![]() This is clearly a second sacrifice, as Amir says “his was Hassan’s final sacrifice for me… He knew I had betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again… I wasn’t worthy of his sacrifice” (105). Again, Hassan acts as a lamb, sacrificed for the benefit of Amir and the relationship between him and his father. Amir framed Hassan for stealing one of his possessions and Hassan, knowing Baba would take his truthful word over Amir’s, sacrificed himself for Amir and wrongly confessed to the theft. When these attempts failed and Amir still could not forgive himself, he was forced to manipulate his father into making Hassan leave the house so that he would not have to see Hassan again and be reminded of his mistake. This sent him into a downward spiral of cruel attacks on Hassan in an attempt to force the same angry reaction out of Hassan. Amir not only felt guilt, but contempt for himself after experiencing Hassan’s God-like and forgiving nature. Hassan’s selfless sacrifice for Amir became the subject of Amir’s unfaltering guilt, leading to Hassan’s second sacrifice for Amir.Īmir’s guilt over his selfish acts is the focus of the rest of the novel. The sacrifice was successful in mending the relationship between Baba and Amir (however only temporarily because the real problem was Baba’s deep-rooted guilt), but destroyed the relationship between Amir and Hassan. He consciously allowed the sacrifice of his best friend to occur before his eyes because “… Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” (77). Instead of stopping it, Amir stood watching the entire time. When Amir spoke about “that/the look,” he was referring to the look on Hassan’s face as Amir watched the selfless sacrifice in the same way that he watched the lamb’s slaughter. He said ” I watch because of that look of acceptance in the animal’s eyes… I imagine the animal sees that its imminent demise is for a higher purpose. Here, Hassan’s rape forced Amir into a flashback to a moment when he watched a lamb’s sacrifice. It is in this scene, Hosseini made a major reference to the sacrifice of a lamb. While retrieving the kite, Hassan was raped by the psychopath Assef because he refused to give up the kite and let Amir, his best friend, down. As Amir’s “kite runner,” Hassan ran to catch the second-place kite so that Amir could present it to Baba as a prize and a final plank on the bridge between the two’s relationship. Then maybe my life as a ghost in this house would finally be over… And maybe, just maybe, I would finally be pardoned for killing my mother” (Hosseini 56). He believed that if he won the tournament, it would “how him once and for all that his son was worthy. At age twelve, Amir found that he could gain his father’s approval by winning a kite flying tournament. He was nothing like Baba and believed himself to be a constant disappointment to him. He believed that he killed his mother in childbirth and that his father resented him for it. Throughout Amir’s entire life, he felt unworthy and unloved by his father. Hassan’s first major manipulation as a sacrifice occurred when he was twelve years old, where he mediated the reconciliation between Amir and Baba. ![]() Although he was not necessarily sacrificed, considering his living conditions were far better than those of the other Hazzaras in Kabul, this situation foreshadowed Hassan’s future as a vector for redemption. Beginning at his birth, Hassan lived with and was taken care of by Baba so that Baba could redeem himself for sleeping with Ali’s (Hassan’s father’s) wife. ![]() From the start of the novel, Hassan was used by others as a means of redemption and reconciliation with other characters.
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