Growing up with one parent is hard enough, but to grow up and feel like your parent does not like you must be even harder. Amir and his close friend, Hassan, had grown up together and Baba treated them both like sons and gave them both attention. To Amir, he felt neglected because Hassan was getting …show more content…
Amir and Hassan, after a kite tournament, run the kite. Hassan being a better, faster runner does it all on his own for the most part until he gets cornered. It is 3 against 1 and then there is Amir watching from the side. After all confrontation and fighting, Hassan is sexually assaulted and Amir has just watched and has done nothing about it. This is shameful, rude, and very disrespectful but Amir does feel guilty about it. Days after the assault, Amir tries to relieve his guilt in a very pathetic and ineffective way, “ I hurled the pomegranate at him.... I hit him with another pomegranate, in the shoulder this time. The juice splattered his face. ‘Hit me back’ I spat ‘Hit me back... (92)” Amir so badly wanted Hassan to hit him back because he believed it would give him a sense of relief and that his guilt would be dying down, but as loyal as Hassan was to Amir, he would never do it. Amir’s actions are done more so without thinking of the consequences of them. He hadn’t learned from the guilt of not helping Hassan so yet again Amir makes a decision that is shameful. He accuses his only friend of stealing from him to get him to leave so that he wouldn 't have to see Hassan anymore, “I lifted Hassan’s mattress and planted my new watch and a handful of Afghani bills under it (104)” Amir believed that when hassan left the guilt would too. …show more content…
Through seeing Amir’s growth, the reader finds sympathy in terms of not having the attention from his father, feeling guilty after the winter of 1975, and then later finding out about what this life really was 30 or so years later when it’s too late to do almost anything about