Amir's Role In The Kite Runner

The Role of a Character Authors of historical nonfiction novels often choose characters inside their novels to symbolize people or groups of people from the time period he or she is writing about. In The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini plans the event of Hassan’s rape by Assef, along with Amir’s reaction, to create a resemblance between the characters in the novel to Afghanistan and American people. Amir’s silence is meant to symbolize the silence of America, where as Hassan’s willingness to accept his “punishment” symbolizes the Afghanistan people as a whole. Amir’s character is created to symbolize America. While Hassan is being raped, Amir silently looks on, avoiding any confrontation that would occur by stepping in. Later in life, Amir realizes the effects of his actions (or lack of). He asks, “True, I hadn’t made Ali step on the land mine, and I hadn’t brought the Taliban to the house to shoot Hassan. But I had driven Hassan and Ali out …show more content…
America feared the possibility of larger attack by intervening, and sent troops away. Muhammad Malik, a professor at the College of Samanabad in Pakistan, writes, “The purpose is domination of a pure Pashtun people and culture in Afghanistan. As a consequence the influence of American culture in Afghanistan will be eliminated, almost entirely during the period that Amir calls the end of Afghanistan” (Malik 74). Because American troops left Afghanistan when the Taliban first began attacking, things continued to get worse instead of better. This cause and effect relationship between America leaving and the Taliban expanding can be seen in the characters Hassan and Amir. After Hassan is raped, Amir convinces his family to leave his house and then bad things happen to Hassan’s family. Both America and Amir abandoned ones in need, and later saw severe consequences for their