Analysis of Amir’s Statement in The Kite Runner Essay Example

“Baba loved the idea of America. It was living in America that gave him an ulcer.” (Hosseini, p. 125). Amir’s statement is true because they are realizing that America isn’t the great country everyone said it was, there are a lot of cultural issues that they face, and they go through a lot of hardship and sacrifice. They are facing the problems of migrating to a new country and dealing with problems they never had to deal with before.

Baba, Amir, and every other immigrant have hope that their problems and living conditions will be fixed after moving to the United States. Unfortunately, many Immigrants find themselves living in poverty once they migrate to America. Amir and Baba find themselves living in poor living conditions in chapter 11 of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. They are living in a small apartment and Baba works as an assistant at a gas station. Baba finds himself going from this wealthy businessman in his home country to a laborer in the country where he was promised success and a better life. 

Many Immigrants move in only thinking about all of the benefits of living in America and not the bad things about living in America. Immigrants face a lot of issues like discrimination and having to adapt to a new culture. “He’d carve notches on our stick with his knife, . . . my father paid him for the number of notches on the stick. That was it. No questions. No ID.” (Hosseini p. 128). That was a cultural aspect Amir and Baba were used to. They did not need to show ID since they lived in a culture where everyone knows and trusts each other. This difference in culture led to the conflict between Baba and Mr and Mrs Nguyen at the store. Baba used a method in his culture that is not welcome within American culture. 

Immigrants are brought to believe that moving to America will improve their quality of life and although that is true to an extent, it still brings along hardship and sacrifice. Amir states, “My student hand, clean and soft, on his laborer’s hand, grubby and calloused” (Hosseini, p. 130). He is seeing first hand the sacrifice his father is putting in in order to give Amir a bright future. Baba is putting himself through intense labor in a country he is still assimilating into in order to provide for his son. Many immigrants face this hard and laboring sacrifice in order to get just a glimpse of the American dream. 

To summarize everything that has been stated, Amir’s statement is correct. He is living in unfamiliar living conditions, he is facing cultural clashes, and he is witnessing the labor and sacrifice that his father is going through. The world today has not changed since Amir migrated to America in the 1980’s. These challenges are still prevalent in today’s world and immigrants are still going through the hardship Amir and Baba went through.