Sunglasses Removed

The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini

Hosseini utilizes imagery in The Kite Runner. One image that occurs around chapter twenty-two is the image of a man's sunglasses. These sunglasses keep his identity secretive and unknown. This man is the  man who Amir believes knows where Sohrab is located. When Amir encounters the man wearing the sunglasses, he thinks that he recognizes the man from somewhere. This man proves to be none other than the man who hurt Hassan when Amir and Hassan were children: Assef. "But he was already here, in the flesh, sitting less than the feet from me, after all these years. His name escaped my lips: 'Assef'"(Hosseini, 281). The ambiguity of Assef's sunglasses were a strong image that represented the unknown, unattended aspects of Amir's past. His past was closing in on him as he knew it. The world that Amir had tried to escape from was slowly coming back into his life. The imagery of Assef allows for the reader to be overcome with shock that Assef has come back into Amir's life. Before, he had stolen Hassan's innocence, but now he attempting to corrupt Sohrab, the next closest thing to Hassan.