Setting Of Kite Runner

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When Soviet military forces invade Afghanistan a few years later, Amir is a young adult. Amir and Baba escape to America, and this setting represents not only a respite from persecution, but a potential exile from the guilt Amir has felt toward Hassan for years. A community of displaced Afghans forms in California, and Amir finds himself able to easily assimilate.

Amir and his father move from Peshawar to Fremont, Calif., where the rest of his childhood and most of his adult life takes place. In Fremont, Amir and his father are forced to start over, working at a gas station and selling Afghan goods at a flea market in nearby San Jose. Given his new location in a U.S. city, Amir is slowly “westernized,” losing character traces that connect him to his birthland of Afghanistan. This empowers Amir, who starts to take writing classes, something he was never allowed to do as a boy in Afghanistan. As Amir grows stronger, his father, Baba, grows weaker, eventually dying of terminal cancer in their new home. The dual effect of the Fremont setting, then, is to show how a Western setting can empower a youth culture, while destroying a traditional culture.