Like Father Like Son

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is written with the first person narrative of the main character Amir. He makes his thoughts clear throughout the book as he continues to emphasize how he was an awful person as a child and as an adult he was punished in certain areas of his life for what he did, or rather didn't do as a child (188). His guilt haunts him throughout adulthood, though the whole novel is filled with disgusting and immoral actions, his actions can't even begin to compare to those of others.

The character most disturbing is none other than Aseef, the epitome of villain who evolves from neighborhood bully to local Taliban leader, or as Amir remarks "years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Aseef was... sociopath" (38). Aseef is the embodied stereotype of Afghanistan, which sadly stereotypes the whole country as terrorists (281). This result is not surprising as Aseef as a young child made comments such as "Hitler. Now there was a leader. A great leader," (39) "they dirty our blood... To rid Afghanistan of all the dirty, Hazaras" (40). His hatred for Hazaras, put the basis for his career within the terrorist group.

His hostility towards Hazaras are heightened when he is the one to rape Hassan (77). His perverted instincts do not hinder him as he joins the Taliban where he is known to take children from the orphanage and sometimes return them sometimes not (256). One of the children he never returned was Sohrab, Hassan's orphaned son (257). This begins the immense contrast of Hassan and his son, "the resemblance was breathtaking" (279). This was no secret to Aseef that the two boys he had raped were of relation "I never forget a face" (281). Aseef creates another similarity amongst the father and son. Hassan as a child protected Amir one day as Aseef began to pick on the two boys, Hassan handy with a slingshot was readily prepared "they'll have to change your nickname from Aseef 'the Ear Eater' to 'One-Eyed Assef,' because I have this rock pointed at your left eye" (42). Ultimately Aseef leaves the two boys alone. His son Sohrab unknowingly finished the ordeal as Amir and Aseef engage in a fist fight to the death "Sohrab had the slingshot pointed to Aseef's face" (290), "he put his hand where his left eye had been just a moment ago" (291).

This poses the question, as Amir's guilt haunts him though finally relieved during his beating from Aseef "but I felt healed. Healed at last," (289). Will Amir take the extra step and take in Sohrab as his own son? It is known that he is unable to have children with his own wife with "unexplained infertility" (185) as well as that Sohrab was to go and live with an American couple living in Pakistan (220). Those two elements in combination with his guilt, is practically giving him a way to correct the wrong he had done to loyal Hassan.