The idealistic goal of humans is to achieve goodness. However, many become lost on the path to reach this goal as they are ignorant of how to find it. Goodness is procured through basing personal choices on love and loyalty, no matter the circumstance, while evil is made through selfishness, power pursuits, and the causing of pain. In “The Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini, the author paints a picture of moralistic conflict throughout the story to shed light on the main point of human character: goodness and evil are made by the choices an individual makes and partially shaped by their circumstance that develops the character they become. For example, in “The Kite Runner,”the character Hassan is described as someone who is “incapable of hurting …show more content…
Assef is the prime example of someone who chose evil, power, and selfish gain in times of both easiness and hardship. Due to this, he becomes a psychopathic figure, who delights in abusing power to cause pain. He grew up similar to Amir, surrounded by riches and given everything he could possibly want, and granted a great standing in society due to his race and wealth. However, from a young age he chooses to violently wield this power as he is introduced as someone who has a “well-earned reputation for savagery,” (Hosseini 38). He commits the act of rape, a sexual act that is used as a sign of power, against Hassan to show that he was in charge. When he was finally in a position of pain, he used it to add fire to his rage and become more cruel. A soldier who hurt him suffered a fate of “Being shot in the balls, “ (Hosseini 284). Assef’s joining of the Taliban further illustrates Assef’s evil personality as he joins them to “take out the garbage,” (Hosseini 284) to refer to the ethnic cleansing of the Hazaras. The Taliban are a reflection of his values as they abuse their power through violence. A certain story brings an understanding to the kind of people they are: “The worker, who was running a project north of Kabul, said he had tolerated a series of petty thefts by his Afghan workforce until his transistor radio, his only means of getting news of the outside world, went missing. He complained to the local mujahedin commander. A couple of days later the radio reappeared in his room, and he thought no more about it until the following morning, when he found the bodies of two men, shot through the head, in the road outside his compound. After that he kept any complaints of theft to him,” (Whitaker). The Taliban used murder as punishment for a petty theft, a clear overreaction for the purpose of solidifying fear into people’s hearts to keep their power, something Assef does by raping
Cruelty is something that eventually causes agony in the best of us. In The Kite Runner, the author uses cruelty in the novel to push the story and characters in a new direction. Cruelty acts as a driving force for the protagonist, Amir, and the people he interacts with. The author does this by placing the characters in unfamiliar situations and forcing them to react to those situations. Initially, Amir is placed in an unfamiliar situation when his friend, Hassan, is abused. His actions while he is in this situation set off a chain reaction forcing the characters to navigate difficult situations. Throughout these difficult situations, Amir grows emotionally as a result of the cruelty around him.
A man is insensible to appreciate prosperity until he has tasted adversity. Adverse situations shape an individual’s identity and play a significant role in one’s life by shaping personal values, determining one’s own potential and self worth. Khaled Hosseini conveys how hardships shape individuals identities through the characters of Amir, Baba, Hassan and Ali in his novel The Kite Runner. Like every individual they go through a series of incidents and hardships that shape who they become and how well they deal with struggles in
Cruelty is an important factor in two themes in The Kite Runner. One of those themes involves experiencing pain and how that pain shapes who character will become in the future. This theme is exemplified in the alley scene when Amir witnesses his servant and friend, Hassan, being sexually assaulted by the neighborhood bully, Assef. The horrendous acts of cruelty Amir experiences that day are completely paradoxical to anything he has encountered previously in his life. Up until this point, the only cruelty Amir has had to experience is that of his relationship, or lack thereof, with his father. As the story continues, Amir considers himself to be cruel for not even attempting to help Hassan in his time of need. He even references this experience in the first paragraph of the book by saying “I became what I am today at the age of twelve… crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the
How, after years of guilt, self-disgust, and deception, is it possible for one person to become good again? Entrapped in a cage of cowardice for so long, can they ever develop and grow as a normal human being? Amir, the anti-hero in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, seeks to answer these questions in his own search for atonement through various existential events in his life.
The average adult makes 35,000 choices every day. Behind every choice is an intent, whether it be good or bad. In Khalid Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, characters have a variety of intents behind their choices. Some characters make amazing choices for heinous reasons, while other characters make horrible choices for altruistic reasons. These characters cannot be judged by their choice alone. Hosseini displays how it is not the action itself but the intent of an action that defines a person in his use of the symbol of brass, in the actions of Baba, and in the character of Amir.
The first character Assef stayed in Afghanistan and some how adapted to the new political reality, which was actually quite suitable for his aggressive and sadistic-like character to develop. As a consequence Assef grew up from a bully of younger kids into a cruel and despotic member of the regime and continued to ruin lives of other people/
The life of a person may be measured in years, moments, and the number of laughs or cries but what if one were to measure a life on good deeds or on that person’s virtues? The theory and idea of ethics and virtue as conceptualized by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics and as it is expressed in the pages of The Fundamentals of Ethics by Russ Shafer-Landau is a complex and dubious notion. It is one that is easily related to characters in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.
