In the story the Kite Runner, the Author Khalid Hassan wrote a story that was based on a family of wealth from Afghanistan in 1960-2001. Baba the father of Amir were described as Pashtun Sunni. They lived with their servants Ali and Hassan which to be described as a Hazara and a Shia. In the early 1960’s Hazaras were disfavored by Pashtuns as pashtuns considered them different and less than human due to their chinese doll faces. Baba and Amir had an unusual relationship, Amir had different aspirations than his father and Baba doesn’t offer much as a father and doesn’t really credit his sons literature and storytelling skills. In the story, Baba was described to tower over ordinary men, with a thick black beard, curly black hair, once wrestled …show more content…
Baba told Amir “ Real mean didn’t read poetry - and God forbid they should ever write! Real men - real boys - played soccer.” Baba tries to get Amir to take in different interests such as soccer but Amir later says (Hosseini 20) “I shambled about the field on scraggly legs[...]” which means he wasn’t as fast on the soccer field as other players and considered himself pathetic to his team. One day Baba brings Amir along to Buzkashi a highly skilled horseman tournament and after the event Amir was horrified after and Baba seemed angry with Amir on the ride home as he clenched on the steering wheel. When they finally reached their home Amir overheard Baba saying “ He’s always buried in those books.” With Amir feeling hopeless and feeling like he has to prove something, Baba seemingly shows less interest in him. Baba's distance really affects Amir and is one of the major motivations for Amir's betrayal of Hassan. Such as, when he watched Hassan get raped in the alley and didn’t even mind helping him …show more content…
Rahim Khan, Baba’s childhood best friend tells Amir “He was once married to Hazara women from the Jaghori area.” Baba kept a huge secret from Amir that changed his entire life. After Amir’s biological mother passed away Baba got with a Hazara women. Which was Ali’s wife and ended up getting her pregnant, Later turning out to be Hassan. Baba implemented into Amir and Hassan that lying and theft were the biggest sins. Not telling Hassan and Amir that they were brothers and treating them as if they were caused Amir to live a confused childhood and not knowing if they were brothers, his servant, or his best friend because of who he was as a person. When Amir finds out Hassan was his actual brother he doesn’t know how to feel when he finds
It is not often that Amir’s love for Baba is returned. Baba feels guilty treating Amir well when he can’t acknowledge Hassan as his son. Baba discriminates against his son Amir by constantly making him feel weak and unworthy of his father. Baba once said to Rahim Kahn, “If I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own eyes, I’d never believe he’s my son” (Hosseini 23). Amir doesn’t feel like a son towards Baba since he seems like such a weakling. This neglect towards Amir causes him to feel a need to be accepted by Baba to end the constant discrimination from his father and he will do anything for it. “I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” (Hosseini 77). Amir did not stop the rape of his good friend for one sole purpose. Amir felt that he had to betray his own half-brother to gain th...
At times Amir had trouble realizing that they were best friends because Hassan was a Hazara, he was of Asian descent and of the Shiite tribe, he resembles his ancestors, the Mongols. Amir is a Pashtun, of the Sunni tribe, a majority group in Afghanistan. Hassan was loyal and showed endless amounts of respect and praise to Amir. Though Hassan knew what Amir had witnessed and done to him, he covered up for him. He did not ever let Amir get into trouble with Baba, his father. Hassan was also the half brother of Amir, neither knew until Rahim Khan, a friend of Baba’s informed Amir. He and Hassan had a connection, both as friends but also as brothers.
This quote, an excerpt from the letter Rahim Khan wrote to Amir, reveals the inner torment Baba faced regarding his two sons, whom he didn’t know how to love fairly, and the guilt he carried for fathering an illegitimate son, guilt that is reminiscent of Amir’s guilt for betraying Hassan. All his life, Baba had been hard on Amir, withholding the fatherly affection Amir longed for, but, as Rahim reveals, this was also hard on Baba. Baba wanted to be able to show affection to both of his sons, but didn’t know how when one of his sons was illegitimate and the other represented everything that made him feel guilty. In this quote, it is also apparent that Baba is much more like Amir than either of them thought. Baba harbored guilt for betraying Ali, just as Amir suffered guilt for betraying Hassan.
