Hope Walls
English II Honors, 7th hour
Ms. Ducote
15 May 2015
Love is arguably the most powerful emotion humans are capable of experiencing. The beginning of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner centers around a boy named Amir who is desperate for his father’s affection and approval. The sense of disapproval and distaste that Amir feels from his father leads him to do and think incredibly destructive things throughout the course of the novel. Amir shows how the lack of love and acceptance from a father for a son can have damaging and detrimental effects on a person. In The Kite Runner, Amir’s father Baba was a highly respected figure in the town that they lived in. Baba built an orphanage for underprivileged orphans in order to give back to the community. Through spending so much time overseeing the process, Baba did not spend as much time with Amir and Amir began to hate anything that prevented them from seeing and spending time with each other. When speaking of his father building the orphanage in chapter three, Amir says he wishes the orphans “all died along with their parents.” While the idea of the orphans dying is not truly what Amir wants, he views them as an obstacle in his relationship with his father. The lack of affection Amir was receiving during this time period caused him to wish an awful fate onto innocent, parentless children because he did not feel wanted by his own parent. In chapter seven, of The Kite Runner, after Amir sets out to win an annual kite running competition in an attempt to win approval from his father, who won many as a boy. Amir and Hassan end up winning the competition, and afterwards Amir asks Hassan to go find the last kite they won that led them to win the competition to show to his father. When Hassan doesn’t return for a while, Amir goes to look for him. While looking around, Amir learns that a group of boys were chasing Hassan. Amir continues looking and finds Assef, the town bully, and his group of friends cornering Hassan. He stands and watches dumbfounded as Assef attacks and takes the kite from Hassan, and rapes him as a trade-off. He doesn’t say anything in fear that if he doesn’t have the kite to return to his father so he can please him. In this chapter, it is blatantly evident that Baba’s affection is more important than his best friend’s safety. One day a few weeks after Hassan’s rape, Amir realizes that in order to stop lying to Baba, he must get rid of Hassan and Ali. When Amir suggests getting new servants to Baba, Baba is appalled and tells him to never speak of getting rid of Hassan and Ali again, that they are family. Despite this, Amir still
