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Child abuse and the media
Results of traumatic childhood
Results of traumatic childhood
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In Kabul, before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, well-to-do teenage boy Amir and his very loyal Hazara servant Hassan (the son of his father's servant Ali) are best friends. Amir goes to school, but Hassan does not; as a result he cannot read. Amir likes literature and reads stories to Hassan. His father Baba (A Persian term similar to "papa" in English) thinks he is not tough enough, Amir lets Hassan protect him when he is bullied. Amir worries that Baba does not like him because Amir's mother died giving birth to him.
Amir also writes a story himself. Amir’s father is not very interested, but his friend Rahim Khan reads it and encourages him.
One day Hassan and Amir come across Assef, a bully with rancor towards Hazaras, and his two friends. He prepares to fight Amir and Hassan, but Hassan threatens him with his slingshot. They back off but Assef warns them that he will take revenge.
Amir and Hassan like kite fighting. It is a popular sport in Kabul, in which the lines are coated with a mixture of finely crushed glass and glue, for cutting the line of a competitor. In the competition whoever catches a kite of which the line is cut can keep it. Therefore children run for them. Hassan is the "kite runner" for Amir. He seems to have a gift of knowing where they will land. Amir wins a tournament. Hassan fetches the kite Amir has cut, but runs into Assef and his two henchmen. Assef demands the kite, but Hassan refuses to give it up. Because of that Assef beats him up. The film briefly shows the undoing of Assef's pants buckle and Hassan's pants being tugged down, suggesting that a sexual assault follows. While looking for Hassan, Amir approaches this scene, and hiding, watches the assault. He neither defends Hassan, nor calls for help. Amir and Hassan never tell anyone what happened, and do not talk about it among themselves. When Amir comes home he is finally praised by Baba for winning the tournament, but Amir realizes that the opposite would have been the case if Baba had known what had happened.
Amir and Hassan both become emotionally downcast. Amir feels guilty of being a coward, realizing that Hassan was brave; if Baba knew what happened he might love Hassan more than him. Amir decides it would be best if Hassan would leave.
Because of Amir’s extreme desire to receive the attention and affection from Baba, he begins to subconsciously sacrifice his relationship with Hassan in order to fulfill his interests. However, as Amir continuously matures and begins to recognize his initial ignorant, detrimental actions towards Hassan, he no longer “worship” his father like he did in the past. This causes him to ensure a sense of independence because of his ability to quickly adapt to a completely new, unfamiliar environment and remain adamant on pursuing their own aspirations.
Amir goes through many events that take place in the book that change him, and the way he is perceived within the book. Amir is a young boy, who is tortured by his father’s scrutinizing character. Amir is also jealous of Hassan, because of the fact that his father likes Hassan instead of Amir. Amir fights for his father’s approval, interest, and love. This is when Amir changes for the good as he deals with the guilt of the rape of Hassan. Amir witnessed Hassan getting raped, but decides to nothing in order to win over his father’s interest. The guilt that Amir builds up is carries from his premature times as a child to his mature times. From Afghanistan to
So when Assef comes, Hassan becomes the scapegoat to protect Amir. According to Hosseini, “Hassan had pulled the wide elastic band all the way back. In the cup was a rock the size of a walnut. Hassan held the slingshot pointed directly at Assef’s face. ‘Please leave us alone.’” (Hosseini 42). From Assef’s talking, Hassan knows Amir gets trouble because of him. So he thinks he has the responsibility to deal with it. So he pulls Assef’s attention to himself and let himself become the target. According to Hosseini, “Hassan didn’t struggle. Didn’t even whimper. He moved his head slightly and I caught a glimpse of his face. Saw the resignation in it. It was a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb.” (Hosseini 42). Hassan knows he promised that he would catch the kite and give it to Amir. So he is willing to do anything to save the kite. At that time, Hassan imagines the kite as Amir, so he can be the scapegoat for the kite. Also he knows if Assef does not catch him, Assef will start to look for Amir and beat Amir up. Since one of them will be hurt, Hassan chooses to sacrifice himself to make sure Amir is
No one in the city of Kabul thought anything less than greatness and admiration for him. Hassan’s with Amir, ready to defend and protect him no matter what the cost. And Amir’s with Baba, wanting to please him and make him proud to have a son like Amir. By making a decision of who Amir was more loyal to as well as who he wanted to please more, inadvertently led to his betrayal of Hassan. “I had one last chance to make a decision.
Assef's vow comes true during the day of Amir's favorite sport: "kite fighting". In this sport, children fly their kites and try to "slice" each other's kite. Amir wins the tournament, and Baba's praise, with his kite the last one flying, but when Hassan goes to fetch the last cut kite, a great trophy, Assef and two henchmen are there instead. Hassan tries to protect Amir's kite, but Assef beats Hassan and brutally rapes him. Amir hides and watches Hassan and is too scared to help him. Afterwards, Hassan becomes emotionally downcast. Amir knows why but keeps it a secret, and things are never the same between the two. After hearing a story from Rahim Khan, Amir decides it would be best for Hassan to go away. Amir frames Hassan as a thief but Baba forgives him, even though he admits to committing
On his journey to save Sohrab, Amir discovers that a Taliban official took him from the orphanage. When meeting with that Taliban official, who turns out to be his childhood nemesis Assef, Amir is placed in a situation where he is forced to choose between fleeing from the enemy and saving Hassan’s son. The structure of this scenario is analogous to one earlier in the book when Amir had to choose between saving Hassan by standing up for him and repairing the relationship with his father by bringing the blue kite back. The author uses the similar setting with Assef and the similarities in characterization of father and son in order to provide Amir with the opportunity to make the choice to stand up for what he believes in. When Amir allowed Hass...
