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            Through the use of imagery and figurative language in the Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini reveals the state that Afghanistan is in due to the war, and about Amir's feelings on how Afghanistan had changed. When Amir returns to Afghanistan to meet Rahim Khan, he learns that Hassan was in fact his half-brother, and that he had been executed. As a result, Amir goes to Kabul to look for the orphanage that Hassan's son, Sohrab, is in. When he arrives in Kabul, he sees that "the buildings that hadn't entirely collapsed barely stood, with caved in roofs and walls pierced with rocket shells [and] entire blocks had been obliterated into rubble" (246). Hosseini's use of imagery helps the reader imagine how the neighborhood looks due to the war. With words like "pierced," Hosseini's diction shows how the buildings had been violently hit, and with his choice of the word "obliterated," we can see that blocks of the neighborhood had been completely destroyed in the crossfire. When Amir sees how Kabul now is, he reflects, "A sadness came over me. Returning to Kabul was like running into an old, forgotten friend and seeing that life hadn't been good to him, that he'd become homeless and destitute" (246). Hosseini compares Amir's return to Kabul to seeing a friend many years later and seeing that he didn't have much to survive on. Hosseini uses a simile to compare Amir's sadness when he saw that the neighborhood he grew up in as a child was destroyed and falling apart to seeing an old friend who was not well off and having a hard time surviving. This part in the passage contrasts the rest of the book as Amir has mentioned that in America, he wanted to forget about his past and the sins that he has committed. However because he is back in Afghanistan, Amir begins to reminisce about his childhood memories with Hassan, and visits his old neighborhood and house. With this, Amir realizes that the Kabul he used to know, his childhood, and Hassan are gone. Overall, Hosseini conveys the effects of war on Afghanistan and Amir’s responses to those changes through the use of imagery and figurative language.