to write his own short story, which he reads to Baba and Rahim Khan as they drink and smoke in Baba’s study. Although Baba is dismissive of the story, Rahim Khan takes the story and later leaves an encouraging letter for Amir applauding his work as a writer: “[...] the most impressive thing about your story is that it has irony. You may not even know what that word means. But you will someday” (28).
That night, Amir wakes Hassan to read the story to him. Hassan is elated by the story but offers a criticism, identifying a plot hole that Amir had missed. That night, Afghanistan becomes the site of a bloodless coup as the monarch Zahir Shah is unseated by his cousin Daoud Khan—the new Prime Minister of the Republic.
Chapter 5 Summary
Amir and Hassan encounter Assef and his acolytes, Wali and Kamal. Assef is a bully of Wazir Akbar Khan, Amir’s affluent neighborhood in Kabul. Assef considers himself high-born and confronts Amir about his friendship with Hassan, a Hazara. Amir nearly argues that Hassan is only his servant but stops short, surprising himself with his reaction. When Assef threatens to hurt Amir for his friendship with Hassan, Hassan quickly loads a large rock into his slingshot and threatens to take out Assef’s left eye. The standoff ends in a stalemate, though Assef promises Amir that it is not resolved: “This isn’t the end for you either, Amir. Someday, I’ll make you face me one on one” (37).
The story moves forward to the days before Hassan’s birthday in the winter of 1974. Baba, who always buys Hassan a gift, surprises Hassan with a visit from a plastic surgeon. Doctor Kumar is from New Dehli and has come at Baba’s request to treat Hassan’s harelip. By the following year, the swelling from the operation has healed as a faint pink scar. Amir remarks on the irony that Hassan’s smile was restored by the winter of 1975. This was the year Hassan would stop smiling.
Chapter 6 Summary
Each winter in Kabul, schools close as children prepare for the kite fighting tournament, a highly competitive endeavor in which kite fighters position the glass strings of their kites to cut rival kites out of the sky. Hassan, Amir, and Baba each have a vested interest in the competition. Once a kite has been cut, in run the kite runners—hordes of neighborhood children who fiercely chase after the cut kite. One year, a boy climbed a tree to capture a kite, then fell and was paralyzed. However, following custom, he never let go of the kite on his way down.
At first Amir and Hassan participate with their own handmade kites, but after flaws in their design cost them victories, Baba buys them kites from Sypho, a famed kite maker in Kabul. Amir has a natural talent and inclination for kite fighting, and Hassan is the best kite runner in the neighborhood, able to anticipate where the wind will take a cut kite rather than simply chasing behind it. Attaining the last cut kite of a tournament is considered a trophy or badge of valor to be “[...] displayed on a mantle for guests to admire” (46).
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
When Amir describes a boy who was paralyzed after he fell from a tree while grabbing a fallen kite during a kite fighting tournament, the author introduces a major theme of The Kite Runner. Attributing the boy’s paralysis to the concepts of custom and tradition, Hosseini indicates there are culture codes at work in the world of The Kite Runner that encourage both dangerous and valiant behavior. This extreme code of ethics runs through much of the events within Hosseini’s novel. Hassan’s shamed status as a Hazara, Assef’s sadistic sense of entitlement, and even Amir’s intense need to win the kite tournament and thereby gain the acknowledgement of his father are all threaded through the destructive organization of customs and tradition that Amir describes here.
Desperate for his father’s approval, Amir struggles with an intense envy for Baba’s affection. For example, in Chapter 3, when Baba invites Amir to Ghargha Lake, Amir does not invite Hassan, afraid Hassan will upstage him in his father’s eyes. At its heart, this scene’s conflict spirals out from the same customs and traditions that paralyze the boy who fell while kite running: the impossible drive for validation in a violent culture.
Stories are especially important markers in the narrative, often foreshadowing tragedy and shaping the way Amir views the world. Amir and Hassan bond over a love of stories even though Hassan is illiterate. An excerpt from the tragic story of Rostam and Sohrab underscores a motif that runs through the book: stories, legends, and anecdotes in which boys are killed or wounded by their fathers:
If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thou did’st it of thine obstinancy. For I sought to turn thee unto love and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting [...] (25).
This quotation also contains foreshadowing element: That the identity of Rostam’s son is occluded from him is a tragic reflection of the way Amir’s own blood in Hassan is hidden from him. When he later finds out that Hassan was his half-brother, Hassan is dead.
Similar to the role of stories in the narrative is the role of Amir’s dreams and imaginings. According to legend, Baba once wrestled a black bear in Baluchistan to a standstill, retaining the scars across his back to prove it. The story captured Amir’s imagination, even invading his dreams, though Amir can seldom tell the bear and Baba apart: “I have imagined Baba’s wrestling match countless times, even dreamed about it. And in those dreams, I can never tell Baba from the bear” (11). This comment establishes Baba as both Amir’s most cherished male role model and his most ambivalent.
When Amir writes his own story, it concerns a man whose tears become pearls. In the story, the man quickly finds it difficult to continue to produce his own tears. By the end of the story, the man has killed his own wife to make himself cry, choosing selfish personal gains over love. When Rahim Khan leaves the letter in praise of Amir’s story, he isolates a single quality in the work: irony. The man in Amir’s story has an incredible talent and brings tragedy to his life for selfish reasons. This story-within-a-story works the same way as The Shahnamah: as a projection of the book’s themes and a foreshadowing of the events to come in Amir’s own life.
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