A reason for this could be that Baba perhaps felt guilty about keeping the brotherhood between Amir and Hassan a secret. Although Baba was distant towards Amir and, at times, Hassan, he appeared to pay attention to the relationship between the two. He possibly knew how poorly Amir treated Hassan and felt he was solely to blame because he had kept their kinship from them. Baba assumed that Amir treated Hassan so poorly because Amir saw himself as better than Hassan. Since in his mind he, Amir, was a Pashtun and Hassan was merely a Hazara, as well as the son of Amir 's father 's servant. Even though Amir witnessed his Baba treating Ali, Hassan 's father, kindly, almost like a brother, he did not follow suit. Since Amir was more influenced by the opinions and views of the children he went to school with rather than his own
Baba is a very high standing man in Kabul, but seems to be extremely harsh to Amir when he was a child. He is a very large, tough man who was very well known in the town and as Amir stated in the novel, “Lore has it my father once wrestled a black bear in Baluchistan with his bare hands” (Hosseini 12). This small detail of Baba makes it known to the reader that Baba is a man of great courage and strength. Some may think that an honorable man is one with no flaws, but many disagree. Every human being makes mistakes, including Baba. When Amir grows up and goes back to visit Rahim Khan in Afghanistan, he finds out that his father lied to him his entire life about Hassan being his half-brother. He also finds out from Rahim Khan that all Baba had back then “was his honor, his name” (Hosseini 223). He did not tell Amir and Hassan that they were brothers because they had a different mother and that would have made their entire family be looked down upon in the town. He did it for their own good, and wanted for them both to grow up as honorable men, like himself. There is a difference in making mistakes and trying to do what’s best to fix them, rather than making the same mistakes over and over again, which is what Amir seemed to do in the novel. Amir was the exact opposite of his father, which made it very hard for them to have a
Hassan would do anything for his friends and treat everyone, even bullies, with respect because his respectful dad, Ali, taught him to always be loyal to all, and never hurt anyone. Ali was Baba’s servant and long-time friend, and stayed close to him throughout their childhood and adulthood. Amir's actions showed how much of a coward he was. Amir suffered his whole life living with the guilt of knowing that Hassan was raped, much like Baba lived his whole life in guilt knowing that he stole the truth from Ali by committing adultery.
Just as Hassan is the primary juxtaposition for Amir, Rahim Khan is the primary juxtaposition for Baba. During Amir’s childhood, Rahim Khan is the fatherly, caring figure that Baba should have been. Rahim Khan encourages Amir’s writing and is the reason that Amir pursues writing in the end. However, this should have been Baba because it is a father’s job to always love his son unconditionally. Even more than this though, Rahim Khan also seems to be an all-knowing figure in the household. He knew about the rape and that Amir witnessed it and yet did nothing. However, this knowledge could be used for anything. Instead of using it to take advantage of Amir, he uses this knowledge to sympathize with Amir. Just as a father should do, he takes Amir’s side and supports him even though Amir does not deserve it. He writes Amir a letter and tells him not to feel guilty about what he has done. Even in person Rahim Khan says to Amir “[insert quote here].” Rahim Khan has no reason to care about Amir and be nice to Amir and yet unlike Baba, he does. He shows that love and care do not need a reason. This is something that both Amir and Baba seem to struggle with throughout the book. It is only after drastic life changes that they begin to realize that they should care about other people around
Life is a rollercoaster of events and emotions that supply us with a myriad of obstacles and experiences. Every human being is flawed or scarred whether by a situation they had to undergo or something they view about themselves that they consider being ‘imperfect’. In literature, characters are usually portrayed as a deeply human and flawed person to emphasize and depict real people in reality. In The Kite Runner the protagonist, Amir, is shown as a profoundly conflicted and flawed character. Amir’s most tragic flaw is his perpetual silence throughout the novel and he is able to overcome it by doing a heroic action in order to save someone else’s life.
