First Period Blog

First Period Blog

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Amir's "Superiority" to Hassan

As the novel began, i interpreted Amir's and Hassan's relationship as childhood best friends, however, as the story unfolded, i understood that he was far from that. Amir being born to a high social class family and Hassan being born to a low social class family, Amir having a powerful, rich and influencing father and Hassan having a weak, crippled, made-fun-of father, it will be difficult to have mutual feelings toward one another.
The problem is that Amir will always consider himself superior to Hassan, even though he has no power or reason to do so. By reading history books about his Pashtun history of always overpowering the Hazaras, by having the Hazaras as his family's servants, Amir will never see Hassan as a "best friend". Hassan is a lovely, innocent child that had no control of his place in society, he lives  happy life and does a s he is told. Not having the opportunity to go to school, he has Amir to read to him and explain some thought he cannot learn by not going to school. However, through the first forty ages, any reader can perceive that Hassan is an extremely smart kid that has a deep understanding of logic, something that cannot be taught in school and something that Amir does not embody within him. This brings jealousy to Amir, how sometimes Hassan is able to contribute, or "criticize" Amir's stories. Amir has trouble with jealousy, something that i think is common within children. Even childhood best friends will always want to be better than the other at any aspect in life, being better at skipping stones, being admired by a father, having great intellect etc.
The relationship between Amir and Hassan is a unique one that interests me tremendously.  The way that Amir considers himself superior to Hassan, the way he is living the good life while Hassan isn't, the way Hassan is able t live his difficult life and still exceed Amir's abilities in some aspects in life will alway create conflict within their relationship. I am looking forward to a great book as the opening relationship of the novel has intrigued me tremendously.

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