Metacognotion: Kite Runner

I'm writing an essay on The Kite Runner. It discusses the role of secrets and our pasts in driving and defining our current actions and thoughts.

In crafting the thesis and outline I found some unexpected but welcome surprises. Foremost among these is how I was actually writing about the central theme of the book. I was expecting to be able to find some text to support my claims, but the pure quantity astounded me. This changed my tactic in doing in-book research from one of quickly finding relevant passages to selecting and considering which passages had the highest quality. It became less about "is this a secret?" and more about "what does this secret mean?" My thought process benefited from this. I became enthralled in the hunt for evidence, and felt much more connected to Amir when I realized how every major movement of his life was driven by his past. This spilled over into my life, and helps my psychoanalyze, sometimes too much, the motives and deficits my actions attempt to cover up. Finding that was surprising. That being said, I also need to be careful not to become over-invested in psycho-analyzing Amir, the book does that already. Instead, I need to focus in on how specific actions at specific points of Amir's past, beyond Hassan's rape, correlate into specific actions in Amir's present. Then, I'll be able to appreciate Amir not only for a man with a haunted past, but a man defined by it.