Every friendship goes through rough times but what happens in the end is what really matters. In a powerful novel by Khaled Hosseni called "The Kite Runner" the author shows a good example of a friendship starting to come to an end. The pomegranate tree is significant throughout "The Kite Runner" because it symbolizes the friendship between Amir and Hassan.
At the beginning of the novel Hosseni shows how close Amir and Hassan are and where their friendship is at in this point of the story. In chapter 4 page 27 Amir says that he and Hassan would grab a book and run to an old cemetery together. "There was a pomegranate tree near the entrance to the cemetery... one summer day I used one of Ali's kitchen knives to carve our names.." This showing how close and Amir and Hassan are. Then showing what their friend ships mean to each other it says "Amir and Hassan Sultans of Kabul, those words made it formal that the tree was ours. " Carving their names into the tree showed how strong their friendship was at this point and how close they are.
In the middle of the story something serious happened to Hassan and Amir witnessed it which gets in the way of the friendship to makes it start going downhill. Hassan not knowing Amir knows, he tries to go back to normal but he can't because Amir is uncomfortable with what he knows. "We stood under our pomegranate tree and I knew I made a mistake." Amir is feeling very uncomfortable that he refuses to read to Hassan like he normally does and they leave. Amir not feeling right around Hassan anymore says "the words carved on the trunk ... I couldn't stand looking at them now." This shows Amir is drowning with guilt and can't stand to see the carving. Now the friendship isn't as close as it was.
Towards the end , the friendship has taken a big fall and they are at a horrible stage. Close to loosing each other Hosseni tells us what happened between the two. "Then he'd taken the pomegranate from my hand, crushed it against his forehead" and Amir says "get up, hit me!" This helps show how Hassan was with Amir and looking up to him he can never betray or hurt him he will do anything for him but now the friendship has ended. Loosing a good friend that was so loyal and good to him must've hurt dearly but because of all the guilt he had he couldn't do nothing but drive Hassan away. It says " I remembered the day on the hill I had pelted Hassan with pomegranates and tried to provoke him. " This showing that Amir remembered the day he and Hassan got in that big fight and as a result their friendship ended. Since Amir couldn't tell Hassan that he saw what he had saw and was so guilty he lost a good friend.
Later in the book when Amir goes back to Kabul as an adult he goes to the tree and realizes that the tree hasn't born fruit in many years, just as his friendship with Hassan had died and not born the fruit of friendship , the tree had died also.