Juxtaposition In The Kite Runner

“Sanaubar had taken one glance at the baby in Ali’s arms, seen the cleft lip, and barked a bitter laughter. “There” she had said. Now you have your own idiot child” (Hosseini 10). Since the moment he was born, the defining feature of Hassan’s appearance was the split in his upper lip, just left of the midline. In the novel, The Kite Runner, Hassan was repeatedly belittled for being the harelipped Hazara. A harelip is considered an imperfection, a mistake in how someone is suppose to look. Why would Khaled Hosseini, the author of the novel, want Hassan, the loyal selfless servant, to be known as a mistake? Hassan’s cleft lip is a juxtaposition with his virtuous personality and character. In order to reiterate the juxtaposition, Amir suffered a cut on his lip after battling Assef, “The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip” (Hosseini 297). After Amir defeated Assef, he achieved redemption and his character was good again, his physical appearance now suffered. Contrastingly, Assef

Not only was Hassan scorned because of his harelip, but he was belittled because of his ethnicity. Very few characters in the novel actually took the time to figure out who Hassan really was, rather they would simply refer to him as, “just a Hazara” (Hosseini 63). Assef on the other hand had good looks and was apart of the Pashtun upper class, so he was treated favorably. Hosseini’s purpose in creating the disparity between appearance and personality is to reinforce a commonly known, yet not as commonly followed theme; do not judge others solely on their physical appearance. Judging others based on the color of their skin, the figure of their body, or the shape of their eyes, is illogical, unhealthy, and unfair yet it still happens in our society today and I even see it in my own