Discrimination In The Kite Runner

“People called Hazaras mice-eating, flat-nosed, load carrying donkeys. I had heard some of the kids in the neighbourhood yell those names to Hassan.” Hassan is a part of the Hazara’s caste which is a socially backward group in the Afghani society. These names which were being called to Hassan are nothing but the society’s view towards this caste group. Caste and religion go hand in hand to shape our society and its perception.

Hassan is a victim of discrimination, bigotry, and class structure in Afghan society. Hassan and Ali are members of the Hazaras, a minority group of Afghanis. Amir and his father are Pashtuns, the majority, who believes they are a better class than the Hazara. Religion was all that separated Amir and Hassan, as did tribe and class. Amir learned from his father that the Harara tribe to which Ali and Hassan belonged, were inferior people. Because of this bigotry and basic class structure, Hazaras are often victims of physical, emotional and psychological abuse. Thus when a crisis comes and Hassan is being attack, Amir not only doesn't come to Hassan's aid, but also allows him to be brutally abused. Morality lacks because of this class structure, which allows people to be treated as second-class citizens. Considerations towards morality and religion helps the reader to broaden there understanding of the novel and it would be impossible to appreciated the book lacking them.

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, Amir was the son of a wealthy social worker. He was brought up with the son of his servant, and perhaps his only best friend, Hassan. Amir had a rocky relation with his father. At times, it seemed as his father loved him but those moments didn’t lasted forever. He thinks Baba (his father) wishes Amir were more like him, and that Baba holds him responsible for killing his mother, who died during his birth. Despite being best friends, Amir thinks that Hassan is beneath him because he belonged to an inferior cast. He used to mock him jokingly or tried to outsmart him. In all fairness, it was Amir’s cowardly nature that

Millions of people around the world are discriminated against, but Hazaras and Shias especially know the struggle of this, constantly being put at the bottom of the social class and knowing unfair treatment all too well. In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the act of discrimination is portrayed throughout the novel and is the cause of many of the main events that occur in the novel. Hassan, a hare-lipped Hazara boy in the novel, feels the pain and torture of simply being who he was and endures the hardships of his ethnicity, but yet he never complains or wishes to change who he is, symbolizing his bravery. Therefore, discrimination and slander towards Hazaras in the novel gives a strong sense of unequalness among the two ethnicities, Pashtuns and Hazaras, and is not considered virtuous among societies today.

Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner reveals the effects of ethnic and religious division present throughout Afghanistan. The Afghan society places Hazaras as lower than the Pashtuns; the Hazaras were of Mongol descent and were mocked for their asian resemblances. Pashtuns have gone to the extent of excluding Hazaras out of their history textbooks, proving Afghanistan belongs to them. Pashtuns have a majority of the wealth and power in Afghanistan; they want to remain in supremacy so that they maintain ruling over the Hazara people. Majority of Pashtuns see the Hazaras as unworthy or undeserving of living in Afghanistan. In addition to the statement made previously we can further argue that Hazaras are seen as intruders,

Similar to people of colour, the Hazaras were also extremely despised, and looked down upon in Afghanistan. They were often kept as servants, as shown through Hassan’s case, in which his family had been servants for Amir’s family, and they were considered of lower value and worth than the Pashtuns. From an early age in his childhood, Hassan has therefore dealt with racial segregation and actions expressing distaste towards him from the larger community. It was very clear that as someone of lesser authority and worth due to his ethnicity, he was merely someone who did housework for Amir. When society itself is promoting acts of racism and disdain toward the Hazaras while often keeping them as slaves, those who are of that group cannot help but feel unsafe, or unhappy with the ethnicity they were born into. The hatred towards the Hazaras can lead to the victims slowly believing these insults. This would make them hesitant to approach others for fear of being humiliated about their race. Hassan’s decrease in self-worth is evident when he

Hassan’s dads is the servant of Amir’s dad. While walking by a group of soldiers they refer to Hassan as a Hazara, which is an ethnicity in Afghanistan. Amir reads some history books and learns that the hazara had an uproar and was stopped by Pashtuns. He also seen some derogatory names for the hazara and realises that they were lower class citizen. *

In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, he tells a story about a boy, but he ultimately tells a story about Afghanistan. Division and barriers in relationships between Amir and Baba, Amir and Sohrab, Amir and Soraya, and many others is a common theme throughout the book and one of the main examples of this is the social separation of Hazaras and Pashtuns. Hosseini includes the historical, yet horrific, massacre of Hazaras in Mazar-I Sharif in 1998 to maintain a consistent timeline of Afghanistan and further support the theme of disconnection. The conflict between Pashtuns and Hazaras dates back to the time when the Mongols had conquered most of Asia, the Middle East, and were invading Eastern Europe.

