Olivia Gerbec
Readers Journal #1
“I became what I am today at the age of
twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter
of 1975. I remember the precise moment…”
Page 1.
“He asked me to fetch Hassan too, but I lied
and told him Hassan had the runs. I wanted
Baba all to myself.” Page 14.
“ ‘I think I have saratan,’ I said. Cancer.
Baba lifted his head from the pages flapping
in the breeze.” Page 15.
“With me as the glaring exception, my
father molded the world around him to his
liking.” Page 16.
“We’d had a fleeting good moment-it wasn’t Amir, the narrator, shows us that his father
often Baba talked to me, let alone on his lap- does in fact neglect him emotionally, and
and I’d been a fool to waste it.” Page 19.
“The townspeople caught the killer…..They
hanged him from the branch of an oak tree
with still two hours to go before afternoon
prayer.” Page 19.
Narrator is seemingly the first person
involved, and looks like the main character.
Talks about an experience he had when he
was twelve, must be something important to
the story. I will look out for this throughout
the novel.
The main character seems greedy and
doesn’t want his friend Hassan to be around
his father. Maybe the narrator is insecure
about himself and knows his dad likes
Hassan more than him.
Narrator says something extreme to
seemingly get his father’s attention. Maybe
this is him showing us that his father never
gives him the attention he needs.
Narrator explicitly states that he is a
disappointment to his father, and he knows
it. Maybe this is why he is insecure about
his relationship with his father, and why he
wants to keep Hassan away from him.
maybe this is the root to his insecurities and
bad qualities we might learn later.
Is this normal to do when a criminal is
caught, to hang him? Or did this only occur
because the perpetrator acted against Amir’s
father? Did Amir’s father have such a high
social rank, or was this only what Amir
thought?

“ ‘You know, sometimes you are the most
self-centered man I know,’ ” Page 23.
“ ‘I see how they push him around, take his
toys from him, give him a shove here, a
whack there. And, you know, he never
fights back. Never. He just… drops his head
and…’ ” Page 24.
“ ‘If I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of
my wife with my own eyes, I’d never
believe he’s my son.’ ” Page 26-25.
“My favourite part of reading to Hassan was
when we came across a big word that he
didn’t know. I’d tease him, expose his
ignorance.” Page 30.
On page 33, Amir talks about his first short
story he created about greed and how it can
push you to do things that you would never
do.
“ ‘May I have it, Amir jan? I would very
much like to read it.’ ” Page 34.
Olivia Gerbec
This is said by Rahim Kahn, one of Amir’s
fathers’ friends. This is an inside look on
how other characters view his father, a view
that the narrator would never say himself.
This makes me think that maybe the narrator
isn’t the most reliable and honest person,
although it is his father.
This is another conversation with Amir’s
father and Rahim Khan. It gives us a look of
a different aspect of Amir, one that he would
never explicitly say himself. Is this actually
how Amir is, or is this another one of his
father’s warped views?
This shows Amir’s father's disappointment
in his son, much like Jedidiah Jenkins’
parents disappointment in him in the novel
To Shake The Sleeping Self.
This shows that Amir may be more like his
father than he would admit. That he would
treat a friend like that just to embarrass him
about things that he had no control over.
But, was this a normal relationship between
man and his servant? Maybe Amir was
better to Hassan than most people were to
their servants in that time. I’ll have to see if
there are other references to servants further
in the novel.
Did Amir’s story come from personal
experience? Did something happen that gave
him inspiration to write that, or was it
something he saw in a movie or previous
book? I’ll keep an eye out for something he
might say that could answer these questions.
Rahim Khan offered to read Amir’s story
because his father had no interest in doing

