Displacement In The Kite Runner

Amir’s struggles, on the other hand, are of an inherently different nature from John’s in that they are internal and Amir is more directly responsible for the cause of his alienation. Amir, having witnessed the rape of his childhood best friend and servant Hassan at a young age, failing to help him, and not telling anyone about it, bears the weight of his sins throughout a large portion of his childhood and adult life. Amir struggles greatly with what he has done in the weeks and months after the rape, leading him to emotionally and physically harm Hassan even more than he has already been

Throughout the whole book, Amir has been vying for love from his father, often against Hassan, and feels powerless when he does not get it; this causes him to attempt to assert power in other aspects of his life, usually over Hassan. Amir feels as if Baba does not love him, and feels powerless to fix it; he says, “I always felt like Baba hated me a little, And why not? After all, I had killed his beloved wife, his beautiful princess, hadn’t I? The least I could have done was to have the decency to have turned out a little more like him. But I hadn’t turned out like him. Not at all” (Hosseini 19). He believes there is nothing he can do to make his father love him; after all, he cannot change the past, and he cannot change himself substantially. This feeling of powerlessness affects him in such a way that he feels the need to compensate for this loss of power elsewhere in his life. He would exploit the kindness and forgiveness Hassan always showed him, and would try and prove his superiority and worth in that relationship. Amir once asked if Hassan would eat dirt if he asked him to, and afterwards said, “I knew I was being cruel, like when I’d taunt him if he didn’t know some big word. But there was something fascinating--albeit in a sick way--about teasing Hassan. Kind of like when we used to play insect torture. Except now he was the ant and I was holding the magnifying glass,” (Hosseini 54). Amir is filling the power gap he feels in his life with power over Hassan, and is trying to show Hassan how much control he has over him. Hassan, Amir’s servant and a genuinely kind person, is in a vulnerable position against Amir,

Amir resents his choice to be a coward when Hassan is raped. His guilt is immediate and it gnaws at him. A few days after Hassan was assaulted, Amir already feels guilt and resentment inside him. “’I [Amir]

When Amir was looking for Hassan after the kite flying contest he is talking to someone asking if they had seen him. He refers to Hassan as “our servant’s son” (69). He and Hassan are best friends at home through their entire childhoods. Despite this, he still does not even refer to him as a friend to society; to the people around him Hassan is just his servant. Then later in the novel after he has witnessed Hassan getting raped, he does not want Hassan to be living with them anymore. He asks Baba “have you ever thought about getting new servants?” (89). He tries to exile his best friend for no reason at all even though they have been through everything together. This is the foundation of Amir showing this theme of exile towards Hassan, and it only gets worse. Hassan begins to notice what Amir is doing and tells him “I don’t know what i’ve done, Amir agah I wish you’d tell me. I don’t know why we don’t play anymore” (88). He ignores Hassan and shuts him out into exile even though all he has done is be loyal to Amir. Soon after Amir wants to completely exile Hassan and get him out of his home for good. Amir decides to frame him so he “lifted Hassan’s mattress and planted [his] new watch and handful of Afghani bills under it” (104). Amir lets Hassan take the blame for this act completely and exiles him out of his life forever. Hassan even writes to him but Amir does not respond. Amir exiles Hassan and shows the theme of exile through his actions toward Hassan throughout the

After he nearly convinces himself Hassan is “not [his] friend,” Amir is ashamed for neglecting his best friend in pursuit of his own safety. By portraying Amir’s guilt, the author displays Amir’s conflicted feelings for Hassan—the person who he has always treated “like a brother”—thus highlighting his inability to be decisive. Hosseini seems to believe that, although humans make mistakes, the following guilt can strengthen a person’s relationships in the long-term, provided they avoid making similar mistakes in the future. Later in the story, Amir and Hassan have a second encounter with Assef when Hassan is raped, but Amir simply watches the scene as a bystander, traumatized and scared to stand up for his friend. Amir continues to carry the burden of guilt for the rest of the novel and expresses his frustration by attempting to cut ties with Hassan. In chapter 9, Amir frames Hassan for stealing by placing his birthday money and his watch under Hassan’s mattress. When Baba finds out that Hassan had “stolen” from Amir—as Amir had planned— Hassan shockingly admits to stealing the watch and money, even though he was not responsible. However, Baba forgives Hassan, leaving Amir in a

The beginning of Amir’s journey causes him to feel guilty enough that he causes a chain reaction where he inflicts more cruelty upon himself and others. Amir and Hassan used to live a simple life with the biggest negative in Amir’s life being the fact that his father liked Hassan more. Right after a kite tournament that Amir won, Hassan goes to run the kite for Amir, and Amir finds him being abused by Assef in an alley. Amir decides to do nothing and feels guilty about it for most of his life. Although the initial cruelty is inflicted upon Hassan, it is Amir who is hurt the most. His guilt causes him to inflict cruelty upon Hassan in order to cause Hassan to “give [Amir] the punishment [he] craved, so maybe [he]’d finally sleep at night” (92). Amir’s cruelty leads Hassan and his father to walk out of Amir’s life, leaving Amir and his father, Baba,

    Amir had been disloyal to Hassan his whole life. He did not stand up for Hassan when he needed it most and Amir even ran away when he could have helped Hassan. Amir constantly tortured Hassan as he tried to make Hassan eat dirt, throw fruit at him, or even when he tried to get Hassan to punch him. Amir wanted Hassan to stoop to his level and beat him up, so his guilt would disappear.

