1. The Kite Runner Conflict

2. Conflict
Conflict is a key theme in The Kite Runner and is significant to the story. There are two types of conflict I will be talking about the conflicts between Amir and Assef and the conflict in Afghanistan, that forces Amir and Baba to leave Afghanistan.

3. Amir and Hassan v Assef
Assef in the book terrorises Hazaras with racial abuse and physical violence using brass knuckles. Hassan is a Hazaran and Assef believes that Afghanistan should get rid off all Hazaras including Hassan. Assef confronts Amir about being friends with Hassam, a Hazaran, and threatens to hit Amir with his brass knuckles. He is only stopped because Hassan threatens to hit him with a rock from his slingshot. Quotation: “If you make a move, they’ll have to change your nickname from Assef ‘the Ear Eater’ to ‘One-eyed Assef,’ because I have this rock pointed at your left eye. ”

4. Soviet v Afghan war
The war in Afghanistan against Soviet Russia is very important to the story, as it is the reason why Amir and Baba have to flee from Afghanistan to Pakistan. So they can start a new life in America away from the war. Amir tells the reader what life was like during Soviet control: “Tomorrow morning, I’d wake up, peak out the window: No grim-faced Russian soldiers patrolling the sidewalks, no tanks rolling up and down the streets of my city, their turrets swivelling like accusing fingers, no rubble, no curfew, no Russian Army Personnel Carriers weaving through the bazaars”

5. Amir Returns
Amir returns to Afghanistan after he learns that Hassan was killed by the Taliban and has an orphan son named Sohrab, who he learns is his nephew. He sees the devastation left behind after the Russians have left and the Taliban have taken over. Quotation: “Grim reminders of it were strewn along the road: burned carcasses of old Soviet tanks, overturned military trucks gone to rust, a crushed Russian jeep that had plunged over the mountainside.”

6. Taliban Public Executions
While trying to get a meeting with a Taliban official to save Sohrab, Amir attends a football match where the Taliban official was going to be. At half time two red trucks drove out to one side of the pitch where there were two holes in the ground and the Taliban officials removed a man and a woman from the trucks and forced them into the holes. The Taliban official told the crowd they were there to carry out justice in the name of Allah and then the man and woman were stoned to death. Quotation: “The Talib, looking absurdly like a baseball pitcher on the mound, hurled the stone at the blindfolded man in the hole.”

7. Amir and Sohrab v Assef
Amir gets a meeting with the Taliban official who has Sohrab. The Taliban official brings Sohrab out and makes him dance in front of Amir. Then Amir finds out that the Taliban official is Assef, his childhood bully, and Amir asks if he can take Sohrab. Assef tells him that they have unfinished business and brings out his brass knuckles and they get into a brutal fight. Amir only escapes when Sohrab fires a ball at Assef’s eye and finished what his father, Hassan, had threatened to do. He was now “one-eyed Assef.” Quotation: “He put his hand where his left eye had been just a moment ago.”