Third Place
As a young American, who hasn’t had the opportunity to first handedly experience major aspects of cultural diversity, I’ll start off by saying that “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, has done nothing but broaden my horizons, and make me realize that there is more to life than what we experience as teenagers, and that there is a whole world beyond our high school doors. “The Kite Runner” has given me the opportunity to realize that although all cultures may seem disconnected by barriers like religious beliefs, when broken down, people of all cultures have common characteristics.
This may sound shallow, but after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers, I like many other Americans despised Afghanistan, and all people who where connected with it. Unknowingly I had placed a cultural barrier between myself and an entire country, but as I got older and the vivid memory of 9/11 faded away, so did my hatred toward Afghanistan. It wasn’t that I wasn’t still angry, but as time moved on, so had I. As I began to read “The Kite Runner”, I began to remember what had happened the day of the attacks, and I began to do something that I never thought I could, I began to forgive. “The Kite Runner” brought it to my attention that, all humans make mistakes, no matter where you’re from, no matter what religion you believe in or what culture you are, all humans’ error. I began to put myself in other positions, and I ended up coming to the conclusion that when humans are stripped of their luxuries, like religion and culture, we are all the same, every person in the world holds the same feelings and emotions, it’s just how we use them, and show them, that makes us all so different.
Through Khaled Hosseini’s characters Amir and Hassan, I began to realize that there is no difference between 2 boys playing together in Afghanistan and 2 boys playing together in America. And more importantly I began to realize that...
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