Quarter 2: Outside Reading #3

Today I learned that the kite runner that the author is referring to is Hassan, and we learn that Rahim Khan is the business partner and good friend of Baba. Also, we see both sides of the relationship between Amir and Baba. While Amir sees his father, Baba, as a great and successful person who is powerful and good looking, Baba has a different view about his son, Amir. Amir described his father, "My father was a force of nature, a towering Pashtun specimen with a thick beard, a way-ward crop of curly brown hair as unruly as the man himself. hands that looked capable of uprooting a willow tree, and a black glare that would 'drop the devil to his knees begging for mercy,' as Rahim Khan used to say"(Hosseini 13). While Amir has this powerful image of his father, he couldn't more different than his father. Amir enjoyed writing and reading poetry and didn't fight back when he was picked on, and his father was a huge soccer fan and player and stood up for himself. And Baba doesn't understand Amir and his ways, and explaines to Rahim Khan, "Look, I know there's a fondness between you and him and I'm happy. I mean that. He needs someone who... understands him, because God knows I don't. But something about Amit troubles me in a way that I can't express. It's like it I hadn't seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own eyes, I'd never believe he's my son" (Hosseini 23). We also learn Baba's definition of sinning, "There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft" (Hosseini 16). I think this philosophy will come up later in the book.