The Kite Runner is a powerful book contrasting selfishness and selflessness. The book follows the life of Amir, a character who experiences guilt and tragedy throughout his life. While growing up in Kabul, Amir witnesses the imperfect and prejudice society in his country. Within an imperfect society, there are many who are self-invested, and among those, there are those who are selfless. Characters Amir and Hassan possess selfish and selfless traits. The traits that these characters possess are influenced by fear, victimization, and loyalty, ultimately leading them to inaction and action.
This view is carried out with the supportive character, Hassan, who plays a significant role in the novel by representing a Christ figure who is forever forgiving of Amir. Hassan is the, “harelipped kite runner” whose only friend is Amir (Hosseini 2). Hassan demonstrates the themes of second chances and forgiveness through his actions of kindness. For example, when Assef and his gang come to torment Amir, Hassan comes to the rescue with his slingshot. Although Amir never considers him to be his friend, Hassan proves to be a flawless servant to his half-brother, even after Amir betrays him. Throughout the story, Amir remembers Hassan by his kind-hearted phrase, “For you, a thousand times over,” which evidences how magnanimous and
One day Asseff rapes Hassan as an act of power, and Amir witnesses the actions but acts in a cowardly matter and simply avoids the matter by ignoring it. Amir then proceeds to cut off the relationships between himself and Hassan, “I actually aspired to cowardice, but the real reason I was running, was that Asseff 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. Was it a fair price? The answer floated to my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara. Wasn’t he?” Amir did it because the traditional and historical beliefs were more important than friendship. This action displays how being born in a different social class can outweigh all feelings of love and friendship with one of a different social group.
In the novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini uses the literary element archetypes. Archetypes are typically characters, actions, or situations that seem to represent universal patterns of human nature. Hosseini uses the archetype of the villain, which can be seen in the character Assef. By using archetypes, it shows the universal role of a character, in The Kite Runner, it shows the universal role that the villain has, but one step further. Throughout the novel, Assef’s main goal is to cause to harm to others including Hassan and Amir. He goes beyond the idea of a typical villain we know, not only does he want to cause harm but, physically and mentally destroy a person. We can see that over time Assef progressively gets worse as a villain, from taking pleasure in bullying, to raping innocent children, he slowly turns into a psychological monster that takes pleasure from the pain that is inflicted on others.
The root of discrimination founds on the lack of similarities. Everyone is different in some ways, but dehumanization allows exploitation of the differences for self interest and satisfaction. Human history is littered with tainted footprints of prejudice and discrimination, and they all contain one thing in common: dehumanization.Dehumanization is a psychological process that makes individuals and groups seem to not deserve moral consideration by viewing them as less than human. All human have fundamental rights that should not be violated, and innocent people should not be subjects to violence and brutality. In Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, excessive violence and ethnic conflicts question moralities. Hosseini is able to reflect how these real-world issues are revolved around dehumanization. The novel highlights genocide, violence, and violation of human rights, and most importantly, how these terrible deeds originates from one psychological process: Dehumanization. Dehumanization is the cause of violence and discrimination because it asserts superiority, assuages guilt, and denies individuality; ultimately, it is the cause of human rights violations.
In the novel The Kite Runner the text explores many different ways the relationships and people surrounding a person can shape one's self, this is most prevalent in Amir. During Amir's childhood, he is constantly vying for Baba's attention and affection. Amir's cowardice is seen through many different examples in the novel, mainly Assef and his violent actions bring forth his cowardice in many forms. Hassan is Amir's best friend in the beginning of the novel, he is also a role model to Amir.
Evil is the sense of gaining power over others and doing harmful things to them. We are a little malicious inside, because we all get angry at one time or another. Although throughout our lives social pressures, people, and events will shape weather that evil subsidies or grows. The Kite Runner is a depiction of bad that not everyone sees. Assef is the obvious villain in this book but Amir's experiences and decisions caused him to be corrupted by his mistakes as well. He made the decision not to help Hassan when he was being raped, and from then on he inflicted physical and mental abuse onto him. Amir drove Hassan out of his home and was constantly trying to gain power over him throughout their lives together. In the end he did things to benefit him, which caused a divide between his good actions turning into ones that benefit his bad ones. Considering this, as a society we may not be able to avoid the Evils embedded into our environments, but we can at least be honest and open, and not suppress our desires and feelings towards one
Quite the antithesis of Baba, an outspoken liberal, is Assef, best described in Hosseini’s eyes as a local radical. Radical not in his strict obedience to Islamic jurisprudence, but ironically in his dedication to the perversion of it, being a part of the Taliban that “reigned over years of theft, rape, murder and torture under the pretense of abiding by Islamic Law” (Sandstrom 2). He uses religion as nothing more than a pretext for the pathological cruelty he shows to others he deems more inferior, despising minorities like