well, similar - except that while one is having breakfast, the other is cooking it, cleaning up, preparing wardrobe, etc.

other than they spend some time together playing, I don't think their lives are very similar at all.

Maybe similar isn't the right word. Their lives revolve around the same day to day activities. The parts they play are different but they are big parts of each others worlds. Hassan doesn't seem to be rebelling against his station and the other boy doesn't appear to be abusive with his superiority complex. Both fathers seem concerned for the welfare of both boys.

I cook, clean, and do laundry ect for everyone in my family. But we are all members of the same "family" and we all revolve around one another. These two boys lives revolve around one another. They're best friends. To say their lives aren't similar at all is to turn a blind eye towards all that they share, have in common, ect. I agree that it's a big deal that the one kid cooks breakfast while the other kid eats it but I think you are making it too big a deal. It's probably, at this point, something they are use to and don't think too much about. Much as I don't think much about cooking and cleaning up after my husband.

I think it's in the very first page or so that he says he doesn't think of Hassan as his friend, just as he has never heard his father refer to Ali as his friend, even though they grew up together.

Yeah but that's obvious bull$hit! It's just a product of their "culture" and Amir thinking Hassan isn't supposed to be his friend. They are obviously friends, very close friends, in fact Hassan is Amir's closest and arguably at this point ONLY friend and while he may not admit that or possibly even recognize that himself it's abundantly clear. Two kids can't possibly be fed by the same wet nurse, raised together, play together everyday, get along well, and not be friends. That's absurd. In chapter Two when the one soldier hassles Hassan, Amir is clearly worried and concerned for his friend. Amir says, "I reached across my seat, slung my arm around him, pulled him close. He rested his head on my shoulder." Then Amir tells him, "He took you for someone else."

Clearly Amir is Hassan's friend. There is love there. They're like family.

Amir's refusal to acknowledge their friendship is bull$hit. It's like a guy saying movies don't make him cry and then wiping away his own tears when noone is looking.

Good point...

I guess it is time to include 3&4 into the conversation.

Okay folks...

Chapters 1,2,3 and 4 up for discussion.

Now you see some of Amir's jealousy. Amir has low self esteem. Combine this with someone who's self-centered and sensitive and you get a boy who's a bit depressed.

Amir sees his father as a man who's bigger than life itself and Amir overheard, by eavesdropping, that his father is surprised Amir is his son. Baba says he wouldn't believe it if he hadn't seen the boy pulled out of his wife with his own eyes which frankly is sort of an odd thing to say because it almost highlights the idea that there's room for doubt.

I'm sure this is huge and taken in the absolute worst way by the young boy. I'm sure Baba loves his son, he just doesn't relate to him much because their personalities are so different. Perhaps Baba had expectations that his son would be A, B, C, & D, and instead he's faced raising a boy without a mother who's E, F, G, & H and he's at a loss. Amir also feels guilt over his mother's death. She died during childbirth so in Amir's mind he killed her. Amir believes his father feels the same way but I don't think there is any evidence of that and I'm sure Baba would have denied it if asked. Baba is, without question though, arrogant and this arrogance makes it harder for him to relate to his son. Baba is a man who feels he's learned certain truths in life, knows what's important, and knows what's not. The idea that he could be wrong or missing something never dawns on him. For example when Amir brings him a story it never even dawns on Baba to ask to read it. I don't think he's directly trying to hurt the boy by not asking to read it so much as it just literally doesn't occur to him that reading a story his son wrote might be important.

The story Amir writes is interesting too. A poor man who was a happy man that never shed a tear who then gets rich and ends up weeping helplessly.

At this point in the story I think Amir recognizes that Hassan is happier than he is. He knows Hassan's father is very loving while his seems, to him, aloof. And he also hints that Hassan is quite intelligent. So this is all quite upsetting for Amir. He is the one with the position of power, money, goes to school, ect. Yet he is the one who feels unhappy. He feels good when his schooling makes it obvious that he's more educated than Hassan yet there's something about Hassan that lets Amir know despite education Hassan might actually be the smarter of the two. And Hassan is happy and not much bothered by his station in life. So Amir is a jealous friend.

