Written Assesment In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Amir is constantly looking for Baba’s approval, although many incidents and complications within the father and son and the people in their lives make this a challenge. The absence of a mother, Hassan’s superiority to Amir, and Rahim Khan’ role as an alternate father figure for Amir all take part in Amir’s relationship with Baba. The atypical nature behind Baba and Amir’s relationship reveals Amir’s selfish and impulsive behaviors and Baba’s aloofness and detachment to Amir, further displaying their unhealthy relationship. Amir’s troubled relationship with Baba is primarily sparked by the complications regarding them and the people in their lives, provoking Baba’s disapproval in Amir, …show more content…
Amir had always felt like he was a burden on Baba’s life because he was the reason for his wife’s death: “After all, I had killed his beloved wife / The least I could have done was to have the decency to have turned out a little more like him.” (Hosseini 19). This emphasizes the pain Amir’s endures from the very start of his life out of internal conflict. The feelings of guilt that Amir experienced at such a young and vulnerable stage became ingrained in his self esteem when it came to pleasing Baba. Because Amir was much like his mother, it became a difficult thing for Baba to live with somebody who reminds him of the woman who meant the world to him. As a gateway to elude from his father’s strict and reserved nature, Amir gravitated towards reading his mother’s old books: “That was how I escaped my father's aloofness, in my dead mother's books” (Hosseini 38-39). This not only exemplifies the complications within Amir and Baba’s relationship, but also creates irony behind the contrast between Amir’s relationship with Baba and his relationship with his dead mother. His mother’s physical absence does not act as a barrier between him and intellectual proximity with her, yet still with Baba present in Amir’s life, the two lack a healthy relationship that consists of understanding and