People fight for their own rights and what they believed in, though, one of the groups

In Afghanistan, there is a divide between the Pashtuns and the Hazaras; the Pashtuns are upper class citizens who are treated with respect while the Hazaras are lower class, minority citizens who are treated poorly. Because of the contrasting history of the two groups, their responses to the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul were complete opposites. The Pashtuns “danced on [the] street,” (Hosseini 200) while the Hazaras cried “God help the Hazaras now” (Hosseini 213). The conflict between the Pashtuns and Hazaras in “The Kite Runner” directly reflects the real life issues in Afghanistan starting in the late 70’s and continuing on past 2001.

Social status allows the powerful to gain more power, while pushing the struggling deeper into a hole. Hazaras are an ultimately low class in Afghanistan with very minimal rights. In The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini the protagonist Amir is a higher level Afghan citizen who is best friends with Hassan, a lower level Hazara. Throughout the book Amit gradually begins to treat Hassan more like a Hazara is treated by the majority of the population. Assef bullies Hassan to show him his place as a minority in Afghanistan. Due to Hassan being a Hazara, Baba avoids social embarrassment by not exposing the truth of Hassan being his son. Hassan later on gets killed for being a Hazara. In The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini shows that an individual's social status affects their future through the way Hazaras are treated in Afghanistan.

This is shown when Amir describes Hassan or other “normal people” in his life. Despite their ethnic differences, Amir and Hassan “fed from the same breasts”, took their “first steps on the same lawn”, and it’s learned later in the novel that they are half brothers (11). Countless hours of their childhood consisted of them playing pretend, flying kites, reading stories, and just talking with one another. This definitely falls in the parameters of friendship, but Amir “never thought of Hassan and [him] as friends” (25). In moments of chaos, Amir finds Hassan expendable in order to protect himself and his desires. When Hassan refused to give up a kite that Amir desperately wanted, Hassan was attacked and raped while Amir hid. Although Hassan was taking the beating for him, Amir thought that “he was just a Hazara” so there is no need to go out into harm’s way (77). This way of thinking can be traced back to the large majority of the people surrounding Amir viewed Hazaras as subhuman. Amir described a boy named Omar as “a pretty good guy” but refers to Hassan as “your hazara” and insults his “tight little eyes” (68). This perception of Omar being a good guy despite his degrading comments towards Hassan shows how much Pashtuns had influenced Amir. A Marxist, however, would say that Amir supported the dominant ideology thus keeping the bourgeoisie at the top.

In the novel, Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, the protagonist, Amir, is torn between two truths as he lived associated with different kinds of religious groups in Afghan society: Pashtuns and Hazaras. Each identity played a unique part in Amir’s life. Whether they had a positive or negative effect, both changed his values and beliefs. Individuals also shaped Amir’s character. Baba, Assef, and Hassan were major influences upon Amir’s growth throughout the book; their differences shaped Amir into the man he later became as all three represented a different side of Afghan society.

Amir is not the only one who alienates or discriminates against Hassan and the Hazaras. Assef, for example, is part German and a Nazi sympathizer. Assef uses the values and beliefs of a society from his heritage to help shape his values as a person. Assef believes that the only way to keep order in a society is to keep people in their rightful places based on their race, class, or identity, and he attempts to force his values on those around

Discrimination is like an airborne disease, once one person is contaminated, others get infected as well. It then becomes very hard to cure. When one person begins the persecution of another, others join in, otherwise known as the domino effect. Racism is psychologically wired into the brain; it’s a human’s tendency to judge the environment and people living in it under a personal lens. People’s views on one another are shaped by their views and values, which naturally leads to preferences to some over others. Yet when this is taken to another level by performing prejudicial treatment of different groups of people or things, becomes discrimination. In the novel, The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini, Hassan is subjected to many levels and variations of discrimination. Whereas his more privileged friend, Amir, witnesses the events but never makes a move to aid his best friend. Discrimination comes in a multitude of forms, such as prejudice towards women, disability, and race. Prejudice takes place all over the world and can have many psychological and physical effects on the individual being targeted. Those with more privilege must acknowledge others that are less fortunate if there is any hope of equality between all categories.