Kite Runner Epic

The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, would be best categorized as an epic hero structure. The main character, Amir, had a friend named Hassan that would be considered lower class than him. Amir and his father Baba went through many problems and ended up moving to America to start a new life, but left Hassan and his caretaker. This caused more conflicts and created Amir's journey to travel back to Afghanistan to save Hassan's son. The plot follows the five reasons found in an epic: a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go, trials and errors, and a real reason to go. The many components required for this structure can be found in different parts of the story, such as the questor. In the book Amir, a young boy, who thinks his life purpose is to please his father, has a real journey that he does not yet. His place to go would be Afghanistan, where his stated reason to go would be to save …show more content…
In the book Amir gained self knowledge which is his real reason to help Sohrab. In Paul Comeau’s paper it says, “Laurence's characters go through three stages, an infernal state of self-destructive pride, a purgatorial condition of self-doubt, and paradisal fulfillment in self-knowledge” (Comeau 1). Amir gained self knowledge from when he learns that Hassan knew about his error from Rahim Khan, “do not forget you were a boy when it happened. A troubled little boy. You were too hard on yourself then, and you still are” (Hosseini 301). His self knowledge is that no one is perfect and no matter what he did in the past he made up for it by finding Sohrab. This pushes him to forgive himself for his wrong doings and try to continue to fix it. The author chose to write in this structure since he wanted to bold the thought of Amir gaining self knowledge after going through many trials in his life. It shows that the whole journey healed Amir and diminished his