I have added our Kite Runner wiki to moodle. To find it look in The Kite Runner section. It has lots of resources on it to help you with your revision and more is being added all the time.

When I started posting on the chapters of The Kite Runner it didn’t seem a daunting task but as I am only up to chapter seven … maybe I was wrong.

So here goes -

In chapter seven Hassan dreams that Amir conquers the monster in the lake. Amir prays to win the competition - which he does and Hassan runs to retrieve the losing kite. Assef and his gang trap Hassan in an alley and Assef rapes him. Amir sees the rape but he runs away and pretends nothing has happened.

This is the most important chapter of the entire novel as it presents the problem that Amir will have to deal with the rest of his life. It shows his greatest sin and what Rahim Khan had referred to when he said, “There is a way to be good again.” The dream is used to foreshadow Amir’s victory in the tournament, but there are still monsters to deal with: Assef of course, and Amir himself. Amir’s cowardice is made clearer by Hassan’s courage in standing up for him the year before. The tournament is Amir’s greatest moment in his search for approval from Baba, but in the end, it is his worst moment because of what he allowed to happen to Hassan. This event will form the basis for the remainder of the novel. Note that the foreshadowing set into place with Assef’s warning that he was a patient person and would have his revenge eventually has come true. Hassan will pay a terrible price for that revenge, but then so will Amir.

So to be clear - the seventh chapter is very important. The key scene in which Amir witnesses the rape of Hassan and does nothing to protect him is the central event in the novel. This is the event that has haunted Amir. As readers we condemn Amir’s cowardice and feel some repulsion at Amir’s failure to defend Hassan. However, it is important to note that disgust for his cowardice is also shared by Amir himself. Amir knows that his abandonment of Hassan can be viewed as a sacrifice to win Baba’s approval. Amir is afraid that he let Hassan get raped because he is “just a Hazara”. Also note how Hassan’s attackers, Assef, Wali and Kamal attack Hassan’s ethnicity. Hosseini is making it clear to the reader just how embedded the idea that Hazara are inferior in Afghanistan is. I will mention at this point the image of the slaughtered lamb which recurs through the novel and is obviously developed further in this chapter. The key scene reinforces the idea the Amir had to sacrifice Hassan in order to win Baba’s approval.

Tag Galaxy is very cool site that you may find useful to find images. What it does is to pull pictures tagged in Flickr with a certain keyword onto a virtual globe for presentation.

I put in the tag ‘New Zealand’ and the first thing I got was this screen -

and that became a virtual globe full of images like the one below. For my second tag I put kite and this shows you how the images are displayed.

Throughout the novel Amir is plagued by guilt. He constantly thinks about his actions, is bothered by them, but doesn’t seem to know how to resolve the situation, until Rahim Khan gives him a way.

In The Kite Runner it is like it is a genetic part of his make-up as Amir seems to have been born with the inherited guilt of his father. When he was young he blamed himself for his mother’s death and believed this was why Baba had a problem with him:

I always felt like Baba hated me a little. And why not? After all, I had killed his beloved wife, his beautiful princess, hadn’t I? The least I could have done was to have the decency to have turned out a little more like him.

It was years before Amir learned the truth from Rahim Khan. After the death of Ali, Hassan and Baba, Amir was alone and left to not only sort out his own sins but also those of his father. Amir had learned to silence the guilt that gnawed away at him and he would need time to deal with the truth.

From the moment that he saw Hassan raped Amir defined himself by his guilt. The novel even opens with, “I became what I am today at the age of twelve.” Amir’s failure to act to prevent Hassan from being raped left him stained with guilt. He went through life with a secret sin and guilt. Amir feels unclean and realises that he is cursed. “I watched Hassan get raped … I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.” Amir is beginning to realise the connection and conflict between his inner desires and his behaviour. “Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay to win Baba. Was it a fair price? … He was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?” Amir learns that to win the prize there will be costs and sacrifices. Amir not only sacrificed Hassan and Ali, but he has sacrificed his own soul.

When Soraya confessed her past before they got engaged, Amir thought:

How could I, of all people, chastise someone for their past?… I envied her. Her secret was out. Spoken. Dealt with. I opened my mouth and almost told her how I’d betrayed Hassan, lied, driven him out and destroyed a forty-year relationship between Baba and Ali. But I didn’t. I suspected there were many ways in which Soraya Taheri was a better person than me. Courage was just one of them.

It would take Amir fifteen years before he would be able to tell Soraya the truth. When he gets the call from Rahim Khan Amir is set on a journey that will strip away all his protective layers. Layer by layer he loses the weight of guilt and he is able to find forgiveness. When Sohrab attempts suicide Amir prays that he lives. He asks God to forgive him but it took more time for Amir to forgive himself. Amir and Sohrab both found it difficult to forgive themselves. The fact that Sohrab feels guilt is so sad. He felt dirty because of Assef’s abuse and he even feels guilty for hurting his abuser. Amir assures Sohrab that he has done nothing wrong but his guilt and his fear of going back to the orphanage is too much to bear.

