Theme Of Betrayal In The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a novel that has the prominent theme of sacrifice and betrayal. The story follows a wealthy father and son in Afghanistan and their relationship with their servants. The wealthy father and son are known as Baba and Amir, they both betray their servants Ali and Hassan in harmful ways. Hassan was very loyal throughout the entire story to Amir and sustained great trauma due to his loyalty. Amir and Baba’s betrayal set the stage for the entire book you can see how their actions affected their character development through the choices they made after the initial act of disloyalty. The betrayal committed by Baba and Amir was essential to their road towards redemption. Amir and Hassan came from two completely …show more content…
“‘Imbecile.’ It means smart, intelligent. I’ll use it in a sentence for you. ‘When it comes to words, Hassan is an imbecile.” This is his first act of betrayal because Hassan cannot read or write, which means he does not know any better than what Amir tells him. For Amir to call him an imbecile when he was only trying to learn is discourteous. Even though Amir saw Hassan as inferior to him Baba saw them as equal because they are both his sons. Sometimes Baba treated Hassan better than he did Amir which caused Amir to be jealous and play tricks on Hassan. The worst form of betrayal expressed in the book is committed by Amir. While Hassan went to get the kite that Amir had won the race he was attacked by Assef and two other boys. Instead of helping Hassan and defending him, Amir watched and eventually ran away allowing Hassan to be attacked. “In the end, I ran.I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me… I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba. Was it a fair price? The answer floated to my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?” Not only was his running away a form a betrayal but his thoughts after he did nothing to stop Hassan’s attack was worse. He believed Hassan was just a Hazara and called him a sacrifice to win Baba’s attention and he continued with this thought when he executed a plan to get Hassan out of their residence. Baba believed that stealing was the biggest sin and expressed this to Amir, subsequently Amir planted his watches and money under Hassan’s mattress as if Hassan had stolen it in hopes that Baba would kick them out. This lead to Ali and Hassan deciding to