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. The first time where a character is placed in an unfamiliar situation is when Hassan gets abused in the alley. Abuse, in itself, is a from a cruelty, and although this cruelty is not addressed to Amir, it has a direct impact on his life. Right after a kite tournament that Amir won, Hassan goes to run the kite for Amir. While trying to run the kite, Hassan finds himself cornered in an alleyway by Assef and his lackeys. To demonstrate his power over Hassan, Assef decides to rape him while his allies hold him down. What they do not know is that Amir, worried about Hassan’s whereabouts, went looking for him only to find him in this situation. Amir chooses not to help Hassan and he runs away where he never discusses the situation with anyone. His guilt over the situation causes him to set off a chain reaction where he inflicts more cruelty upon himself and others. The paramount example of this is when Amir and Hassan revisit their favorite hill for the first time in months. Amir believes that Hassan is too loyal and that is why Hassan was abused in the alley. In order to make Hassan less loyal and “give [Amir] the punishment [he] craved, so maybe [he]’d finally sleep at night”, Amir decides to pummel him with pomegranates (92). Amir’s guilt only isolates Hassan, exactly what Amir thought he needed. However, isolating Hassan only makes Amir’s guilt worse. The isolation of Hassan drives him and his father away from Amir. Amir and his father, Baba, are hurt by Hassan and his father leaving. Amir hopes
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]
A fear of empathy dictates one’s ability to achieve true redemption. This is proven many times throughout the novel, “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini. The character of Amir often struggles to allow people to both feel for him and to allow himself to feel for others. While the characters Hassan shares similar problems, they have different causations and solution. They both fear experiencing empathy in the beginning, effectively hindering their ability to progress appropriately. However, while Hassan is eventually able to accept his and other people’s feeling of empathy, Amir continues to fight against them, letting his fear control his life. This is shown when Amir fights against a relationship with both Baba and Hassan, while Hassan
In his critically acclaimed first novel, The Kite Runner, author Khaled Hosseini tells the story of a 12-year-old Afghan boy named Amir, who seeks his father’s love but is hindered by his own cowardice. Both Amir’s cowardice and his father’s lack of attention are compounded by the people and events surrounding Amir, until they feed into each other in a vicious, never-ending cycle.
Sacrifice is a common theme brought to the forefront of many stories throughout history, stories both real and fictional. From beginning to ending, Khaled Hosseini perfectly establishes the theme of sacrifice in his novel The Kite Runner. Baba, the father of the protagonist, sacrificed much in his life purely out of the love in his heart. His love and sacrifice spread from his family, to strangers, and most importantly to his son Amir.
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
In every great piece on literature there always ends up being a scene with some sort of violence. In the book The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini there are a couple of points that include violence that help carry the plot and contribute to the overall meaning of t there are a couple of points that include violence that help carry the plot and contribute to the overall meaning of the work. There are two scenes in particular that really show this concept such as Hassan’s rape and the fight between Armir, Assef and Sohrab. Both scenes are not just there for show, they carry the story along and show what the characters personalities and how they contribute to the plot.
This one decision left a stain on Amir for the next thirty years. A quote on pg. 88 states “I wish someone would wake me up, so I wouldn’t have to live with this lie anymore” This quote explains how guilty Amir felt after seeing Hassan get raped as he desperately sought for anyone to find out but didn’t chose to tell anyone the actual truth. Another example from the text is when Amir tries throwing pomegranates at Hassan, as an attempt to get Hassan to fight back and punish Amir for choosing to leave Hassan. However, Hassan refused to throw any pomegranates at Amir, but instead smashed one into his face. A quote on pg.94 states “I wanted Hassan to fight me back for the way I failed him” This quote indicates that Amir wanted Hassan to fight him back, so he could have the “punishment [he] craved” (93) This demonstrates that Amir wanted to feel the act of being punished for his wrongdoing, similar to how Hassan was brutally raped due to Amir’s apparent mistake. Amir’s guilt forces him to travel across two countries to seek redemption for the mistake he made. 15 years later, Amir’s guilt led him to make the hefty decision of returning to Afghanistan “to be good again” (189) by rescuing Hassan’s orphaned son, Sohrab, from the terrible conditions he was left to face in Kabul. Amir sees this as an opportunity to redeem and free himself from
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,
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
Later, the same guilt that Amir obtains hurts Baba and Ali’s relationship as they leave because Amir makes a plan to get rid of Hassan as he cannot stand looking at him which creates darkness in their
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.
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.
Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, depicts the conflicting life of Amir, a young boy who lives in Kabul, Afghanistan. His life becomes complicated at age twelve when he witnessed his best friend and Hazara servant, Hassan, get raped and abused. Amir just idoly stood by but was he feeling helpless, or was Hassan just a servant that meant nothing to him. This is when the question of good and evil comes out. While Amir shows significantly redeemable qualities throughout the book of doing, it does not change that he was toying with the fact that he let such a vial ast be committed in the first place. Later Amir finds out that Hassan was his brother and he tries desperately to do whatever he can to do good things in Hassan's name like adopt
Illiteracy and poverty are highly connected. This is well known. A child who grows up impoverished in a developing country is likely to be illiterate. An illiterate and impoverished child has an incredibly low chance of succeeding as a person. If those chances weren't low enough, imagine that child is growing up being discriminated against because of his or her religious affiliation and cultural background. In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the character Hassan exemplifies the poverty stricken illiterate child. He has grown up as a servant and never acquires a useable skill and never makes a live able wage. Conversely, the character Amir has had access to school, is a member of the dominant religion of Afghanistan, and is supported by a wealthy father. Because he was born into a family with money and privilege, he is likely to be a competitive member of the economy and will follow in his father's footsteps in that way. The future of each of these characters can reliably be traced back to one thing: their ethnic backgrounds.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a historical fiction novel set mostly in Kabul, Afghanistan and Fremont, California. The novel spans the time periods before, during, and after the reign of the Russians (1979-1989) and the Taliban’s takeover (1996) of Afghanistan. It is told through the first person perspective of Amir alongside his father, Baba, his half-brother, Hassan, and Baba’s companions Ali and Rahim Khan. Growing up, Amir and Hassan are practically inseparable, as they are always playing games, reading poetry, or simply spending time together. Hassan’s mother, Sanaubar, is never present during the children’s youthful years, but they both have Baba as a shared father figure in their lives. The themes of betrayal and redemption