The Kite Runner Group

Question:

shawty-dt
shawty-dt
Student
College - Freshman

Why does Baba hate Carter in The Kite Runner?

Rate question:

Posted by shawty-dt on Thursday October 1, 2009 at 12:28 PM and tagged with baba, carter, characters, historical context, summary, themes.

Answers:


  1. dymatsuoka

    eNotes Editor

    Baba "loathed Jimmy Carter" because he thought he was a weak President who did next to nothing to help Afghanistan in the face of Soviet invasion and occupation.  With undisguised hostility and disgust, Baba called Carter "a 'big-toothed cretin'", and scoffed at his gesture of boycotting the Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980.  Baba said,

    "'Brezhnev is massacring Afghans and all that peanut eater can say is I won't come swim in your pool'".

    Baba believed that Carter had "unwittingly done more for communism than Leonid Brezhnev".  He much preferred a man like Ronald Reagan, who succeeded Carter as President of the United States.  Baba recognized Reagan as "a hard man...a man to be reckoned with, someone who took action instead of wringing his hands".  When Reagan, with a much more aggressive stance, labeled the Soviet Union "the Evil Empire", Baba was thrilled.  He went out and bought a picture of Ronald Reagan, framed it, and hung it in the hallway of his home (Chapter 11).

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/kite-runner/
    http://www.enotes.com/kite-runner/historical-context
    http://www.enotes.com/kite-runner/themes

    Rate answer:

    Posted by dymatsuoka on Friday October 2, 2009 at 2:00 PM