Courage

To live with courage is to face the imperfections which adorn our lives, and learn to embrace them as who we are. Burdened with his father’s irrational expectations, Amir, the leading protagonist in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, breaks free of his father’s dream of who he is to become and matures into the man he wishes to be.

Respected and valued by the people of Kabul, Baba desires for his own personal attributes to echo through to his son, Amir. In an almost arrogant manner, Baba expresses quite visibly the distaste that he holds towards his own son. Unaware of Amir’s presence, Baba confides to a close friend, “Sometimes I look out this window and see him playing on the street with the neighborhood boys, I see how they push him around, take his toys from him…and, you know, he never fights back. Never” (22). Compliantly, Amir sees himself through the eyes of his father. He is an embarrassment, a coward. Where most parents would cherish their children for their individual qualities, Baba places a burden on Amir to leave who he is behind, and become the man his father wishes him to be. With these unreasonable expectations set before him, it is easy to see how a child as young as Amir would run from the pressure both Baba and the Kabul society have placed upon him.

Striving for his father’s affection and pride, Amir finds himself presented with a distressing realization as he compares himself to his life-long play mate, Hassan. In Baba’s eyes, where Amir is cowardly and weak, Hassan is like Baba, courageous and strong. Searching for a reason behind his father’s affection toward the Hazara servant boy, Amir inwardly bickers, reasoning to himself “Hassan hadn’t done anything to earn Baba’s affection: he’d just been born a stupid harelip” (46). As jealousy grows within him, Amir begins to tear himself away from Hassan and their unspoken friendship. In final parting act to his friendship Amir kneeled to watch as “Hassan lay with his chest pinned to the ground…...