The Kite Runner Themes

(Click the themes infographic to download.) There are two major relationships in The Kite Runner. One is between the protagonist and his father. The other is between the protagonist and his best...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) The plot of The Kite Runner revolves around the protagonist's betrayal of his best friend. In a way, this betrayal drives the rest of the book and perh...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) In The Kite Runner, Hosseini directly compares the arrival of war to a loss of innocence. (Soon after an invading army shows up, the narrator watches h...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) It's one thing if your father is a principled man. That's all well and good. We mean, morality is kind of important, right? But what if your father isn...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Here's a very basic reduction of The Kite Runner's main plot and sub-plots: people lose their innocence and try to regain it. In telling this story, Ho...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Does racial intolerance bring about our worst moments as human beings? The Kite Runner examines the whole spectrum of racism: out-and-out hatred, relig...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) There aren't a lot of women in The Kite Runner. In fact, Hosseini really only spends time with two women: the protagonist's wife and mother-in-law. Fur...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Early on in The Kite Runner it seems like there are only two approaches to religion. Either you're an extremist like the protagonist's teacher, who con...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) We're not sure if admiration is actually a good thing in The Kite Runner. The protagonist's intense admiration for his father leads him to some fairly...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) When the protagonist of a novel is a writer, there's a good chance the novel will have plenty of juicy commentary about writing. That's certainly the c...