Characters (DP IB English A: Language and Literature: HL): Revision Note

In an exploration of The Kite Runner, ideas about society are conveyed through the writer’s use of characterisation. Khaled Hosseini constructs characters whose experiences reflect key social and historical contexts, particularly in relation to class divisions, ethnic tensions, family dynamics, and the impact of political upheaval in Afghanistan from the 1970s onwards. Through figures such as Amir, Hassan, and Baba, the novel presents a society shaped by hierarchy, loyalty, and conflict, while also tracing how these pressures continue to influence characters over time, including during displacement and exile in the United States.

Characterisation in the novel can be explored in several ways: how characters are initially established and how they are subsequently developed across different stages of the narrative. Students might analyse how characters are presented through their actions and motivations, what they say and think, and how they interact with others. Examining the relationships between characters is central, particularly as these evolve over time and reflect broader thematic concerns such as loyalty, guilt, power, and redemption.

Below you will find character profiles of key characters within the novel, as well as smaller summaries of other characters that affect the plot. 

Main characters:

• Amir

• Baba

• Hassan

• Rahim

Other characters:

• Soraya

• Assef

• Ali

• General Taheri

• Farid

• Sohrab

Amir

• Amir is the protagonist of the story and the novel’s narrator, and starts the story as a 12-year-old

• Amir is raised by his father, Baba, and lives in a wealthy household:

  • His mother passed away giving birth to Amir

• Amir feels that his father blames him for his mother’s passing and is desperate for his approval so that he may be forgiven:

  • This desire to receive affection from his father makes him prone to jealousy if anyone else receives positivity from Baba, especially if this is Hassan

• Amir is Pashtun and Sunni Muslim

• Amir has a complicated relationship with Hassan, his best friend:

  • He believes superior to Hassan, as Hassan is his servant and a Hazara

  • Even though they are clearly best friends and spend all their time together, Amir does not always refer to him as a friend around others

• Amir does not assert himself over others, except Hassan, and does not stand up for himself

• When Hassan is raped, Amir does nothing to prevent it:

  • Hassan, indeed, is always the one always standing up for Amir, who is not used to handling confrontation

  • During the rape, Amir is frozen in fear

  • He also wants the blue kite that Hassan saves for him, and is willing to sacrifice Hassan as he is assaulted and raped, as the blue kite holds the key, at least in Amir’s thinking, to Baba’s love and approval

• Amir is then defined by his guilt, and lives a life in which he consistently shows self-hatred as he feels unworthy of much more due to his betrayal of Hassan:

  • This is made worse by his actions following the assault, where he forces Hassan and his father to leave their home so that he does not have to look at Hassan and feel the pain from his actions

• The story follows Amir from childhood to adulthood, from Afghanistan to Pakistan and America

• Amir struggles to ever feel happy, ashamed of his actions in the past and unable to find redemption:

  • When he and his wife fail to conceive, he feels it is punishment for his past

• Amir and Baba move to America after conflict in Afghan forces them to flee:

  • In Fremont, California, he meets and eventually marries an Afghan woman named Soraya

  • He goes on to become a successful novelist

• He returns to Afghanistan near the end of the novel, believing he may find redemption:

  • In the end, he adopts Hassan’s orphaned son, saving him from the Taliban:

    • This finally gives Amir some peace from his guilt

Baba

• Baba is Amir’s father, a relatively wealthy businessman in Afghanistan

• Baba appears cold and distant from Amir, and more interested in his social standing among the local community

• Baba uses his wealth to help others:

  • He designs and builds an orphanage

  • He pays to fix Hassan’s cleft lip

  • Later, he spends money in an Afghan restaurant in America to turn the night into a party to celebrate Amir’s high school graduation

• Baba is stubborn and finds living in a different culture to Afghanistan difficult:

  • He moved because he thinks America is the best place for Amir, showing his ability to sacrifice what he wants for the good of others

• Baba dies of cancer after years of smoking:

  • He was popular in Afghanistan and is popular in California, too, with other Afghans in the community flocking to visit him in hospital and attend his funeral

• After his death, Rahim, his best friend, reveals that Baba lived a life of guilt after he had got Ali’s wife pregnant, and was actually Hassan’s father:

  • Rahim reveals that his affection for Hassan, his tears for Ali and Hassan, and his charitable acts were part of Baba’s own search for redemption

