Final Response

This is a beautiful and informative story of Amir, an Afghan boy who betrays his closest friend, Hassan, when they are just 12 years old. Now, because of this betrayal, Amir has had to live with this guilt for many years. The guilt has caused him a great deal of pain and grief. Since the pain has become unbearable for Amir, he awaits the chance to redeem himself.

Amir and Hassan may have been inseparable but things were not well with them, at least from Amir’s perspective. Class separated the boys as did tribe and religion. Amir was rich and Sunni, Hassan poor and Shi’a. Yet his father adored Hassan and regarded Ali as his best friend. Of course we learn later in the book that Baba was in fact the father of Hassan. So, this is why Baba treated Hassan as his own because Hassan was. However, even though it is obvious why Baba could not openly state that Hassan was his son, I believe that it was very improper and immoral how Baba never disclosed the information to Hassan who would never find out that he was in fact the son of one of the most respected men in Afghanistan. I also find it very ironic that so many people considered Baba as a “perfect” man even though he committed one of the biggest mistakes a man could ever make and, on top of that, hid the truth from the world. I also find it very ironic that when Amir’s own shame drove him nearly crazy and in anguish to end his pain, he set Hassan and his father up for a shame so great that they would have to leave the home, which would supposedly free Amir of his haunting guilt. However, this treachery in fact doesn’t end the shame, but intensifies it.

There is another scene that astounded me when, in California, Amir’s father just goes ballistic in the convenience store that was run by Vietnamese immigrants. When Amir finally calms his father down, apologizes to the people and says he will take his father home and come back to pay for the damages, it turns out the dispute was because for the first time in these two years his father didn’t have the cash and wanted to write a check. However, the proprietor asked for ID. This just set Amir’s father off. The author then reveals that back in Kabul when the family servant Ali would go to the store to buy things he would take a stick off the tree and the shop owner would simply make notches in the stick to indicate the various debts and every now and again his father would go in and settled up the debt of the notches. Thus after dealing with these folks for two years he was just outraged to be asked for identification.

Hassan is almost too decent a human being to be believed. Few fictional characters I’ve ever been convinced by have greater civility than he. Perhaps his only flaw was his excessive servility. I think what makes him “real” for me is the cultural setting, such that even in late 20th century Afghanistan his deference to his “masters” is believable and honorable. But it is precisely this cultural setting which makes the book so rich.

The book is so powerful because it brings up the basic humanness in us all. Before this novel, I had never given Afghanistan much thought, following only the broadest patterns of its political history. However, Hosseini forces us to see the Afghans to be like everyone else – humans, complex, both defined and weakened by tradition, but no more or less than anyone else. The novel enriches me in further insight to the unity of the human species, and the struggles, even agony, of moving on with life. However, even if these themes of betrayal, guilt and redemption were the only ones in this novel it would still be a great book. Author Khaled Hosseini treats them with power and sensitivity, making us understand the depths of Amir’s weakness but, the fact that this is a book set inside Afghan culture and much of it is taking place in Afghanistan makes the entirety of the book much more interesting to me.