Examples Of Social Class In The Kite Runner

Amir questions his relationship with Hassan and says, “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). This is the first occurrence in the novel of Amir acknowledging that him and Hassan are different. Amir is superior to Hassan in the eyes of Afghani culture. Later Amir almost says to Assef, “But he’s not my friend! I almost blurted. He’s my servant!” (Hosseini 41). Amir later questions what he says, and does not understand what he really thinks Hassan is to him. Another example of Amir realizing his superiority is when he was not not beaten by a teacher like the other students. Amir says, “But my father was rich and everyone knew him, so I was spared the metal rod treatment” (Hosseini 90). Amir recognizes his father’s wealth and realizes he receives special treatment because of it. This thought of being superior is inevitably capable of being installed in a child’s brain that they are above others and deserve special

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,

The Kite Runner is the first novel of Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. It tells the story of Amir, a boy from Kabul, Afghanistan, whose closest friend is Hassan, a young Hazara servant. Novel turns around these two characters and Baba, Amir’s father, by telling their tragic stories, guilt and redemption that are woven throughout the novel. Even in the difficult moments, characters build up to their guilt and later on to their redemption. Their sins and faults alter the lives of innocent people. First, Amir and Baba fail to take action on the path to justice for Ali and Hassan. Moreover, Amir and Baba continue to build up their guilt due to their decisions and actions. Although Amir builds up more guilt than Baba throughout the novel, he eventually succeeds in the road to redemption unlike his father. After all, Amir and Baba have many chances to fix their atonements but Baba chooses not to and Amir does. Baba uses his wealth to cover up his sins but never atone himself while Amir decides to stand up and save Sohrab and finally finds peace. Amir and Baba’s reaction to sins essentially indicate their peace of mind and how they react to guilt and injustice.

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.

Best friends typically have loyalty that comes with the friendship, and Hassan was all about the loyalty, whereas Amir had trouble giving Hassan what he deserves. For instance, after Amir had won the kite race, Hassan had caught his kite to then be met by a bully, Assef, and his friends in an alley way. Amir is a bystander to what would be the raping of Hassan and Amir tells it as “I could step in to that alley, stand up for Hassan-the way he’d stood up for me…” to then finish with, “In the end, I ran.” (Hosseini 77). Amir immediately regrets his self-proclaimed cowardly decision. As Amir grows older, the circle of life catches up to him and he has the opportunity to stand up for Hassan’s son, Sohrab, against Assef. Revisiting the experience, he had of standing up for Sohrab, he admits “That was the first time I’d fought anyone.” (Hosseini 288). Amir is aware that he messed up with his opportunities with Hassan, in turn he ironically is the first to stand up for Sohrab who was up against the same person that troubles Hassan.

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

The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini is a novel with multitudes of themes but the theme most integral to the story concerns friendship, guilt, and redemption. This theme was most important to the novel because the conflict in the book is intertwined with this theme, following the life of a man haunted by regrets. The book is told from the perspective of Amir and this is something he deals with for the entirety of the book after the incident with Hassan. Amir, even as a middle-aged man, is still haunted by what he hadn’t done for Hassan all those years ago. Amir’s entire life takes a certain path because of what he did or didn’t do during and after Hassan’s assault. Amir’s decision affected not only himself, but also Hassan. Their lives forever changed. Amir and Hassan were each other’s best friends and they grew together like brothers, though they didn’t know at the time. Amir feels as though he broke the sacred bond they had and he decided to make it right by finding Sohrab. This is the last thing he can do for Hassan. He cannot tell him he is sorry anymore. He doesn’t have any other paths of redemption.

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.

Amir and Hassan’s relationship throughout the book, The Kite Runner, is based off of love, betrayal, and forgiveness.

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.

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.

From reading chapters one to four, one of the main aspects of Amir and Hassan’s relationship is the sense of control Amir has over Hassan. It becomes apparent that Amir is the one with the most authority in their friendship when he ‘talked’ Hassan into firing walnuts at the neighbour’s one-eyed German shepherd, ‘Hassan never wanted to, but if I asked, really asked, he wouldn’t deny me’. This highlights the way Hassan looks up to Amir and obeys him due to their religious, cultural and social differences, ‘I was a Sunni and he was a Shi’a’. Nevertheless, Amir does express his sensitive side towards Hassan and feels protective over him, especially when he can see he’s upset, ‘I reached across my seat, slung my

Throughout the novel, Amir endeavors to be approved by his father, Baba, who is admired by people in Kabul. Unfortunately, Baba believes that Amir, unlike him, is very unmanly “and [that he] never fights back. He just... drops his head ” (Hosseini 24). Since Baba wishes for a son who would stand up for himself, he can’t help but observe that Amir’s friend Hassan, as the guy who “steps in and fends the [bullies] off” (Hosseini 24) is his idea of the ideal son. Though aware of his father’s expectations, Amir is unable to change himself and instead envies Hassan and the fact that Baba treats him like his own son by“[patting]Hassan on the back. [and even putting] his arm around his shoulder [like a fatherly figure]”(Hosseini 15). Despite the manifestation of this hatred in Amir, he continues to recognize the bond that he shares with Hassan, “ brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast” (Hosseini 11) which is because both their mothers died during birth. The confusing emotions he feels for Hassan has Amir face a situation in which he acts inappropriately and allows the guilt to manifest upon him. After winning a very important kite tournament for the first time and “seeing Baba on that roof, proud of [him] at last” (Hosseini 71) Amir begins to search for Hassan who had gone to run his kite earlier. Finally, Amir finds him in a dark alley and as he “peeks around the corner” (Hosseini 75) he witnesses a sight that eradicated not only his relationship with Hassan but also Baba’s brotherly relationship with Ali, Hassan’s father. Peeking through the corner of the alley, like a bystander, he watches his one and only friend getting raped. The guilt that came upon him was for two reason; one, his lack of courage to stand up to

Hosseini utilizes outside environmental factors to contribute to the preeminating assumption of Amir's character. The actions taken in response to external stimuli convey the true nature of not only the protagonist Amir but his genuine friend and unknown half-brother Hassan. The two juvenile Afghani boys face many challenges growing up in Kabul; bullies taunt and threaten them routinely. Assef, the leader among the tormentors, inadvertently plays a key role in determining the measures taken by Amir in order to gain the acceptance of his father. Under repetitive harassment and criticism, Amir rarely fights against his subjugation. Baba discerns his son’s predominant flaw: cowardice. In his mentality, Baba believes that “a boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who

of cultural aspects can impact the way an individual connects with others, and also affect how people face challenges and create relationships. Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, portrays the story of two boys, Amir and Hassan, who as children had a powerful friendship. As they grew, Hassan’s ethnicity and religion negatively impacted the way Amir viewed Hassan and ultimately destroyed their strong bond. Hosseini used conflicts shown through the main character’s development to illustrate the effect outside influences have on young individuals. In The Kite Runner, Hosseini utilizes outside influences to highlight how one’s social class and culture can sway opinions of even the closest friends.