So far, Talloulou has echoed my own thoughts about the book and it's characters. There is one bit though, I'd like to add to Tall's observation in this bit...

At this point of the story, Amir also recognizes that not only is Hassan happier then him, but that Hassan is also stronger emotionally then he is himself. Hassan is Amir's protector when other children pick on him.

Hassan, although a 'lower class' then Amir and his father, is in Amir's perspective what Baba wants in a son in that manner. Which is part of the reason why you get the sense of Amir's jealousy and need to be secretively cruel towards Hassan through Hassan's lack of formal education.

Of course, Amir immediately regrets doing such things to Hassan.

My overall feeling so far at this portion of the book, is that Amir is struggling trying to find that balance between what his society deems his relationship should be with Hassan, even though their relationship is more like brothers and there's that 'sibling rivalry' on Amir's part.

The jealously is what I was referring to earlier when I said that Amir might see Hassan as more priviledged. A child's ideas on 'wealth' usually have little to do with material things. Hassan had a Dad that paid attention to him and cared about him. Amir felt that his Dad did not do either.

All children are self-centered to some degree. It is part of human development. (This is why children often blame themselves when their parents divorce.) Amir, being an artistic child (as writers are), is more vulnerable to the sting of rejection.

Amir chastised himself for laughing when his father was sharing his thoughts on religion. He felt bad when his father sighed impatiently when the boy didn't understand what he was saying. From my perspective, his father simply did not know how to relate to a child, and Amir's reactions were a normal result of that.
I don't think so. I don't think that there was any question in Baba's mind that Amir was his son.

Amir's personality seems to be much more like his mother's from what we can tell so far. Interestingly, this is common among parents all over the world IMO. Parents often go into having a child as 'having a little me' and are at a bit of a loss if the child is extremely different from themselves. Unfortunaltely, his solution is to not spend too much time with Amir.


This is also common with the way that children think. In the absence of other information, they come to their own conclusions about the behavior of their parents. I think that he would have not raised such a question because he was afraid of a confirmation of his fears.


I don't see Baba as arrogant. I see him as set in what he believes and he judges his experiences based on that. The things that Baba values are different than what Amir values. Baba does not seem to be that interested in books and stories; he is a more physical type. This is part of the reason why Rahim Khan becomes a critical person in Amir's life. Khan can understand that which his father cannot. Mind you, this is not the same as getting approval from the parent, which is what he is seeking.

It was a profound story from someone so young. In order for the man to make himself happy, he had to make himself unhappy. It makes me wonder if that story, in some way, related to how he veiwed his father. When his father sat Amir on his lap to discuss religion, Amir was not sure if he should hug Baba or run away.

hehheh - I finished a couple of days ago - and now I'm afraid that I may write something that ends up being a spoiler LOL.

It's amazing how the book becomes a "whole" by the end, and not just a series of anecdotal chapters.

Agreed. Hassan is much more comfortable with who he is and what he is supposed to be. I don't know if this is good or bad. Hassan has been taught to accept a second class status as his father was.

As an aside: Reading this book has made me research more about the Hazara people. Apparently, there has been a great deal of prejudice against them in Afghanistan. This was not something that was made up... It is part of history.
How annoying, the first time that a writer is introduced to the 'plot hole!'

Seriously... This is a cultural belief that Amir absorbed. He is now confused because it seems that things should be easy for him as compared to Hassan.


Seeing a plot hole is not a function of being more intelligent, but of having a different POV. This is not to say that Hassan is more or less intelligent than Amir. He simply was not entwined in the story so he could look at it more objectively. Amir was not able to recognize this and became angry. With his culture, thoughts that we would consider ugly came to mind to make himself feel better.