There are many parallels between the first half of Amir’s life and the second half. Specifically, Hassan runs the blue kite for Amir during their adolescence and later Amir runs the kite for Sohrab. Moreover,
Hassan is a Hazara boy, this being an ethnic group that is looked down upon by Pashtun citizens of Kabul. “In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that.” (Hosseini 25). Throughout his childhood, Amir is put down regularly by neighborhood kids for befriending Hassan because of his ethnic background. Amir realizes that no matter what he may do, or no matter how Hassan may try to alter the situation, Hassan would always be too different for people to accept.
Throughout the childhood that Hassan and Amir shared, they both experience similar hardships, yet Hassan always has it more difficult. Amir has more than one father figure: Baba, his biological father and Rahim Kahn, his father's best friend. The relationship he has with both men eventually has a positive effect on him. Amir spends most of his childhood fighting for the approval of his father. Amir mentions “Then I saw Baba on our roof. He was standing on the edge, pumping both of his fists. Hollering and clapping. And that right there was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of life, ...
The other source of tension in Amir’s life is his relationship with Baba, his hard-driving and demanding father. Desperate to win his father’s affection and respect, Amir turns to the sport of kite flying, and at the age of 12, with the assistance of Hassan, he wins the annual tournament in Kabul. Amir’s victory soon is tarnished when he witnesses a vicious assault against his friend, who raced through the streets of Kabul to retrieve the last kite, Amir had sliced from the sky, and fails to come to his aid. Amir’s cowardness is compounded by a later act of betrayal that causes Ali and Hassan to leave their home, and he now faces the nightmare, bearing the burden of his poor choices for the rest of his life.
In Amir’s early childhood, kites represented happiness. Flying kites was his favorite pastime, as it was the only way that he connected fully with Baba, who was once a champion kite fighter. However, the kite takes on a different significance when Amir doesn’t stop Hassan's abusers from raping him in order to prevent the kite from being stolen. The kite serves as a symbol of Amir’s guilt throughout the novel. Hechose his fragile relationship with his father over the well-being of his best friend and half-brother: “Baba and I lived in the same ...
Amir is, to be put bluntly, a coward. He is led by his unstable emotions towards what he thinks will plug his emotional holes and steps over his friends and family in the process. When he sought after Baba’s invisible love, Amir allowed Hassan to be raped in an alleyway just so that the blue kite, his trophy that would win his father’s heart, could be left untouched. In the end, he felt empty and unfulfilled with the weight of his conscience on his shoulders comparable to Atlas’ burden. Unable to get over his fruitless betrayal, he lashes out and throws pomegranates at Hassan before stuffing money and a watch under his loyal friend’s pathetic excuse for a bed, framing Hassan for theft and directly causing the departure of both servants from his household. Even after moving to America, finding a loving wife, and creating a career for himself in writing, he still feels hollow when thinking of his childhood in Afghanistan. Many years later, he is alerted of Hassan’s death and sets out on a frenzied chase to find his friend’s orphaned son. He feels that he can somehow ease his regrets from all of those years ago if he takes in Hassan’s son, Sohrab. He finds Sohrab as a child sex slave for Assef, who coincidentally was the one to rape Hassan all of those years ago. After nearly dying in his attempt to take back Sohrab, he learns that he can take the damaged child back to the states with him. Sadly, Hassan’s son is so
Hassan agrees and gives chase for the kite with Amir follow some time later on. However, during that time Hassan is corner by Assif and several others children. Hassan is then punished by Assif for protecting Amir, as well as being a different type of Afghani. In one swift motion, Assif performs a horrifying sexual act on Hassan, all the way Amir watch it far down a street. And what does Amir do? Well he ran as he put it, “I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me. I was afraid of getting hurt” (77).
Other than flying kites and watching westerns, Amir would read to Hassan to help pass the time. Amir was not a particularly a good friend to Hassan and would attack him out of jealousy. Amir would tease Hassan’s illiteracy by giving him the wrong definitions of words. Amir was devastated by Hassan for quickly finding a plot hole in his first short story. He was not athletic or brave as Hassan and Amir prided himself for being intelligent. In Amir’s situation, he felt entitled to all of his father’s attention and the majority of it, from his point of view, was going to Hassan and the
He would do anything, even as a small child, to please Amir. Even after he grew up and had a son, he told his son about his love for Amir. “And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words. Mine was Baba. His was Amir. My name.” (Hosseini, 12). If this was a teenage romance novel this would be a love triangle. Between Amir, Hassan and Baba. Amir spent his entire life trying to make Baba like him, to forgive him for killing his wife, to understand him, and get that special father to son bonding. Baba instead gave his attention to the servant’s son, Hassan. Later the story we find out that Hassan is Baba’s son too, but this is after both have died and Amir is a grown man. During his childhood Amir would have done anything to gain his father attention like Hassan had. Baba, feeling guilty, gave his attention to Hassan, and treated him kindly, out of guilt for not being able to recognise Hassan as his son. Yet Baba never treated Amir diskindly, other than the fact they never got along. Hassan did not go to school, and spent his time helping Ali with household chores, but got respected by Baba, and given gifts during holidays and a kite for flying season. Amir and Baba did not click in the way both of them wanted too. Amir tried to fake interests in sports for Baba, but after watching a rider get trampled by his horse, and started crying during the one and only sport event Baba took him too. “I cried all the way back home. I remember how Baba’s hands clenched around the steering wheel. Clenched and unclenched. Mostly, I will never forget Baba’s valiant efforts to conceal the disgusted look on his face as he drove in silence.” (Hosseini, 23) This was Amir memory of the sporting event. Amir need for love from Baba, led him standing in the alley watching Hassan get raped, knowing that when he brought that blue kite to Baba he will earn his love. Hassan on the other hand could not love Amir any less. To