Social Classes In Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner is a well crafted story about the many struggles of the main character and narrator Amir’s life concerning social class, relationships with family, and intense regret when your morals and who you think you are are threatened. The book begins in San Francisco and is narrated by an adult Amir. Throughout the story, Amir has flashbacks to his life as a kid in Afghanistan as he contemplates the struggles he went through and the choices he still deeply regrets. One of Amir’s biggest regrets is when he sees one of his friends Hassan being raped and he neglects to step in and stop it. Instead, Amir pretended like he had no idea what happened and didn’t even tell Hassan that he had watched what had happened to him. In accordance with

Though this is a harsh reality, the culture and time period of this story is one where the way people were treated and how people acted were greatly affected by what social class they were in and, thus, what other parents and people in their same social class expected from them. This is why, throughout the whole story, Amir has this ongoing battle between good and evil. Amir feels constant sorrow about not being who Baba wants him to be, not being able to stand up for himself or Hassan, and even when he is given the chance to redeem these attributes that he hates the most about himself, Amir still chooses to recoil and instinctively say no because of his selfishness and cowardliness. An instance of this is found in the text where Amir becomes a little bit angry, “I began to see where he was going. But I didn't want to hear the rest of it. I had a good life in California, pretty Victorian home with a peaked roof, a good marriage, a promising writing career, in laws who loved me. I didn't need any of this shit.” In this paragraph, it is obvious that Amir sees this scenario to do something good as an inconvenience to him. After his many, many years of continuous self loathing Amir finally has the chance to make it right and what does he do? He doesn’t even hesitate to put his foot down and say no. As a member of the audience, I’m wondering where his bravery was when Hassan his supposed “friend” needed his help in that alleyway? This paragraph only seems to reinforce the fact that Amir is selfish and cowardly when it comes to standing up for other people, but when there is something that is untimely for him, he has no issue whatsoever in making up his