How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
It was Rahim Khan who first referred to him as what eventually became Baba's famous nickname, Toophan agha, or "Mr. Hurricane." It was an apt enough nickname. My father was a force of nature, a towering Pashtun specimen with a thick beard, a wayward crop of curly brown hair as unruly as the man himself, hands that looked capable of uprooting a willow tree, and a black glare that would "drop the devil to his knees begging for mercy," as Rahim Khan used to say. At parties, when all six-foot-five of him thundered into the room, attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun. (3.2)
It's safe to say that in the novel – at least for Amir – masculinity and Baba are inextricably intertwined. Baba is what it means to be an Afghan man. Here, Amir recounts the utter presence of his father: a huge man with thick hair and a ferocious glare. But we at Shmoop – at least our psychiatry division – think there might be a tiny problem with Amir's picture of his father. This is the stuff of mythology: Amir's father uproots trees and scares the devil. To what extent does Amir, by mythologizing his father, mythologize masculinity? Does this make masculinity unattainable for Amir?
Quote #2
Of course, marrying a poet was one thing, but fathering a son who preferred burying his face in poetry books to hunting...well, that wasn't how Baba had envisioned it, I suppose. Real men didn't read poetry – and God forbid they should ever write it! Real men – real boys – played soccer just as Baba had when he had been young. [...]. He signed me up for soccer teams to stir the same passion in me. But I was pathetic, a blundering liability to my own team, always in the way of an opportune pass or unwittingly blocking an open lane. I shambled about the field on scraggly legs, squalled for passes that never came my way. And the harder I tried, waving my arms over my head frantically and screeching, "I'm open! I'm open!" the more I went ignored. (3.40)
Amir isn't the masculine Pashtun Baba wanted. He isn't a sports-playing, bear-hunting man of a boy. (Really, Baba wants someone like himself.) Said another way, Baba's dislikes Amir as a son. We might question Baba's definition of manhood (what if you don't like sports?) but, as a boy, Amir doesn't have that privilege. Baba is everything to him. Thus, Amir needs to acquire some manliness if he's going to gain Baba's respect. This, of course, leads to disastrous consequences.
Quote #3
But at the moment, I watched with horror as one of the chapandaz fell off his saddle and was trampled under a score of hooves. His body was tossed and hurled in the stampede like a rag doll, finally rolling to a stop when the melee moved on. He twitched once and lay motionless, his legs bent at unnatural angles, a pool of his blood soaking through the sand.
I began to cry.
I cried all the way back home. I remember how Baba's hands clenched around the steering wheel. Clenched and unclenched. Mostly, I will never forget Baba's valiant efforts to conceal the disgusted look on his face as he drove in silence. (3.45-47)
Baba takes Amir to a Buzkashi tournament. In this sport, a skilled horseman (chapandaz) picks up a goat carcass and tries to drop it into a special circle. The horseman does all this while being harassed by other chapandaz. Sounds pretty gory, right? The chapandaz at this particular tournament is trampled. And Amir cries on the way home, probably shocked by the violence of the sport. This disgusts Baba. (Though, in an odd act of kindness, Baba tries to hide his disgust.) Amir learns his lesson, right? Which is: If you want to be a man, don't cry and don't react to violence. This "lesson" brings up an important question: How does Baba's practice of masculinity actually prevent Amir from confessing his betrayal of Hassan?
Quote #4
We saw our first Western together, Rio Bravo with John Wayne, at the Cinema Park, across the street from my favorite bookstore. I remember begging Baba to take us to Iran so we could meet John Wayne. (4.8)
Have you noticed how many references there are in this novel to American films, especially Westerns? The Western mythologizes its male heroes – they're unnaturally silent, strong, and they accomplish ridiculous feats of endurance. No surprise, then, that Baba and Amir would share a love of American Westerns. Baba because it affirms his brand of masculinity and Amir because it depicts men like his father (men he wishes he could be like).
Quote #5
Then, Baba and I drove off in his black Ford Mustang – a car that drew envious looks everywhere because it was the same car Steve McQueen had driven in Bullitt, a film that played in one theater for six months. (4.10)
This black Ford Mustang goes part and parcel with Baba's conception of manhood. (We can't help but notice the touch of irony later when Baba gives Amir an American muscle car – a Gran Torino – as a graduation present. The muscle car, once the hottest thing on the road, is actually eleven years old by the time Baba gives it to Amir.) How does Hosseini mythologize Baba and other Afghan men and simultaneously mock them? How does Amir, in his own life, diverge from his father's ideas of masculinity? In what ways does he subscribe to them?
