Caught from the beginning in The Kite Runner

The novel read in class The kite runner by Khaled Hossein caught my attention from the very first chapter. The fact that something that seemed very important was mentioned in the first chapter by the protagonist made me interested in the story behind that unspecified event that seemed to cause huge effects on the protagonist.
The author’s method on how to catch the reader’s attention worked on me, since after reading only a few pages I felt like reading the whole book. The depth of some of the phrases used by the author captivated me, and made me curious about what I was going to read next. These were the reasons why I decided to analyze the author’s methods used on the first chapter that proved to be so effective in catching my attention. In my review, I intended to go beneath the words of the novel to discover where the real hook was. As I could conclude after writing it, the mentioning of some ghosts from the protagonist’s past was what caught me from the begging of the story and incentivized me to keep reading it.


The Kite Runner by Khaled Hossein is a novel that takes place mostly in Afghanistan in the 1970s. It tells the story of a young boy growing up and how he has to deal with several realities from his country that he cannot understand. The novel is narrated by its protagonist, who starts the story of his life at the age of 12, when he experienced his first life-changing event. The first chapter of the novel serves as a proper introduction of the whole book; it sets up how the whole story is going to be developed and gives a hint of what the main conflict will be.
The narration of the protagonist’s life starts when, in his adulthood, he receives a call of someone from his past in Afghanistan, who brings back a very important issue for the protagonist. After this the story goes back twenty-six years in time, to the point in his life where he experiences a traumatic event. Later in the novel we learn that this event, the rape of his best friend and the protagonist’s inability to stand up to defend him.
The narrator lets the reader know that this event will haunt him for the rest of his life. ‘Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.’ This quote gives a clue of the impact that this unmentioned event in the first chapter will have on the protagonist. Its importance is clear in the fact that it’s been in his mind for twenty-six years. The passage of time and the fact that the protagonist still looks back on this event tells that this has been very painful, and we can infer there’s still some guilt in the protagonist.
The narrator’s feeling of guilt underlies the whole quote, since it shows a process of reflection on what happened from the part of the protagonist. The quote gives the idea that he has thought countless times about this hurtful past event and that he still cannot face the whole situation. The fact that the narrator writes the story many years after it happened enables him to state that he did think about this memory and can now try to look at it from a different perspective than the one he did years before in his life.
Another characteristic of the protagonist is showed on the quote. His peeking into that deserted alley’ gives the undeniable hint that he was, or still is, afraid or coward. Cowardice is showed as part of the character’s personality because he clearly says that he was afraid of really looking at this bad memory. The narrator’s fear may have two reasons: he cannot look at this ‘deserted alley’ because he cannot face the fact that he was a coward and did not respond in the way he should have; or because he cannot accept that although he covered his eyes, the rape did happen.
Although it is the real place where the event took place, the deserted alley mentioned in this quote has a symbolic meaning. The fact that the alley has no way out and is deserted, is a symbol on how the character feels about what happened. The loneliness within the alley shows that the protagonist knows that only he can solve this issue, since no one can take the guilt of him but himself.
The first chapter in The Kite Runner clearly shows what the whole story is going to be based on. Many characteristics of the character are presented in it, as well as a preview of what the main conflict will be and how the protagonist feels about it. His guilt and his fear are the ghosts from the past that he will later face in the course of the novel. The intention of the writer was to show a clear introduction to what the whole novel will develop. The author’s method can be considered to be effective since he manages to build a strong base for the future development of the story and also creates a bridge between the historical past, present and future in the story.