Amir grew up with a sense of entitlement, and a loyal servant/friend in Hassan. After Hassan’s rape, Amir is stricken with grief and tries to console himself by saying that he is better than Hassan because Hassan is a Hazara and has a cleft lip. It’s here where the disgusting mindset of Amir, a perspective that only the reader has the opportunity to understand. “Hassan knew. He knew I 'd seen everything in that alley, that I 'd stood there and done nothing. He knew I had betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.” (Kite 9.29) This quote perfectly encapsulates Amir’s feelings of extreme grief for what he did to Hassan. This is a recurring theme within the book, the reader sees the anxiety that Amir feels for betraying Hassan in the alley that day, and from that day he does his best to repent for his unatoned sins.

The moment Amir heard Baba explaining to Rahim Khan that Hassan stands up for himself and Amir, which leads him to conclude, “…there is something missing in that boy.” , Amir instantly behaves aggressively towards Hassan. This subconscious jealously causes Amir to betray Hassan in a variety of circumstances: the right of correct education, the act of allowing Hassan suffer, and the act of keeping quiet when Amir innated Hassan being a ‘thief’. Inevitably, Amir felt always challenged with his lack of confidence caused by Hassan being admired by Baba and being adroit, which lead to terrible decisions to a loop of

The novel, The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, is a story about betrayal, forgiveness, and redemption that revolves around that two main characters, Amir and Hassan. Amir is a young selfish boy who constantly manipulates and exploits Hassan for personal gains. He uses Hassan as a scapegoat to win Baba, but upon accomplishing this task, he is riddled with guilt. Amir uses his friendship with Hassan for ulterior motives. His lack of action caused severe guilt, which he tries to escape throughout the entire story. He uses various scapegoats to rid himself of his guilty conscience.

Amir goes through two critical character shifts in Khaled Hosseini’s “Kite Runner” that get him closer to the man he aspires to be. The first shift occurs when he chooses not to take action when witnessing Hassan’s rape. Before this incident, he was fairly ignorant of his entitled, bratty attitude and was able to use Hassan as a sort of puppet without feeling any shame. When he lets Hassan be raped, however, guilt starts to gnaw at him, and he realizes how truly awful he has been to Hassan his whole life. The guilt affects him even through his adult life, a permanent mark on his heart he is constantly aware of.

An internal conflict with power develops when one’s emotions begin to control their actions. After having a nightmare, Amir describes the actions of a monster in his dream: “It had grabbed Hassan by the ankles, dragged him to the murky bottom. I was that monster” (Hosseini 86).Hassan acts as the ghost of Amir’s past, the cause of his guilt. Amir’s dream alludes to how he allowed the rape of Hassan, his childhood friend, to take place. However, in this case Amir himself is the aggressor. Hosseini uses the first person saying “I was” in order to highlight how Amir not only takes on responsibility but he takes on the guilt from Hassan’s rape. The author’s use of connotation through the words “grabbed” and “dragged” is not only dark, but violent. This reveals that Amir as one who likes to be a victim, he over exaggerates his role in hurting Hassan, revealing how he feels he is a victim to his guilt. As Amir is consumed by his guilt, he begins to develop animosity for Hassan. Considering that it is what he allowed to be done to Hassan that causes him guilt, Hassan and his guilt are directly related, Hassan is the cause of his guilt and is antagonized by Amir as a

Through amir's perspective him and baba relationship becomes more distant as time goes on. The lack of acceptance that amir feels towards baba changes his perception of Hassan. He thinks of him as a human punching bag that he can abuse in order to get the attention that baba never gives. The relationship between Amir and hassan is literally and figuratively dangerous as, the constant emotional abuse that Hassan experiences can destroy an individuals self-worth, their pride and the little confidence that still remains just so other can fill the emptiness in his heart and feel he has redeemed himself. Through this Khaled Hosseini comments on the nature of humans and how the world has steered us, through corruption and media us into believing the notion that in order to have a sense of redemption we should take out our anger and frustration on others

Amir feels guilt and shame for being a coward and not doing anything to defend his friend when he needed him the most. Being around Hassan is a constant reminder of Amir’s cowardice and makes him feel ashamed of himself. Worse, after a couple of months of the rape, Amir sees a hollow-eyed Hassan around the house falls apart and betrays poor Hassan again. To remove reminders of his guilt, he hides a wad of cash and a watch under Hassan's mattress. He frames Hassan for theft which drives Hassan out of the house. Holding onto guilt is a form of self-punishment for Amir.

Amir is often threatened by Hassan which Hassan is oblivious to, resulting in Amir feeling jealous and misusing his authority over Hassan, ‘though I stopped reading those when I saw he was far better at solving them than I was’, implying that Amir can’t handle an ‘inferior’ person exceeding him in any way. This jealousy develops into abuse towards Hassan when Amir uses his intelligence to make a fool of Hassan who is illiterate, ‘”When it comes to words, Hassan is an imbecile.” “Aaah” he said, nodding’. However, Amir would then feel ‘guilty’ for this and would give him an old shirt or a broken toy, ‘I would tell myself that was amends enough for a harmless prank’ displaying Amir’s malicious behaviour towards Hassan.