When Amir takes Baba to the doctors, the doctor suggests chemotherapy for Baba to prolong the cancer but Baba did not want any medication. Amir tells the reader, “He had the same resolved look on his face as the day he’d dropped the stack of food stamps on Mrs. Dobbins’s desk” (156). Baba did not want help even if his life was on the line. Baba also starts to take pride in Amir when he tells General Taheri, “Amir is going to ne a great writer,” Baba said. I did a double take at this” (139). Amir is starting to realize that his father who was untouchable and was a legend in Kabul was truly human. When Amir tells Baba that he wants to marry Soraya, Baba calls General Taheri to set up a meeting between the two men. As Amir dropped off Baba at the Taheri’s for the meeting, he says, “Baba was hobbling up the Taheri’s driveway for one last fatherly duty” (163). In this instance, Amir sees Baba as a true father. Amir feels Baba’s acceptance when Baba tells Amir on lafz, “It’s the happiest day of my life Amir” (166). Baba is telling Amir that through everything in his life from him marrying Sophia, to Amir winning the kite tournament, all the way to Amir graduating high school, Baba has never been prouder. After Baba’s death, Amir says, “As words from the Koran reverberated through the room, I thought of the old story of Baba wrestling a black bear in Baluchistan. Baba had
First, Baba’s looming shame of his affair prohibits him from being a proper father to Amir and Hassan. Baba fails to inform Amir that his best friend, Hassan, is actually his half-brother because of this affair. Years after Baba’s death, Rahim Khan tells Amir of Baba’s act of adultery. With this betrayal, Amir begins to question everything he values in his father, stating that “Baba had been a thief. And a thief of the worst kind, because the things he’d stolen had been sacred: from me the right to know I had a brother, from Hassan his identity, and from Ali [Hassan’s “father”] his honor. His nang. His namoos” (Hosseini 225). Despite his guilt, Baba makes a vow with Rahim Khan and Ali to keep the affair a secret from his own sons, causing a distortion
Over the course of the novel, Baba implies that he is not proud of Amir and the only reason he knows Amir is his son, is because he witnessed Amir 's birth. He states to Rahim Khan that he thinks Amir needs to stand up for himself more often. Countless times during the novel, Amir feels like he has to fight for his affection, that he has to earn Baba’s love. In order to prove himself worthy of affection and to redeem himself for not being a son Baba could be proud of, Amir yearns to win the kite runner competition. He reminisces on a memory, when all “I saw was the blue kite. All I smelled was victory. Salvation. Redemption” (65). In the aftermath of Hassan’s rape, Amir got rid of Hassan so he would not have to face the cause of his guilt on a daily basis. Amir buries the secret of the rape deep within him, where he hopes that it will not come back to haunt him, which is not the case. “We had both sinned and betrayed. But Baba had found a way to create good out of his remorse. What had I done, other than take my guilt out on the very same people I had betrayed, and then try to forget it all? What had I done, other than become an insomniac? What had I ever done to right things?” (303). As mentioned earlier, Amir is not one who stands up for himself. In order for Amir to redeem himself for betraying Hassan, and not standing up for him earlier,
Escaping his father’s aloofness in his mother’s books was the only thing keeping some connection with his father. His father was distant towards Amir. Amir thought that his father hated him because his mother died while giving birth to him. Amir feels responsible for his mother’s death. “Without me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can’t love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little” (Hosseini 15). This tells the reader that they did not have a close relationship, but there was a lot of respect. Baba was a powerful man and got whatever he wanted. Amir was intimidated by this. It shows that Amir and his father weren’t close in Amir’s early childhood.
Amir's father claims that the worst sin is stealing. He always says that when someone lies, they steal someone's right to the truth. Knowing this, Baba has committed the worst act of sin and betrayal in the entire story. When Amir goes back to Afghanistan as a grown man to visit Rahim Khan, he learns that Hassan is his half-brother; his father had been their father all along. He went back to his home country to redeem himself and find forgiveness, but now he is faced with redeeming his father's sins as well.
War establishes many controversial issues and problems within society and can often expose an individual to many economic and sociopolitical hardships; thus creating an altercation in the way they view life. Amir, from the novel The Kite Runner and the novel’s author Khaled Hosseini, both saw the harsh treatment toward the people of Afghanistan through a series of wars, invasions, and the active power of a Pashtun movement known as the Taliban. Amir, much like Hosseini, lived a luxurious and wealthy life in Kabul. He is well educated and immerses himself in reading and writing. After transitioning from a life in Afghanistan to a life in the United States, both Hosseini and Amir faced obstacles in order to assimilate to American society. In The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, the protagonist Amir parallels the experiences and hardships that Hosseini endured in his own lifetime.
Amir knew that it hurt Baba severely when Hassan and Ali left. When Amir asked for new servants before Ali decided to leave, Baba responded with: “why would I ever do that?”. Baba seemed irritated with Amir once he asked the question, but he had caught on to strange behavior they were projecting towards each other. Baba told Amir “ I know there 's something going on between you two, but whatever it is, you have to deal with it, not me. I 'm staying out of it." Baba knew that there was something more to the story, but Amir was hiding it. It hurt Baba years later when him and Amir moved to California. At Amir’s graduation, Baba said “I wish Hassan had been with us today.” That symbolized that Baba was still hurt about the situation and still thought about it years later. Hassan suffered severely too. He damaged himself emotionally and still got penalized for sticking up for Amir. Amir learned that through the revelation of Hassan’s true identity that he should treat everyone equal. When Amir travels back to Middle East, he changed his outlook on things. When Amir was younger he grew up with everything being handed to him. Hassan was his servant, so he never had to do any hard work. He fled to America to escape the Russian Rule, but he still managed to live a better life than those stuck in his homeland. In chapter 19, the frustration on why Amir decided to return is shown through a