I knew that I wanted to deal with Amir and Hassan's relationship, because the complexity of it really intrigued me. At first all of the thesis statements i came up with were too unoriginal. After my conversation with Mr. Allen about them, he told me to use the kites to look at Amir and Hassan's friendship. He said that if I took down an inventory of all the places in the book that kites were talked about, I would find a consistency between all of them.
So, I went home and did just that, but after I still was not sure of this great insight that I was supposed to be realizing. I knew that the kites reminded Amir of Hassan and his childhood, and so I attempted to base a thesis around that. However, I was still not completely convinced that my thesis was anything special.
I had another meeting with Mr. Allen, in which he gave me another hint: I should look at the actual kite fighting, and the fact that the strings are covered in glass and they are used to cut each other.
Even after all of this, i STILL was not sure about what exactly my paper was going to be about, so decided to just put fingers to keys and start writing. Then, all of the sudden, it came to me! Mr. Allen was trying to tell me that the kites, which are usually thought of as leisurely, are contradictory just as Amir and Hassan's friendship is. Childhood friendships should bring warmness to the heart, not pain, but that was all that Amir could think of when looking back on it.
It took a lot to get the idea for my paper to be perfect, but in the end it was worth it. If i could change one thing about my process, I would have tried to think deeper into the story first, instead of looking on the surface for ideas. All in all I think my thinking process turned out very well, and i was happy with the outcome.
