Third Place Kite Runner Essay
by Danielle Pitcher , Henniger High School
As a young American, who hasn’t had the opportunity to first handedly experience major aspects of cultural diversity, I’ll start off by saying that “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, has done nothing but broaden my horizons, and make me realize that there is more to life than what we experience as teenagers, and that there is a whole world beyond our high school doors. “The Kite Runner” has given me the opportunity to realize that although all cultures may seem disconnected by barriers like religious beliefs, when broken down, people of all cultures have common characteristics.
This may sound shallow, but after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers, I like many other Americans despised Afghanistan, and all people who where connected with it. Unknowingly I had placed a cultural barrier between myself and an entire country, but as I got older and the vivid memory of 9/11 faded away, so did my hatred toward Afghanistan. It wasn’t that I wasn’t still angry, but as time moved on, so had I. As I began to read “The Kite Runner”, I began to remember what had happened the day of the attacks, and I began to do something that I never thought I could, I began to forgive. “The Kite Runner” brought it to my attention that, all humans make mistakes, no matter where you’re from, no matter what religion you believe in or what culture you are, all humans’ error. I began to put myself in other positions, and I ended up coming to the conclusion that when humans are stripped of their luxuries, like religion and culture, we are all the same, every person in the world holds the same feelings and emotions, it’s just how we use them, and show them, that makes us all so different.
Through Khaled Hosseini’s characters Amir and Hassan, I began to realize that there is no difference between 2 boys playing together in Afghanistan and 2 boys playing together in America. And more importantly I began to realize that there is no difference in betrayed there than there is here, and that no matter where you are in the world, you will always find a friend, you will always be able to find someone you have something in common with. For me, I even found a friend in the fiction character Amir, so much that his struggles, his qualities, and his flaws all could have belonged to me. Now Amir and I are two totally different people with to completely different upbringings, from two totally different cultures, but we can be joined and compared through our fears and human error.
Over all, “The Kite Runner” has opened my eyes to something I never though possible. It has opened my eyes to forgive, and to realize that no matter where you are, there will always be someone who you have something in common with. No matter what culture you’re in all people have the same problems, all people stress out over work, long to get along with their family, wish they had something someone else does, for some a struggle to “fit it” and for other a struggle to stand out. Even though they speak a different language, eat different foods, warship a different god we can all be put into one group; human, we all can’t help but be human. Now this may seem far fetched but maybe the answer to peace among cultures is human error, its one thing every person on the planet, despite your culture has in common. Maybe we’ve spent too much time trying to be perfect, and trying to perfect others that we looked right over the answer to many of the worlds problems. Maybe if we just accepted error among every culture, a conquest for assimilation wouldn’t be necessary. “The Kite Runner” has brought this point to my attention, it’s allowed me to see that the Afghanistan culture can be just like our own, everything that happens in Afghanistan happens in America, and happens in the rest of the world