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Adam Szalai
Ms. Coyle
ENG 3UO
April 7th, 2018
Close Reading #1
“Ali and Baba grew up together…wasn’t Iranian either” (27-8).
I chose this passage because it demonstrates the kickoff of Ali and Baba’s
relationship, and how their sons Amir and Hassan demonstrate the same type of
relationship a generation later. A few lines into this passage, we learn that “In none of
his stories did Baba ever refer to Ali as his friend” (27). Could this be telling us that Ali
doesn’t admire Baba as a friend, or foreshadowing that Amir and Hassan’s relationship
will turn out the same way?
This passage shows us the real character of Amir and Hassan, and how there
relationship is very difficult. Amir says “ The curious thing was, I never thought of
Hassan and me as friend either…in the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I
was Sunni and he was Shi’a” (27). The way Amir says this make me think that deep
down he thinks of Hassan like a brother and a best friend, but on the other hand he
can’t express this feeling because they are different religions. Is this the only reason
why he doesn’t want to express these feelings, or is there someone or something
stopping him?
Amir is looked upon by his dad as weak and that he is not very “manly”. Amir is
talking about the good times he’d had within his friendship with Hassan over the course
of 12 years when he states “We hurled pebbles at their goats. We squirted water on
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their mules. I’d make Hassan sit on the wall of ailing corn and fire pebbles with his
slingshot at the came...
