Kite Runner Final Essay

“I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me. I was afraid of getting hurt. That’s what I told myself as I turned my back to the alley, to Hassan.” (Amir, P.77). This is what Amir said and did when he saw Hassan being raped BY Assef and his little friends. This simply shows how good of a friend Amir was too Hassan. The entire rape situation did not make that much sense to me as far as the way Amir acted to the situation.

Hassan made it very clear to Amir that he would do anything for Amir, and he proved it when he went through the rape for the kite. All Amir did was stand there. That proves what kind of friend he was to Hassan. Another thing that reflects what kind of person Amir was when he kicked Hassan out of the house. After all the things that Hassan did for Amir during there childhood, you would think that Amir would have some kind of heart as an adult. At the same time, Amir was not responsible for Hassan’s death, so lets just get that out of the way before I continue. . My feeling about all of this, is that Amir did not physically make Hassan leave the house. However, Amir did say some things that may have made Hassan upset and caused him to leave. None the less, the way Hassan reacted to what Amir said was entirely up to Hassan, and had nothing to do with Amir. Even if Amir did somehow force Hassan out of the house (which he didn’t), Amir cannot be blamed for the Taliban. Obviously the Taliban has been and is currently an ongoing problem in that part of the world, and Amir was not a part of the Taliban. It would be obscured to say that Amir wanted Hassan to be killed by the Taliban. Sometimes people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The example that I used in class to prove my point was this. Let’s say that I am hosting a party, and someone gets super drunk. Around 1:00am I say the party is over, and that everyone has to leave my house. That same drunk person decides to drive home. He ends up hitting another car, and killing the driver. It is not my fault that the other driver was killed. Just because I said the party was over and people had to go home, is not the cause of that person’s death. Now that all of this is out of the way and cleared up, I will continue. I think that Amir in a way owed Hassan because Hassan did so much for Amir as a child. Once again the rape. All Hassan had to do was give Assef the kite and he would not have gotten raped, but he took the rape just so that he could still give the kite to Amir. Since Hasssan went through all of this during their childhood, the fact that Amir kicked him out of his house when he returned to Kabul as an adult.

Questions that where brought up when I was reading the book where these. First of all, why did Hassan and his father leave Amir and Baba’s house? Did Hassan tell his father what had happened with the rape, and therefore the father wanted to flee town to get away from Assef? Or did Hassan tell his father all of the stuff that he lied about in order to keep Hassan out of trouble?  To me, it just not make too much sense why they just all of a sudden left. The second question I have, is what made Amir let Hassan stay at his house as an adult in the first place? Obviously after the rape, Amir just stayed away from Hassan and their friendship was pretty much over. So because of this, why would he let Hassan stay over? My final question is why did Amir go back to Kabul in the first place? You could tell this when he went got the phone call in San Francisco. Overall, I thin that Amir did some really messed up things to Hassan especially after all the things that Hassan did for him.