Prejudice In The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini tells a coming-of-age tale of two boys, Amir and Hassan. Amir, a Pashtun, yearns for his censorious father’s fondness, and undergoes both friendship and jealousy toward servant Hassan, a Hazara. “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.”(Chapter 2, pg. 11) There’s an initial intimacy between Amir and Hassan. Later in the novel, we find out that the two boys have the same father. While the two are still children, after a local kite competition, Amir observes local delinquent Assef beat and rape Hassan. Amir does not help Hassan, and guilt-stricken, formulates a plan to get his father to send Hassan

The Kite Runner scrutinizes the whole scope of racism: blatant hatred, religious rationale of racism, nonviolent but still nasty racism, racism which coincides with charity and thoughtfulness, and internalized racism which reveals itself as self-loathing. Hassan is a Hazara, an ethnic group that the majority of Afghans (who are Pashtun) deem inferior, though Hosseini makes it coherent that Hassan is Amir’s equivalent and in numerous ways morally and intellectually superior. Despite racial tensions, the plot proposes, the very ethnicity that Pashtuns treat so poorly is closer to them than they may think- Amir finds out that Hassan, a member of the ethnic minority, is his half-brother. When Amir spots Assef violate Hassan in the alleyway, he dwells on if he really needs to save Hassan from the immediate danger because “He was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?” (Chapter 7, pg. 77) Amir, in this instance, struggles between deciding if Hassan was truly a friend of his, or rather, just a servant that plays with him at Amir’s convenience. He justifies at that moment betraying his friend, selfishly vindicating that this ought to be a sacrifice for Hassan being born into that social caste. Almost immediately after not intervening, Amir seriously regrets viewing Hassan as inferior during the rape as well as throughout their whole duration as children, seeing as Hassan did nothing to deserve such torture as he always been good to