Quote #6
I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me. I was afraid of getting hurt. That's what I told myself as I turned my back to the alley, to Hassan. That's what I made myself believe. I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba. Was it a fair price? The answer floated to my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara, wasn't he? (7.140)
In this passage, Amir watches as Assef rapes Hassan. It's horrific and cruel. Somehow, Amir believes he can win his father's love if he brings back the blue kite Hassan ran down. And he's right, to an extent. Following his victory in the kite tournament, Amir and his father become closer than ever before. But Amir is also tragically wrong. Amir ignores – by not defending Hassan – some of his father's most cherished principles: honor, pride, and bravery. In order to seem like a man in his father's eyes, Amir actually does the most shameful thing he could do: abandon (and later betray) Hassan.
Quote #7
Baba would enlighten me with his politics during those walks with long-winded dissertations. "There are only three real men in this world, Amir," he'd say. He'd count them off on his fingers: America the brash savior, Britain, and Israel. "The rest of them – " he used to wave his hand and make a phht sound " – they're like gossiping old women."
[...]. In Baba's view, Israel was an island of "real men" in a sea of Arabs too busy getting fat off their oil to care for their own. "Israel does this, Israel does that," Baba would say in a mock-Arabic accent. "Then do something about it! Take action. You're Arabs, help the Palestinians, then!" (11.3-4)
Baba's ideas about masculinity even seep into his politics. America, Britain, and Israel are the only real men in international politics because they take action instead of simply talk. Don't forget, though, how Baba's life changes once he immigrates to America, one of the "masculine" countries. He diminishes in stature; he's no longer throwing lavish parties and building orphanages, but instead working long hours at a gas station. And what caused Baba to move to America? The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan, which sounds like a country "taking action." The very qualities – and countries – Baba praises actually ruin him. Is it possible for Hosseini to include any more irony in this novel?
Quote #8
What America and the world needed was a hard man. A man to be reckoned with, someone who took action instead of wringing his hands. That someone came in the form of Ronald Reagan. And when Reagan went on TV and called the Shorawi "the Evil Empire," Baba went out and bought a picture of the grinning president giving a thumbs up. He framed the picture and hung it in our hallway, nailing it right next to the old black-and-white of himself in his thin necktie shaking hands with King Zahir Shah. (11.5)
It's really no surprise Baba would love Ronald Regan. First off, Regan lets the Soviet Union have it. This should please any Afghan who lived through the Shorawi invasion of 1979. But another aspect of Regan might attract Baba. Regan, as a politician, drew on the American mythology of the West, the gunslinger who sets things right. In his dress and demeanor, Regan reminded Americans of John Wayne, the iconic star of the Western film. Reagan was even in a few Westerns during his acting career. With Baba and Amir's diet of American movies in mind (action flicks, Westerns), Regan must seem like the shining god of masculinity and honor.
Quote #9
"Remember this," Baba said, pointing at me, "The man is a Pashtun to the root. He has nang and namoos." Nang. Namoos. Honor and pride. The tenets of Pashtun men. Especially when it came to the chastity of a wife. Or a daughter. (12.11)
Well, Baba gives you a pretty explicit definition of masculinity here: honor and pride. But we also want to note – though honor and pride are generally good things – how nang and namoos affect Afghan women. Meaning, how do Baba's (and General Taheri's) ideas about their own identity affect their wives and daughters and daughter in-laws? Well, the idea here is that women need to be pure for men. A man's honor is tied up in the purity of his wife and daughter. Granted, feminists would have a field day with this one, but we also want to point out the irony (again!) of Baba's statement. Didn't he steal Ali's honor by sleeping with Sanaubar? Did that act destroy Baba's honor, too, and thus his masculinity? Are there any truly honorable men in this novel? Or are the honorable men only in the movies Amir and Baba used to watch?
Quote #10
I kissed her cheek and pulled away from the curb. As I drove, I wondered why I was different. Maybe it was because I had been raised by men; I hadn't grown up around women and had never been exposed firsthand to the double standard with which Afghan society sometimes treated them. Maybe it was because Baba had been such an unusual Afghan father, a liberal who had lived by his own rules, a maverick who had disregarded or embraced societal customs as he had seen fit. (13.97)
Amir has just dropped off Soraya and wonders about the double standard women are subjected to in Afghan society. It seems like it's OK for men to sleep around before marriage, but it's not OK for women to do the same. (You have to wonder who the men think they're going to sleep with.) We think this passage is important because it points out just how male Amir's household and upbringing were. And since Amir betrays Hassan and is guilty of cowardice, he must have felt all the more isolated in his household. In fact, it seems like Amir craves a feminine mentor in the Kabul house. He reads all his mother's books and writes poetry instead of playing soccer or riding around on a horse with a dead goat in tow.