The novel ends with the first rays of hope that Sohrab is recovering mentally, emotionally and physically. Amir has put so much energy into saving Sohrab and through this journey he has also saved himself. Amir was able to finally forgive himself and he has been able to turn his guilt into good. He finds redemption.

Wii Fit was billed as a fitness breakthrough. It just looked like standing around to most people.

Here are a few brief notes on Wilfred Owen’s poem Anthem for Doomed Youth for those of you who want to revise.

Anthem for Doomed Youth is one of Owen’s most famous poems.  It is often read aloud at Anzac Day services and the poem seems to silence the audience.  Is it the sound of the guns in the poem or the themes it explores or the images it conveys?

It  is a powerful poem that still has an effect on people today.

Examining the title of this poem is a way to look at the contrasts and themes which this poem explores.  An anthem is usually a song of praise, but this poem, which is has the solemn style of an anthem, is about the death of the thousands of doomed youth in war.  The use of the word youth in the title adds to the theme of the pity of war.  The poem is written in sonnet form.  The first 8 lines (the octet) lament the horror of the loss of these young men “who die as cattle”.  The simile comparing the soldiers’ deaths to the slaughter of animals is one the audience can relate to.  The first section poses the question of how do we most appropriately bury our war dead?  The answer is in the sounds of battle.  Owen’s use of alliteration and onomatopoeia in this section artfully create the sounds of battle.

The sestet (the next 6 lines) moves away from the sounds of war to the stillness of the home front, where the men are being mourned by their loved ones.  These men, by the nature of war, have been left to lonely graves away from home and denied a burial service attended by their family and loved ones.  This section acknowledges their grief and shows empathy for their loss.

The poem has bitterness, as it examines the brutality of war, and poignancy, as it examines the grief of the soldiers’ loved ones.

I thought I would post another essay on Wilfred Owen’s poetry. This essay was written by a Year 11 student in exam conditions. The essay looks at language techniques.

In the poem Dulce et decorum est the language techniques Wilfred Owen uses are important as they convey the main theme that war is a horrible reality.

Owen uses similes, such as “bent double like old beggars” this gives the impression in my mind that these young soldiers have been prematurely aged, and seemingly deformed by the harsh conditions of war. ‘Coughing like hags’, another simile develops the idea of these young men seeming old.

When Owen goes on to graphicly describe a soldiers death by gas attack he uses sharp words to create harsh images ‘guttering, choking, drowning’ Owen involves the audience,

‘If in some smothering dreams you too could pace’.

Owen uses vivid verbs so the audience can visualise the war scene ‘writhing, hanging, gargling.’

Owen uses a simile again ‘like a devil sick of sin’. This gives a strong image that I as the audience can visualise.

In the poem Anthem for doomed Youth Wilfred Owens language techniques are also important as they convey the main theme, but the main theme in Anthem for doomed youth is that war is a pointless and cruel waste of lives.

Owen uses a rhetorical question to begin the poem instantly involving the audience, ‘What passing bells for these who die as cattle? ‘Owen compares the death of young soldiers in battle to the slaughtering of beasts and cattle.

Owen uses personification ‘monstrous anger of the guns’, stuttering rifles’. This helps the audience really picture the scene in their minds. A metaphor is used to compare normal funeral services to the battle scenes of war ‘The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells’.

Again, a rhetorical question is used to begin the last stanza of the poem, the sestet.

‘What candles may be held to speed them all? This emphasises the fact that these young soldiers have no proper funeral service, as they are miles from home and there is no time for a proper burial.

Both poems convey a central theme that war is not ‘sweet and honourable’ but a horrific reality and a waste of lives.

The language techniques of both poems are used well, to help convey the themes, making them very important to the poems.

Here’s some stuff that didn’t make it into his last video. It is worth a look.

You should be revising by:

• re reading ‘The Kite Runner’
• working through your notes and making study notes
• writing at least one essay on the novel

Write a 600 word essay on the following topic.

Evaluate the contribution that TWO minor characters make in a novel you have studied .

To do this well evaluate the contribution of your characters. They might:

• play a significant part in illuminating the major characters’ experience or nature, by contrast or parallel.
• have a brief but significant moment in the novel because of what is said or done.
• introduce a special tone or significance into the novel, so making an important contribution to its total meaning or effect, or helping in the reader’s understanding of theme/setting/situation.

If you don’t want to do that topic try the following one:

In what ways does the author of a novel you have studied make the reader aware of an important theme or themes?

1. Identify and discuss the theme(s)

2. Move onto “the ways” the reader is made aware of important theme/s.