How Is Amir Selfish

In the novel, The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, the author, though the journey of Amir, portrays that when man betrays another, the guilt of his actions will lead him to heave a desire to redeem himself. Due to Amir’s feelings of detachment from his father, he is driven to betray his brother and friend, Hassan, by abandoning him in an alley to be raped. Throughout the first few pages of the novel, Amir and his father, Baba, are obviously removed from each other, which causes Amir to have a desire to receive affection from him. Contextually, the reason for this divide stems from Amir’s mother, and Baba’s wife, dying in childbirth. Due to this, Amir feels resentment from his father because he turned out to be less masculine, and was not

Not only does fleeing a violent situation prove Amir’s selfishness, but comparing Hassan to a lamb, dehumanizing him, shows his inhumanity. Amir believes that Hassan is just a price, that he has no human value, and that mindset is both a result of his deep desire to feel affection from his father, and an intrinsic value of demoralizing a lower class such as the Hazaras. Amir’s explicit betrayal of Hassan is further exemplified when he and Hassan meet face-to-face after the act of violence against him. As Amir approaches him, he notes that Hassan had the “blue kite in his hands” which was the first thing he saw, and says that he “can’t lie now and say [his] eyes didn’t scan it for any rips” (78). Amir admits that the first thing he sees after witnessing Hassan being sodomized was the kite, the ticket to Baba’s affection. This shows that Amir, in that moment, cared more about growing his relationship with his father than caring about Hassan’s life and well-being. Conversely, Hassan cared about what he knew Amir cared about, the blue kite he was holding. Even though Hassan “swayed on his feet like he was going to collapse… he steadied himself [and] handed [Amir] the kite” (78). Amir’s betrayal is