Mostly every child, no matter their culture or religion, thinks dad is a kind of super hero. It is part of the growing process that a child discovers that their own dad is a common human being, with his pros and cons. In the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini this fact is present in the whole story, in the way the main character, Amir, looks up to his dad, Baba. Amir can not fully mature when he is an adult because he still looks at his father as superior to himself.
When Amir was a child in Kabul, he used to live with his father. Baba was a very importat person in society as he was one of the richest and most powerful men in the city. At this time, Amir had two problems that bothered him. The first one was he was a fearful kid, and the second was his father wasn’t. These problems are the centre of the father-child relationship throughout the first part in the story.
“A boy who can’t sand up for himself, becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything”says Baba. Amir hears his dad saying this to his best friend, Rahim Khan, after seeing Amir being bullied by other kids. This feeling that his dad had for him is the obstacle to a better relation between them.
“My father was a force of nature, a towering Pashtun specimen with a thick beard, a wayward crop of curly brown hair as the man himself , hands that looked capable of uprooting a willow tree, and a black glare that would “drop the devil to his knees begging for mercy”, as Rahim Khan used to say.”[1] This shows not only how Amir looks up to his dad, but how everybody do so as well. Baba was the centre of attention and his presence was just impossible to ignore. The importance of this part of the book is how Amir lives with the concept that his father is some kind of super-hero.
Amir shows the admiration he feels towards his father, admiring mostly his bravery, conviction, and moral sense. “Tell this man I’d take a thousand bullets before I let this indency take place” says Baba. In this episode they were running away in a truck from the Russian invasion in Afghanistan. In the border, a Russian soldier wanted to have sex with a married woman who was escaping with them, in exchange for letting them pass. Baba confronted the soldier’s petition and he almost got killed. Attutudes like this made Amir look up to his dad with profund admiration.
But later in the story Amir dicovers the truth, his Hazara servant was his half brother. In this episode Rahim Khan talks to Amir after his father died, which is important to the development of all the others aspects of the story (betrayal,fear, ghosts of childhood, friendship and redemption). But it’s importance is that Amir understands, finally, why his father used to behave as such a hero. He has this weight on his shoulders; he is so afraid of social prejudice that he cannot admit he has a Hazara child and he had slept with his servant’s wife. Rahim Khan told Amir “ your father was a tortured soul”, showing how Baba was also looking for redemption by doing good actions.
To conclude I would say that the fact Amir discovered the truth and that he realised his father was a common person, with fears and mistakes as everyone else, makes Amir grow up and stand up to the old fears that had tortured him his whole life, and look for his redemption by being good again.
[1] Hosseini, Khaled: The Kite Runner (page 12-13)
When Amir was a child in Kabul, he used to live with his father. Baba was a very importat person in society as he was one of the richest and most powerful men in the city. At this time, Amir had two problems that bothered him. The first one was he was a fearful kid, and the second was his father wasn’t. These problems are the centre of the father-child relationship throughout the first part in the story.
“A boy who can’t sand up for himself, becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything”says Baba. Amir hears his dad saying this to his best friend, Rahim Khan, after seeing Amir being bullied by other kids. This feeling that his dad had for him is the obstacle to a better relation between them.
“My father was a force of nature, a towering Pashtun specimen with a thick beard, a wayward crop of curly brown hair as the man himself , hands that looked capable of uprooting a willow tree, and a black glare that would “drop the devil to his knees begging for mercy”, as Rahim Khan used to say.”[1] This shows not only how Amir looks up to his dad, but how everybody do so as well. Baba was the centre of attention and his presence was just impossible to ignore. The importance of this part of the book is how Amir lives with the concept that his father is some kind of super-hero.
Amir shows the admiration he feels towards his father, admiring mostly his bravery, conviction, and moral sense. “Tell this man I’d take a thousand bullets before I let this indency take place” says Baba. In this episode they were running away in a truck from the Russian invasion in Afghanistan. In the border, a Russian soldier wanted to have sex with a married woman who was escaping with them, in exchange for letting them pass. Baba confronted the soldier’s petition and he almost got killed. Attutudes like this made Amir look up to his dad with profund admiration.
But later in the story Amir dicovers the truth, his Hazara servant was his half brother. In this episode Rahim Khan talks to Amir after his father died, which is important to the development of all the others aspects of the story (betrayal,fear, ghosts of childhood, friendship and redemption). But it’s importance is that Amir understands, finally, why his father used to behave as such a hero. He has this weight on his shoulders; he is so afraid of social prejudice that he cannot admit he has a Hazara child and he had slept with his servant’s wife. Rahim Khan told Amir “ your father was a tortured soul”, showing how Baba was also looking for redemption by doing good actions.
To conclude I would say that the fact Amir discovered the truth and that he realised his father was a common person, with fears and mistakes as everyone else, makes Amir grow up and stand up to the old fears that had tortured him his whole life, and look for his redemption by being good again.
[1] Hosseini, Khaled: The Kite Runner (page 12-13)
FERNANDO LOPEZ RUBIO
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