The Symbolism of Blood in The Kite Runner

The Symbolism of Blood in The Kite Runner
an essay by Jordan Kasko

Blood seems to be ubiquitous in Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner. Most of the important scenes in the book, from the kite tournament in Kabul to the final confrontation with Assef to Sohrab’s attempted suicide, involve blood. These scenes always seem to occur when there is some kind of connection or disconnection between the main characters; perhaps blood is the symbol of that connection. It certainly connects human beings to life, and when we lose our blood, we weaken and die.

The central connection in the book is between Amir and Hassan. This is, significantly, a blood connection in more ways than one, since they are half-brothers. Well before this is revealed, however, Amir is cut by the glass-covered tar on their kite as they fly in the tournament, he “had Hassan hold the string and sucked the blood dry,” effectively sharing blood with Hassan (64). This tournament is their last true connection as friends, as Hassan offers to run the last kite “for you a thousand times over!” before being beaten and raped by Assef and his cronies. Blood appears on both blood-brothers in this scene, as “tiny drops…fell from between [Hassan’s] legs and stained the snow black (78), and Amir bites “down on [his] fist, hard enough to draw blood from the knuckles” (77). Here is their disconnect; here is where the friends lose their friendship. And months later, when Amir attempts to prod Hassan into beating him so the narrator can forgive himself, Amir pelts Hassan with pomegranates, which cause Hassan to be “smeared in red like he’d been shot by a firing squad.” Hassan even crushes a pomegranate on his own head, “red dripping down his face like blood” (93). However, pomegranate juice only symbolizes blood; it is not blood, and therefore there is no re-connection between the brothers.

But Amir and Hassan aren’t the only two characters whose connection or disconnection is symbolized by blood. Despite the narrator’s claim that he and Baba were on “such better terms in the U.S.” (302), their relations continually improve throughout their escape from Afghanistan, which culminates in Kamal’s father’s suicide before both of their eyes. Amir says he will “never forget…the spray of red” when Kamal’s father shoots himself (124), and it is at this moment that Amir and Baba seem to start to become equals. Not only does the event help Amir on his road to maturity, but both father and son see what a father might do when he loses his son, and both are bound closer because of their experience. Rahim Khan’s final letter to Amir also expresses their friendship in terms of blood when Rahim writes “my heart bled for you” to describe his sympathy for Amir’s unfulfilled desire for love from Baba.

The story’s villain, fittingly, loves blood. Besides the rape of Hassan, Assef enjoys pelting adulterers to death with stones, turning them into “bloodied corpses” (272), and massacring Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif as “God’s work” (277). Interestingly, if tangentially, when Amir remembers his wife Soraya handing him a newspaper article on the massacre, “her face [was] bloodless.” Perhaps her blood empathized with the loss of blood in Afghanistan. Assef also loves Amir’s blood – he nearly beats him to death – and Amir has a flashback to the pomegranates from 26 years before, and laughs, because finally his blood has been spilled, and he feels some relief from his guilt (289).

At this final connection and disconnection between Amir and Assef, Amir also forges a connection through blood with Sohrab. The boy saves Amir’s life by shooting a brass ball into Assef’s eye, turning it into a “bloody socket” (291). Amir repays Sohrab by saving his life in Islamabad when Sohrab attempts suicide with a razor (343, 350), cementing the connection of friendship, fatherhood, and blood between the two.

Finally, the symbolism of blood does not go unnoticed to the narrator. Amir has a dream on the drive to Islamabad where many of the bloody scenes in the novel are recalled, including Baba cooking a freshly killed lamb and Hassan’s bloody pants after the rape (309-310). Amir also recollects in his dream a phrase that General Taheri says to his daughter when she and Amir are considering adoption: “blood is a powerful thing, bachem, never forget that” (187). The Kite Runner echoes this sentiment throughout, using blood to symbolize the powerful connections and disconnections between the novel’s characters.


-03/30/09