The Kite Runner Betrayal Essay example

Amir didn’t call Hassan his friend, throughout the whole book, the main reason for this was that Hassan was a Hazara. The Hazaras are the second class and they must serve to the higher class, like Hassan does to Amir’s family. Instead of strengthen their friendship, he listens to the soldiers and school friends, who continually remind him that Hassan is a servant and that he is not equal to them. When Hassan and Amir where young children they were close friends but slowly things started to change. The afternoons Amir wasn’t at school he and Hassan, read him stories or flew kites, and they were like two brothers. But peer pressure and jealousy stopped Amir from seeing Hassan as a true friend. After Hassan was raped by Assef Amir could no

Baba would always tell Amir how lying was a sin yet Amir eventually finds out that Baba had lied to him about Hassan being his brother. Baba said, "There is only one sin. And that is theft... When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth."(pg.237) By him lying, he completely went against what he said was right. Baba had not only lied to Amir, but to Hassan and others as well. Baba had been doing something he knew was wrong, but he had still chosen to go against his own beliefs and do it anyway. The theme addressed here is simply betrayal. Baba is consistently hypocritical throughout the novel. For example, Baba is immensely ashamed of 11 year-old Amir for crying when he saw a man murdered in the street, but later in the novel when Ali and Hassan leave for good, Baba is full of tears. This reveals the bias and corrupt personality Baba possesses. Baba is not a great father and only shows his affection for Amir when great successes occur such as the kite competition victory. Baba betrays many characters in the novel, however he does most of an injustice to Amir, his son. Baba never informing him of his sibling relationship with Hassan appears as stupidity and selfishness. Baba does not wish to provide joy for his sons at the cost of revealing that he had slept with Ali’s wife and produced Hassan. Baba is really just a coward. The lying demonstrated by Baba contributes to the main idea of forgiveness. Baba does a poor job as a father for the most part of his life and on his deathbed he receives the forgiveness from Amir for all of the pain he has caused Amir throughout his

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 and Baba do not try to involve themselves with Hassan and Ali. Just like when Amir starts to understand the low social status Hassan has and accept the status quo. He says “That Hassan would grow up illiterate like Ali

He never stood up for Hassan, always treating Hassan like he is no one important. Here is a quote about how Amir just watched Hassan get raped and did nothing to help him. Never stopped them from doing that to him. “I felt paralyzed. I watched them close in on the boy I’d grown up with, the boy whose harelipped face had been my first memory.” [Amir Pg. 76]. In this scene of the book this is where Hassan is getting raped by Assef. Amir is doing nothing to stop Assef and his friends from raping Hassan in the alley way. This show that Amir was scared to stop Assef from hurting Hassan. It shows that Amir was only thinking of himself and how Hassan desevers it, that he had it coming for him. When Amir and Hassan got home Hassan when straight to his room. A few weeks when by and Ali started to worry about Hassan because after he had made Amir breakfast and iron his clothes for school, Hassan would go back to bed. Ali ask Amir what happened the night of the kite fight tournament. Amir had the chance to tell Ali what happened that night but he kepted it to himself and never told

While on a truck, he defended the women. Willing to take the bullet without hesitation, he put his life on the line for the stranger, for his passion had been stronger than his fear of death. Baba acted out of bravery due to his grand stature, level head, and big heart, “when all six-foot-five of him thundered into the room, attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun” (13). Baba was well respected in Afghanistan, and he knew that his voice would be heard; therefore, he used his power as a way to defend the defenseless. He was willing to sacrifice himself even though his son disagreed with the idea. Amir thought only of himself and that he would be left as an orphan if Baba was shot; whereas Baba wanted to help the woman as long as he was only risking his own life. His heart reached out for anyone needing an extra hand. He loved and cared for so many people, he wanted to help all of them. Baba put in hard work to help the people around him, and they all looked up to him due to “the marks he had left on people’s lives” (174). Baba’s willingness to sacrifice himself for strangers shaped his reputation in Afghanistan.

The illegitimate son of Baba and Amir’s half-brother (which he didn’t knew until after Hassan’s death), Hassan was a truly good and beautiful person even though he's had his fair share of hard times. In my opinion, Hassan has it tougher than Amir from the beginning. Not only did Hassan lose his mother (like Amir), his mother flat-out rejected him But Hassan, unlike Amir, is a selfless and joy-filled creature. They spent most their childhood together playing games, reading books and flying kites until that fateful day where he was deprived of his pride. Hassan had a very good relation with Baba as it would later prove out to be his father as well. After the war stricken years, Rahim Khan asked him to come back to the house in Kabul and agrees after thinking about it. He felt that he was near Amir by living in that house and that he’s loyal. His loyalty and integrity are the essence of his character. He and his wife were slaughtered by the Talibans in the earlier part of 2000, thus ending the life on an inspiring individual.

What conflict do the two characters share, making themselves similar to each other? Do both Amir and Baba feel guilt and shame through their actions?

