Kenneth Merchant
AP English
The Kite Runner Essay
Essay Question 4
1.15.09
In Shakespear's King Lear, the central character declares "I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning." In Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, the character Hassan fits this theoy in three ways. One, his mother left him when he was little to join the traveling dancers, which is seen as very shameful in Hassan's culture. Two, he is raped by Assef, a local bully, because Hassan is of Hazara decent. Three, Hassan is again tortured by others because of his Hazara decent, when he is killed along with his wife during the Taliban takeover. Over an over again, Hassan is attacked, becoming a subject to sinnery.
Even though Hassan neglects the torture that is dished out at him, underneath it all, he truly does feel the pain. Most youngsters that were his age when his mother left him for the traveling dancers, would have never really known what was happening. So Hassan never came to realize that what his mother had done was unacceptable to his culture. In Hassan's culture, leaving family like his mother did is closely comparative to American culture, if someone had ostracized their family memebers from their lives.
Hassan as the "Kite King," winning the Kite Running tournament. But little did he know that he was being chased down and became preyed upon by a psychomaniac, Assef. Assef never liked Hassan, and always treated him with disrespect. Hassan had it coming to him though. He felt that what he had done would come back to haunt him. Before the Kite Run, Hassan an his loyalty to Amir, a childhood friend, and later to be known brother, got the attention of Assef. Attention that Hassan could have gone without. Hassan threatened Assef with his slingshot when Assef threatened Amir one day, when they were walking. Assef took up his revenge, when he cornered Hassan in an ally during the end of the Kite Run. Assef raped Hassan, and what made everything more worse, Amir was there to watch,...