Cruelty In The Kite Runner

The way our friends treat us in the face of adversity and in social situations is more revealing of a person’s character than the way they treats us when alone. In Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, ethnic tensions, nationality, and betrayal become the catalyst that drives and fuels Amir, Assef, and other characters to embark on their particular acts of cruelty. Serving as a way to illustrate the loss of rectitude and humanity, cruelty reveals how easily people can lose their morals in critical circumstances. Through Amir, Assef, and the Taliban’s actions, cruelty displays the truth of a person’s character, uncovering the origin of their cruelty. Amir’s cruelty spurs from his external environment and need for love from his father, choosing

to push away his friend, Hassan, for his father’s attention. In Assef and the Taliban, cruelty is internal, integrated deep within them.
From the very beginning, the protagonist, Amir, is in the center of disparity between of Sunni and Shi’a Muslims.

While Amir is a Sunni, his childhood friend Hassan is Shi’a, an inferior division of Islam. Simultaneously, Amir and Hassan belong to different ethnic groups-Amir is Pashtun while Hassan is Hazara. During his childhood, Amir would constantly mock Hassan’s illiteracy and poke fun at him. But, the pivotal demonstration of pressure from his surroundings that makes Amir commit his own act of cruelty is when he watches Assef rape Hassan for refusing to give him the kite that Hassan caught for Amir. To this, Amir describes the look of Hassan’s face to “a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb” (76). Throughout his upbringing, Amir constantly believed that his father blamed him for killing his mother in childbirth. To Amir, Hassan’s rape is a sacrifice that Hassan has to pay the price, the lamb to kill, in order to win his father over. To justify his refusal to intervene, Amir reminds himself that “[Hassan] was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?” (77). Amir’s surroundings cause him to have a negative outlook on people that his society deem lower. Amir knows he is morally wrong for not helping Hassan, but his need for his father’s love overpowers his friendship. Adding to his pressures, Amir believes that Baba prefers Hassan over him, a belief that further drives him to be cruel to Hassan. As a result, Amir’s motivation for validation and love from his father

uncovers the source of his cruelty and forces him to become cruel in order to obtain what he longs for.
As the novel progresses, envy and jealousy become evident as the driving force and motivation behind Amir’s brutality.

Amir believes that Baba wants his son to be just like him, but when Amir doesn’t turn out exactly the way Baba wants, he rejects and neglects him. Amir notices this, and looks at Hassan, who embodies what Baba wants in a son. As a result, Amir takes his anger built in from his father disregarding him out and exerts it at Hassan. After every instance that Amir’s father shows Hassan any type of affection or attention, Amir becomes angry. He takes a pomegranate and “struck [Hassan] in the chest, exploded in a spray of red pulp. Hassan’s cry was pregnant with surprise and pain” (92). Amir repeatedly hits Hassan and asks him to hit in back so he doesn’t feel guilty for his actions. To Amir, in order for his cruelty for hurting Hassan to be forgiven, Hassan must hurt him

back.
With Amir craving Baba’s attention and love, when he sees Hassan get remotely close to his father, Amir becomes angry and betrays his friendship to drive Hassan away. When Hassan and his father, Ali, gave Amir a book for his birthday, he “wanted to tell Ali it was not the book, but I who was unworthy” (163). Amir realizes he is undeserving of anything due to the way he treats Hassan. He allowed his environment to negatively influence and ruin his friendship. In the end, Amir “hopes this would be the last in a long line of shameful lies..wondered how and when I’d become capable of causing this kind of pain” (104-105). In order to no longer deal with the guilt built up within him for his terrible acts against Hassan, Amir plants his watch under Hassan’s mattress so Baba can find it and fire Ali and Hassan. Amir wants to stop being cruel to Hassan so he pushes Hassan away so he no longer has to do terrible things to him.
As the Taliban gain control of Afghanistan and massacre the Hazaras, killing Hassan and his wife, Hassan’s son, Sohbrab, is left as an orphanage. Amir’s feelings of guilt for his past actions influence and motivate him to return to Afghanistan after the Soviets leave to adopt Sohbrab. Through the tedious process of adopting him, Amir brings him to America. General Sahib, Amir’s step-father, asks Amir why he adopted a Hazara. To this, Amir tells him that “You will never again refer to him as ‘Hazara boy’ in my presence. He has a name and its Sohbrab” (361). This is the point of redemption of Amir, taking Sohbrab to America and giving him a second chance in life. This time, Amir stands up to someone from a lower class than him. Social tensions have a less important effect on Amir as compared to his childhood. His cruel actions towards Hassan reveals that he was merely influenced by his surroundings, but as an adult, he stands up for what is right and no longer yield to the power of social classes in society.
Unlike Amir, malicious intentions drive Assef and the Taliban. Assef is a source of evil who bullies and terrorizes people, especially those that belong to the Hazara minority. From the very beginning, Assef is described as intimidating: “His stainless-steel brass knuckles sparkled in the sun” (41). Assef always has his brass knuckles in his pocket, revealing how he is innately and brutally violent by threatening to fight anyone he wants. He uses brass knuckles to demonstrate his power that he has over everyone. He constantly declares that “Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns. It always has been, always will be. [Hassan’s] people pollute our homelands, our watan. They dirty our blood” (40). He asserts his Pashtun dominance over the Hazara by aspiring to cleanse their race from the Afghanistan identity. This establishes Assef’s internal cruelty-he wants to masacre a race because they are unworthy to be around his own. He climbs up in society to achieve his goals. When the Taliban took over, they “banned kite fighting. And two years later, in 1998, they massacred the Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif” (213). The Taliban-controlled Afghanistan discriminated specifically against the Hazara people. He later becomes the leader of the Taliban after killing the commander. As the leader, he compares “Afghanistan [to] a beautiful mansion littered with garbage, and someone has to take out the garbage” (284). Contrasting with Amir who is affected and changes as a result of his cruelty, Assef never changes. He remains an arrogant and hate filled man who rejoices in murdering Hazara’s and molesting children. While in Afghanistan, Amir recalls seeing “a dead body near the restaurant. Hardly anyone seemed to notice him” (259). When Amir returns home to Afghanistan, he becomes shocked at the state of how his country transformed. The Taliban ruled by fear and seized power to punish anyone who did not follow their interpretation of the law. As Amir walks the streets, he looks at how the Taliban official “hurled stone at the blindfolded man in the hole... when the bloodied corpses had been unceremoniously tossed into the backs of red pickup trucks, a few men with shovels hurriedly filled the holes” (271-272). The Taliban’s terrorist actions act as a way gain power, representing true evil in humanity. The Taliban gain control and authority through their cruel acts by stoning adulterers and cause their people to live in fear. They attempt to conceal their cruelty by preaching that their actions are God’s law and that they are messengers cleansing Afghanistan from sinners and Hazara’s. Their form of cruelty creates a loss of peace and humanity in Afghanistan that is beyond repairable.
Cruelty in Amir, Assef, and the Taliban serve as a way to reveal their true character and intentions. Cruelty forms from societal pressures creating a disparity between social classes. Amir is swayed to act a certain way due to pressures from his external environments, prompting him to trade his friendship with Hassan for love and attention from his father. When Amir acknowledged his cruelty and the guilt built within him as a result, he was lead down a road to redemption to make up for his past sins. However, Assef and the Taliban never change. Their cruelty is internal, demonstrating true evil human nature.