“...he walked the neighbourhood like a Khan This showcases the author's use of figurative
strolling through his land with his eager-to- devices; simile. He used this simile to help
please entourage.” Page 41.
“ ‘We are the true Afghans, the pure
Afghans, not this Flat-Nose here. His people
pollute our homeland, our watan.’ ” Page
43.
“Someone had challenged their God.
Humiliated him, And, worst of all, that
someone was a skinny Hazara.” Page 46.
“...as the wind screeched through the yards,
the streets.” Page 52.
“If I changed my mind and asked for a
bigger and fancier kite, Baba would buy it
for me- but then he’d buy it for Hassan too.
Sometimes I wished he wouldn’t do that.
Olivia Gerbec
so. Does this mean that everyone can see
that Amir’s father is unconcerned about
Amir? Or is this an exaggeration Amir wrote
about to prove that his father didn’t care?
This proves that Amir, the narrator, may not
be the most reliable narrator for this story.
readers make a connection and understand
how Assef walked through town, using a
comparison we are likely to understand.
Assef talks about how Hassan’s “people”
pollute Afghanistan. Is that how his people
are viewed? Does this prove that Amir is
more than civil with Hassan, and that the
distasteful things he occasionally does to
Hassan is okay?
This single sentence proves that Hazara’s
are proven to be low ranked in the social
hierarchy at that time. It also proves that
Amir knows this, and somewhat agrees with
it to have stated that. Or, was he just trying
to illustrate what Assef and his followers
must have been thinking?
This is another example of the use of
figurative devices; personification. The
“wind screeched” is used to allow the
readers to form a connection and understand
how loud the wind was, through the eyes of
Amir.
Amir seems to be biased when it comes to
Hassan. He struggles to accept the fact that
his father may like Hassan more than him,
or at least equally. It seems like Amir may
 Olivia Gerbec

Wished he’d let me be the favourite.” Page hold an inner grudge against Hassan because
54. of that. Maybe that’s why he is sometimes
mean to Hassan and likes to embarrass him
for no reason.

“ ...I’d always envied his natural athleticism. The narrator explicitly states that he’s
” Page 56. envious of Hassan’s natural athleticism, but
is that the only thing he’s envious about? Is
this yet another reason Amir likes to make
Hassan look bad?

“ That’s when it happened again: Hassan’s
face changed. Maybe not changed, not
really, but suddenly I had the feeling that I
was looking at two faces, the one I knew,...
and another, a second face, this one lurking
just beneath the surface… leave me with the
unsettling feeling that maybe I’d seen it
someplace before.” Page 57 to 58.
When the narrator said that he saw Hassan’s
face somewhere before, that raised my own
questions. Did Amir recognize that face in
someone he knew? His own father or
Hassan’s father? Himself? Or was it
something the narrator was simply
overthinking?

“ ‘I’ll buy you one someday.’ I said.” Page The narrator tells Hassan that he would buy
61. him a television one day. Does this mean
that Amir cares about him more than he lets
on? That he thinks they will stay friends for
the rest of his life, long enough so that when
he can he would buy Hassan a TV?

“Still, I had been mean to Hassan. I almost Again, this shows that Amir takes Hassan’s
apologized, then didn’t. Hassan understood I kindness for granted; he thinks that being
was just nervous.” Page 64. mean to Hassan is justified because he was
nervous. Is Hassan ever going to stand up to
Amir? Or would that affect his job as his
servant?

“At least two dozen kites already hung in Use of simile; like paper sharks roaming for
the sky, like paper sharks roaming for prey.” prey. Used to help readers get an
Page 67. understanding of how many kites were in
the air, and how fast they flew in circles and
loops.

“I thought about Hassan’s dream, the one This was foreshadowed in a way when

about us swimming in the lake. There is no
monster, he’d said, just water. Except he’d
been wrong about that. There was a monster
in the lake. It had grabbed Hassan by the
ankles, dragged him to the murky bottom. I
was that monster.” Page 91.
Olivia Gerbec
Hassan first told Amir about his dream. The
narrator makes a connection to that dream,
saying that he is now the monster. Does this
mean that Amir is compassionate about
Hassan, and that he really does care for him?
Maybe it took Hassan getting raped for
Amir to realize how much he values Hassan
as not only a person, but as a friend. How
will this affect their relationship? Will they
ever become close again? Or will this haunt
Amir for the rest of his life? Is this the
experience the narrator was referring to that
changed his life in the beginning of the
story? Or is that something else?