The Reading Palette

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner is about suffering, relationships, guilt, redemption, war and abuse but more than that, it is about fathers and sons. The father-son relationship is at the core of the novel. Amir wants to please his Baba at any cost. This unfulfilled desire makes him resent Hassan whom Baba treats as his own son. Hassan is his own son ‘biologically.’ Hassan’s father is Ali. Ali dotes on his son. Ali is a Hazara and because of this, Hassan is bullied by other children and insulted with name-calling like ‘flat-nosed’ and ‘load carrying donkey.’

Baba never acknowledged Hassan as his son. It was his secret. Amir’s perplexity in seeing that his father did not favor him over Hassan, and his constant need for attention from Baba, is what contributed to his actions and inactions. His relationship with his father strongly impacted other relationships that he formed later in life.

In the course of the events that unfold in the novel, there is a lack of female presence. Motherhood is replaced by fatherhood. Sons are being brought up by their fathers and not mothers. Amir’s mother died during childbirth. Hassan’s mother ran off with a clan of travelling singers and dancers less than a week after he was born. Amir often wonders about his mother. His father never talked about her. Amir does, however, get to hear about his mother on his visit to Afghanistan from an old beggar, who was once called Dr. Rasul and taught at the university with his mother. Amir was desperate to hear anything about his mother. He did not if Hassan felt the same way.

“Hassan never talked about his mother, as if she’d never existed. I always wondered if he dreamed about her, about what, where she was, she looked like. I wondered if he longed to meet her. Did he ache for her, the way I ached for the mother I had never met?”

Amir thought that his father blamed him for causing the death of his mother. Amir never understood why he was unable to connect with his Baba, whom he loved so much and perhaps even feared. He could never fathom the fact that his father treated him and Hassan equally. Why wasn’t he, his own son, his favorite? What had Hassan to do with Baba’s affections? They belonged to him and him alone. It isn’t until later in the novel and later in life that he learns the truth: that Hassan was Baba’s own son too.

At first, he is horrified and wonders how his father, the most honorable man, managed to betray and look Ali in the eye. Rahim Khan made it a bit clearer to him. Perhaps it’s because Baba was fighting his own demons. He never talked about his mother because the memories were too painful for him, as everyone knew that his father loved his mother very much. Or maybe he was guilt-ridden, considering what he had done just shortly after her death.

Rahim Khan was the one who loved Amir the way he wanted to be loved. He read his stories that Baba never took an interest in. He gifted him the notebook which Amir treasured. Rahim Khan favored him, not Hassan. But he was not Baba.

Hassan’s father Ali bestowed on his son the unconditional love which every child is entitled to. Unfortunately, he was not his biological father. But he was the only father Hassan had known.

“Ali never retaliated against any of his tormentors, I suppose partly because he could never catch them with that twisted leg dragging behind him. but mostly because Ali was immune to the insults of his assailants; he had found his joy, his antidote, the moment Sanaubar had given birth to Hassan.”

Amir always thought that Baba didn’t love him as he wanted because he was nothing like him. He once overheard Baba telling Rahim Khan:

“If I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own eyes, I’d never believe he’s my son.”

That’s the thing, they were wrong. Both of them. Amir is more like Baba than anyone ever was. Baba was in conflict with himself. There were two reasons. First, it’s because he knew he had done wrong, to his wife, to Ali and to Hassan. Second, Amir got the position and title of being his legitimate son but he could never accept Hassan the way he did Amir. It made him resentful towards Amir because this injustice reminded him of his own mistake. Amir was his legitimate half and Hassan was his unacknowledged, illegitimate half. It created a gap between the father and son and Baba spent the rest of his life trying to redeem himself. He did so by never discriminating between Amir and Hassan and adopting a philanthropic attitude.

Amir followed in his father’s footsteps. His relationship with Baba affected his behavior towards Hassan. He also knew that the only person who had ever truly loved him was Hassan.

“Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words.

Mine was Baba. His was Amir. My name.”

Still he was hesitant in accepting Hassan as his friend in front of others and never stood up for him the way Hassan always stood up for Amir.

Both of them had took something away from Hassan. Baba took Hassan’s right of being called his son. Hassan had to bear the taunts and jeers of his bullies which led to him being raped, an unforgivable crime but Hassan bore in silence to save Amir. Amir took Hassan’s right of living in Baba’s house. His false accusation made them leave the house with Ali and thus taking away Hassan’s chance of living a peaceful and dignified life in America. Perhaps if Hassan and Ali were living with them, Baba would have taken them to America. Thus the way for Amir’s life of redemption was paved.

Amir rescued Hassan’s son Sohrab from his abductor and a child molester, Assef, who as fate has it, was the one who raped Hassan. It was not before Sohrab kept his father’s promise and shot Assef in the eye with his slingshot. Sohrab was a master of the sling shot just like his father. Amir brought Sohrab to America with him. He redeemed himself though Sohrab. Perhaps Amir would be father to him. A father that Baba never was. A father that he always wanted and the one Sohrab needed.

When General Sahib (Soraya’s father) objected to a Hazara boy living in their house, Amir finally took a stand for the first time in his life. He told him the blunt, unrefined truth with confidence, something he had been incapable of before in his life. This was Amir’s redemption.

Do you think if Amir had a different relationship with Baba, he would have treated Hassan differently? Let us know in the comments below.