Later he found Hassan walking home, kite in hand, with blood dripping from his pants. ![]() Amir did nothing to help Hassan as Assef raped him. He found Hassan confronting Assef and his two friends in an alley. Before he chased it, he shouted, "For you, a thousand times over." When Hassan did not come home, Amir went out looking for him. Amazingly, Amir won, and Hassan went to run the last kite for him. In the winter of 1975, there was a massive kite tournament. He had an innate sense of where a kite would land. Hassan was the best kite runner anyone had ever seen. They were called "kite runners." Amir usually flew a kite while Hassan ran kites for him. When defeated kites fell out of the sky, boys chased them to try to bring them home as trophies. In the winter, schools were closed in Kabul and the boys spent much time kite fighting. That same year, Baba got Hassan surgery to fix his harelip. As usual, Hassan stood up for Amir he got Assef to leave by aiming his slingshot at Assef's eye. One day, Amir and Hassan got into a confrontation with a boy named Assef and his two friends. Unbeknownst to the boys or anyone else, it was the first of many political changes that would eventually ruin Afghanistan as they knew it. That same night, July 17, 1973, there was a coup d'etat in Afghanistan, changing it from a monarchy to a republic. Yet when Amir wrote his first short story and read it to Hassan, it was the latter who found the plot hole in the story. Amir was proud of his literacy and lorded it over the unsuspecting, illiterate Hassan. In each generation, the boys could never truly consider themselves friends because of their class differences. Ali and Baba grew up together just like Hassan and Amir. Baba's father took Ali into his house after Ali's parents were killed in an accident. Baba wished Amir was athletic and brave like him instead of cowardly and bookish.Īmir explains how Ali and Baba knew each other. Baba did not subscribe to popular belief, preferring to cast his own opinions about issues. He was a huge and imposing man who was rumored to have wrestled a bear. Hassan would have done anything for Amir his first word was even "Amir." Baba was aloof and did not pay Amir much attention. He was very close to his father, Ali, who was Baba's servant.ĭespite their differences, Amir and Hassan were inseparable. Amir's closest friend, the harelipped Hassan, was also his servant and a Hazara. His father, Baba, was one of the wealthiest and most charitable Pashtun men in Kabul, where they lived in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood. We do not know anything about this event except that it still haunts him and that it involves something he did to Hassan, whom he calls "the harelipped kite runner." Amir takes us back to his childhood, in the final decades of the monarchy in Afghanistan. Amir, who is thus far a nameless protagonist, tells us that an event in the winter of 1975 changed his life forever. But not the next generation – the third round of betrayal and abuse is too much.The story is narrated from the year 2002. The first and second generations may be able to avoid the total cynicism of suicide. It's possible Hosseini wants to show us, through Sohrab, that a country can only take so much brutality. Hassan never gets to a point where he gives in to defeat, even though he, too, is raped and betrayed. We believe Sohrab is not trying to hurt Amir – he's just given up. When Amir tells Sohrab he's going to put him (briefly) in an orphanage, Sohrab tries to commit suicide. The cruelty of people like Assef defeats Sohrab. And this is the one major difference between Hassan and Sohrab. Sohrab does remain silent for a year, but it seems more like detachment from the world in general than anger at Amir. You might expect Sohrab to lash out more often at Amir, or to take some sort of revenge since Amir almost abandoned him. Sohrab also seems to have Hassan's innate goodness. When Amir tries to explain to Sohrab why Baba didn't admit that he fathered Hassan, Sohrab catches right on: "Because was a Hazara?" (24.112). He's also fairly perceptive for someone so young. ![]() ![]() Like Hassan, Sohrab is a whiz with a slingshot. When Amir finally meets Sohrab, he says "he resemblance was breathtaking" (22.49). ![]() Hosseini does tell us, however, just how much Sohrab resembles Hassan. We only meet Sohrab at the very end of the novel – so there's not much room for Hosseini to develop this character.
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