Baba is good to the town but doesn't even love is own kid. Baba was an okay person to most people. He did help a lot of people but the fact he didn't love his own kid was pretty low of him. Baba was also very private and secretive about Hassan and other parts of his life. Baba didn't tell Amir and Hassan that they were brothers. Babas complexity and mysteriousness about Hassan being Amir's brother eventually leads Amir more motivation to help Hassan's son. Amir says “Half brothers, really. We had the same father” (322) This quote shows that all the good things that Baba did out ways the few bad things that he did. Amir was mad that Baba did not tell him that they were brothers. But by this time Hassan and Baba were dead. But Baba’s good kindness and carefulness will hopefully be carried on for a long time. People will remember Baba’s great

betrayed Hassan by not telling him that he was his real father, which subjected him to a life of bullying and poverty. Baba’s main concern was his “ honor, his name” (223), by not revealing his secret he was to keep him prestige status because that was “ All that a man has back then, all that he was” (223). By not telling Hassan that he was his father, he became a hypocrite. He referred to theft as “ the only sin’ and when you tell a lie “ you steal someone’s right to the truth” (225) but his betrayals for Hassan contradicts all his upheld morals, since “he committed the biggest theft because: the things he had stolen had been sacred: [...] from Hassan his identity” (225). Due to Baba’s Hassan is subjected a life of poverty and inferiority because he is not able to know his real identity as half Pashtun, but instead he is subjected to his identity as a full Hazara, which is looked down upon on society. Baba spends the rest of his life trying to forgive himself and gain redemption by “ feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, and giving money to friends in need” (302). Through these acts of trying to forgive himself and gains redemption, because “ he found a way to create good out of remorse” (303). Through the guilt of his betrayal, he was able to forgive and achieve

The first reason why Baba is a good man is because he puts family and others he loves first. In chapter three, Amir asked if they could get new servants because their was something going on between him and Hassan. This quote will show what happened: “‘Baba have you ever thought about getting new servants?’ Amir said . . . ‘I grew up with Ali, My father took him in, he loved him like his own son. Forty years Ali’s with my family. Forty goddamn years. And you think I'm just going to throw him out?’”(Hosseini 89) Baba would not just throw out the people he calls family like that. The fact that Baba got so upset when Amir asked that shows that he doesn't care what happens, He will always

Baba is one of the few muslims in Afghanistan that believes there is only one sin, theft. He states to Amir with a great sense of sterness, ''When you kill a man, you steal a life . . . [you] steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness” (18). Although Baba tries to teach this lesson to Amir, he himself is a thief; he stole the “right to the truth” by retaining the truth of Hassan (18). Along with Baba’s betrayal to his son, he also betrays his beloved servants, Ali and Hassan through adultery. Sanaubar, Hassan's mother was potentially driven away by guilt; leaving Hassan without a mother and Ali without a wife.

Though Hassan was his best friend, Amir feelt that Hassan, a Hazara servant, was beneath him. He passively attacked Hassan by mocking and taunting him. Amir never learned how to affirm himself against anyone because Hassan always defended him. All of these factors lead to Amir not being able to stand up for Hassan when he needed him most.

When Amir and Baba went to the lake one day when Baba had built the orphanage, Amir exclaimed, “he asked me to fetch Hassan too, but I lied and told him Hassan had the runs” (13). This associates the power Aamir wants in order to impress his father. Furthermore it embellishes the fact that Amirs quench for power over Hassan was growing since the beginning of the book, Hassan was always, “steps in to fend them off” (22), which made Amir feel weak and powerless. This enraged the evil that was brewing inside him, and created a dynamic of always wanting more. The power that came from Baba’s approval always came so easily to Hassan, However for Amir, he always went out of his way to be vengeful towards him. Hosseini depicts this constantly throughout his life, for example when he graduated highschool in California and Baba mentioned how good it would be to have Hassan there with them in the new car they had gotten, Amir said, “a pair of steel hands closed around my windpipe at the sound of Hassan's name” (134). Hosseini wants us to see that Amir is constantly wants that power over his father’s relationship with him, but Hassan always gets in the way of that. Even when Amir was doing an act of good to save Sohrab, he “hadn’t felt happy and [he] hadn’t felt better, not at all” (289). Amir began to laugh during the time that he

Baba’s influence on Amir can be described in two words, tough love. Baba desperately wants Amir to resemble him in everything he does and do things how he would, but Amir struggles to meet these standards. Baba is reminded by Rahim that he does not get to choose the man that Amir will become, “‘Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with favorite colors”’ (21). It hurts Amir that he does not get Baba’s compassion and love but he stays true to himself and does not change for him. Even though Amir stayed true to himself he would still do what he could to earn Baba’s love. When he won the kite flying tournament Baba shows Amir that love because he did something they can both relate to, sports. It seemed Amir would do anything to be recognized by Baba but Baba did not care about Amir’s thoughts on himself. Baba even said to Rahim “If [he] hadn’t seen the doctor pull [Amir] out of [his] wife with [his] own eyes, [he’d] never believe [Amir’s his] son” (23). This obviously would be heart wrenching to hear and hurt Amir deeply, but he did not let that make him stop trying. The two clearly had a rocky relationship.