Cliff Notes for The Kite Runner
Study Guides
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GradeSaver (TM) ClassicNotes The Kite Runner: Study Guide List Price: $7.99 Sale Price: $7.98 Used From: $8.00 Average Rating:   |
Description
GradeSaver(TM) ClassicNotes are the most comprehensive study guides on the market, written by Harvard students for students! Longer, with more detailed summary and analysis sections and sample essays, ClassicNotes are the best choice for advanced students and educators. Each note includes: * An author biography * An in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary * A short summary * A character list and related descriptions * A list of themes * A glossary * Historical context * Two academic essays * 100 quiz questions to improve test taking skills!
Reviews
This may have been good or even wonderful if my son had used it. Unfortunately, he didn't utilize it at all. That was a disappointment. But it probably would be helpful to some!
Book has general outline of entire novel with detailed chapter summaries as well, author bio, era & geographical information (pertinent to the story), character list, and a brief overview of the main themes. The only thing I would have liked is page numbers (corresponding to the novel) by quotes. There are quizzes for each chapter at the end, and I scored higher than my husband who had recently read the novel! I would definitely purchase more in this series if I needed to. Also I read the whole thing in well under an hour. If you're thinking of getting it, its totally worth it.
Full-Length
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The Kite Runner Sale Price: $4.85 Average Rating:  |
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The timely and critically acclaimed debut novel that's becoming a word-of-mouth phenomenon... In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his first try. The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ("...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.") Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ("people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz"), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon. --Gisele Toueg |
Video & Audio
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The Kite Runner List Price: $19.99 Sale Price: $2.72 Used From: $1.50 Average Rating: |
Description
Amir is a young Afghani from a well-to-do Kabul family; his best friend Hassan is the son of a family servant. Together the two boys form a bond of friendship that breaks tragically on one fateful day, when Amir fails to save his friend from brutal neighborhood bullies. Amir and Hassan become separated, and as first the Soviets and then the Taliban seize control of Afghanistan, Amir and his father escape to the United States to pursue a new life. Years later, Amir – now an accomplished author living in San Francisco – is called back to Kabul to right the wrongs he and his father committed years ago.
Like the bestselling book upon which it's based, The Kite Runner will haunt the viewer long after the film is over. A tale of childhood betrayal, innocence and harsh reality, and dreamy memory, The Kite Runner faces good and evil--and the path between them, though often blurry and sorrowfully relative. Director Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland) presents a painterly vision of Afghanistan before the Soviet tanks, before the Taliban--lush, verdant, fertile--in its landscape and in its people and their history and hopes. The story follows two young boys' friendship, tested beyond endurance, and the haunting of their adult selves by what happened in their youth--and what horrors befall their country in the meantime. The performances of the two boys--Zekeria Ebrahimi (Amir) and Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada (Hassan)--are the film's strongest, unforced and gently evocative. The penance paid by their adult selves is foreshadowed, but never predictable--and the metaphor of innocence lost, a common theme in Forster's work, keeps the film, like the title kites, truly aloft.--A.T. Hurley
DVD Information
Binding: DVDAspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Brand: Paramount
Manufacturer: Dreamworks Video
Original Release Date: 2007-01-01
Actors:
- Khalid Abdalla
- Atossa Leoni
- Shaun Toub
- Sayed Jafar Masihullah Gharibzada
- Igbal Theba
Reviews
"i love this movie and it tore me up",it is a very beautiful haunting movie and it will stick to me.... now,i want to read the book......
I rate this DVD as one of the very best. It is very well produced and true to life. I would highly recommend this DVD to anyone who enjoys drama, suspense and just having fun with family anf friends. This DVD has it all. Enjoy !!
It was an excellent book; and a very good movie - but nothing could compare with the book.
I heard the book was incredible so I checked out the movie and it did not disappoint. It was interesting, suspenseful and emotional. Truly a great movie that will touch you.
What I loved: Great acting (brilliant, in fact), an incredible entrance to a world I know little about (Afghanistan in the 1970s), often excellent storytelling, and an overall sense of trying to grow up and right past wrongs. What I hated (strap yourself in): 1) The son--Amir, the main character--never blames his father for being a rejecting brute, because Amir doesn't ever allow himself to explore his father's brutality. The writers/directors also fail to explore this to any sufficient degree. As the result, Amir comes across as a weak, intrinsically flawed coward, selling out and rejecting his loyal best friend of childhood--Hassan. There was nothing but the barest acknowledgement that Amir was entirely set up to behave this way by his father. In many ways his father loved and admired Hassan more, and emotionally rejected and shamed Amir because of it. Amir was desperate for his father's love, and had no emotional choice but to brutally reject Hassan for it. 2) The father had so many powerful opportunities to get closer to Amir, and to explore Amir's pain, and yet utterly failed to do so, and instead just drove his own wedge of rejection in deeper--all the while blaming Amir for his cowardice. The director and writer failed miserably to elucidate this in a way that accomplishes anything other than laying most of the blame at Amir's feet--blaming the child and exonerating the parent. Same old ugly lie that society's thrives on. 3) The father is presented as a brave hero. Yet what is really brave about rejecting your own son? The father takes a bold move by standing up to a brutal Russian soldier who wants to rape a young Afghan woman, and the father is nearly killed for it. But is this true heroism? What about his obligation to protect his son, and be a real father to him? Had the soldier killed the father (which nearly happened), Amir, who was motherless, would have had no parent, and would likely have died--if only emotionally. Had the father really been brave he would have fought for his son fully, and fought the demons within himself that prevented him from being a more nurturing, respectful parent. 4) Instead of confronting his brutal father, Amir (and the director) confronts the Taliban--making them the ultimate bad-guy. Yeah, they're horrible--but it's always easier to blame an evil regime than a lousy parent. 5) Many of the scenes of Afghanistan in the year 2000 were CHEESY. I'm no expert on the Taliban, but this film struck me as over-the-top. Okay, we all know the Taliban can be brutal and primitive and anti-women, but it felt unnecessary to present their leaders as pedophiles as well. And the movie totally lost me when the main character and the boy take on the Taliban with simply a slingshot and "courage." It went from being a deep movie that strived for something real into something more befitting Harrison Ford. (And don't get me wrong--Harrison Ford can be great, but when I want to watch Harrison Ford I watch "Indiana Jones" or "Star Wars.")
