Directions: Read The Kite Runner up to page 35. Answer the following Close Reading Questions. You may answer as a narrative or each question individually. Be prepared to discuss your insights in class on Thursday.
1. What can one infer (guess) about the amount of narrative space (10 lines) on page 3 to describe Hassan and his features?
2. What condition disfigured Hassan? Why do you think the narrator states, "where the Chinese doll maker's instrument may have slipped, or perhaps he had simply grown tired and careless."
3. What details from pages 2-3 imply that Hassan and the narrator are not equals although they enjoy each others company and are wonderful friends?
4. Why do you think the narrator recollects the pictures he sees in the living room in the following order: (1) the photo of his grandfather and King Nadir Shah taken in 1931; (2) a picture of his parents' wedding night and finally, (3) a picture of the narrator's father, and Rahim Kham standing outside the house, neither one of them smiling, with Rahim Khan holding the narrator's pinky finger? What is significant about the ordering of these pictures knowing what we know about the narrator's mother?
5. What might Rahim Khan holding the narrator's pinky foreshadow or indicate? Who actually calls the narrator as the story begins in Chapter 1?
6. How does one group, the Pashtun's maintain superiority over the Hasaras?
7. Why is it significant that the narrator's first word is "Baba"?
8. Why is it significant that Hassan's first word is "Amir"?
9. Look up the name "Amir" online. What does it mean?
10. What does the story about what Amir learns in school from Mullah Fatiullah Khan (about drinking) conflict with Baba's behavior? What does Baba say about it?
11. Baba tells Amir that"every sin is a variation of theft". What other sins/crimes are a variation of theft? Consider the following: fraud; embezzlement; cheating; adultery; identity theft, speculatating/betting. Are each of those "Crimes" variations of theft? How so?
12. What details let you know that Amir is closer to Rahim Kham than his baba?
13. Why is Baba's stature significant?
14. How does the relationship between Ali and Baba mirror somewhat that relationship between Amir and Hassan?
15. How did Ali come to know Baba?
16. Why did Amir stop reading riddles to Hassan? What might this predict?
17. What question does Hassan ask of Amir in reference to his story?
18. How does Amir react to Hassan's question? Why is this significant?
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