Amir's Conflict In 'The Kite Runner'

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Amir’s Conflict with his Moral Values

What is the difference between a servant and a friend? For Amir, this was a problem that caused a great deal of trouble during his childhood. Hassan has been Amir and Baba’s servant ever since Amir can remember. With Hassan and Amir always being together, they created a great friendship between each other that faltered in multiple ways. Amir always was in the ethical dilemma about whether or not to call Hassan his friend in public or his servant like his father as already taught him. This moral conflict that Amir faces through the entire novel prevails in many situation such as when Amir made Hassan and Ali leave Baba’s house, when Amir had to choose whether or not he wants to save Hassan's child, and …show more content…

Now yes, there are multiple excuses for why Amir did not do anything to stop it. Some of them include that he was too young, too inexperienced, and too weak but even with all of those there is no reason that Amir should have let that happen. Amir fully agrees with his cowardliness when he says “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.” This quote brings up Amir’s final major flaw. How badly he tries to make his father happy. Everything that Amir does revolves around making his father proud of him. This is easily shown by an early quote saying, “Baba and Rahim Khan were drinking tea and listening to the news crackling on the radio. Their heads turned. Then a smile played on my father's lips. He opened his arms. I put the kite down and walked into his thick hairy arms. I buried my face in the warmth of his chest and wept. Baba held me close to him, rocking me back and forth. In his arms, I forgot what I'd done. And that was good.” (pg 148) Baba’s happiness with Amir is all that Amir wants in his life and that is what dictates a lot of his decision in his young and older

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