The Kite Runner: Style 1 key example

This choice of narrative voice also allows the reader to experience events through Amir’s perspective without any outside interpretation. They get the story from his point of view, including all his biases and preferences. Like Amir’s memories, the timeline is non-linear. It begins in San Francisco in 2001 before moving back to his childhood in Kabul in the 1970s. The novel also employs flashbacks extensively to reveal how Amir’s early experiences shape his later choices and relationships. This structure aligns Amir’s personal development in The Kite Runner with the political and social changes that Amir experiences in Afghanistan.

Hosseini uses vivid visual and tactile imagery and strong sensory details to build a clear and memorable setting for the reader. He describes life in Kabul through the specific sights, smells, and sounds of his own childhood experiences. These range from the scent of lamb cooking in the streets to the butterfly-like movement of bright kites against the winter sky. Hosseini also spends time describing the scents of Kabul, especially the dusty roads that wind through the neighborhoods. These details make the setting feel immediate and tangible for the reader. Even after Amir moves to the United States, the sensory descriptions of his childhood home continue. They’re part of how Hosseini makes his memories of Afghanistan remain vivid and unresolved in the reader’s mind.

Overall, the novel treats its setting as an active force rather than a passive background. The changing physical spaces, such as the pomegranate tree Amir climbs with Hassan and the altered streets of Kabul during the book’s many conflicts, reflect the boys’ lost innocence and how they are themselves changed by the passage of time. Overall, Hosseini’s style ties emotion to location and memory to present action. Things Amir does in the present echo backward in time, bringing moments from his childhood into his life in America and reinforcing the novel’s focus on the impact of memory. Every stylistic choice Hosseini makes supports the idea that choices people make in childhood are enduring and can have an unavoidable presence in adulthood.