  • He also tells Amir that his father’s guilt was why he was so harsh on Amir

  • Amir represented the privilege that Baba hated in himself, and so he often was cold to Amir to escape his own pain

• Baba’s moral compass leads his actions in the novel, and sets a tone that Amir finds hard to meet:

  • He worries Amir cannot stand up for himself, then later shows follows through on his beliefs when he is willing to sacrifice himself to prevent a Russian guard raping a woman

• Baba’s struggles to share his emotions with Amir leave his son feeling unwanted and distant from him

• Baba’s relationship with Amir improves immensely in America:

  • He is stripped of his wealth and status, so no longer feels burdened by it and grows closer with his son

• He dies happy, proud of his son’s achievements and the life he is building

Hassan

• Hassan is Amir’s best friend, but also his servant:

  • He and his father, Ali, live in a servants’ hut in the garden of Baba and Amir’s house

• He is a Hazara and Shia Muslim

• He is a year younger than Amir:

  • Amir and Hassan were both nursed by the same nursemaid, and first fed from the same breast

• While Hassan was still a baby, his mother abandoned the family and joined a travelling theatre group

• Hassan is a kind and warm child, and grows up to be kind and warm, too:

  • He looks up to Amir and loves him openly, even though Amir does not show him the same affection

  • He forgives Amir for many of the ways he hurts him and remains loyal and loving, even though they do not see each other again after he leaves

• Hassan loves stories and enjoys Amir’s reading, but does not go to school, so never learns to read and write:

  • He is naturally intelligent, offering more insightful comments than Amir, but his social status means he will never be educated

• Hassan is assaulted and raped by Assef after the kite festival, refusing to let go of the blue kite he found for Amir, even though he was told he would be allowed to go if he did, showing his loyalty:

  • He is traumatised by it, and we find out that he did know Amir was there and didn’t help him, but he forgives Amir completely and just wants to be friends again

• His warmth and kindness show him as a complete innocent, which makes Amir’s betrayal of him more painful and more clearly a selfish act by Amir:

  • He becomes the sacrificial lamb that Amir speaks about, with Amir sacrificing Hassan for his own shot at happiness and approval from his father

• It is later revealed that Hassan is Baba’s child and Amir’s half-brother:

  • Unfortunately for Amir, he only learns this once Hassan is dead

• Hassan is executed by the Taliban, who find him in Baba’s old house and refuse to accept that a Hazara could live there by legitimate means:

  • His wife is then killed as she screams in protest of his shooting

• Hassan and his wife, Farzana, leave behind a child, a boy named Sohrab, named after the lead character in Hassan’s favourite story that Amir used to read to him

Rahim Khan

• Rahim is Baba’s best friend and business partner, and appears to be around the same age

• He is a calm, kind presence, who is able to stand up to Baba due to their closeness and the fact they are both of the same, high social status

• He is close with Amir and often acts almost as a second parent, showing Amir much more warmth, in a way Baba rarely, if ever does:

  • He encourages Amir’s writing, buying him a leather-bound notebook that Amir keeps for decades:

    • Rahim has forgotten about the notebook by the time they meet again decades later, which may show how such a gift is normal and not memorable to him

• Amir is very fond of Rahim, who offers Amir warmth and guidance as a child, and again later as an adult

• Rahim’s strength to say what he thinks is right, even if Baba or Amir may not agree, leads him to be comfortable encouraging Amir at the end of the novel to save Sohrab:

  • He calls Amir and tells him he has the chance to be good again

  • He later reveals not only that he knew about how Amir reacted to Hassan’s assault, but also kept Baba’s secrets about Hassan, too

  • He pushes Amir to save Sohrab, out of duty to Hassan and because he knows Amir will do the right thing if pushed

• He lies about an American couple that can take Sohrab as he wants Amir to save Sohrab without worry of what comes next:

  • It is clear that he lies to force Amir into a good act, hoping Amir will step up and save, then adopt Sohrab, as part of the redemption Rahim offers Amir

• When Amir comes back to find Rahim, he has left a note and wishes to die in peaceful privacy:

  • He is a dignified man who wanted to look after Amir, and Hassan, one more time, and goes away quietly

  • Much like when Amir was younger, Rahim looks out for him without wanting reward

Other characters

Soraya

• Soraya is a softly spoken Afghan woman whom Amir meets at the markets when living in America:

  • She is described as beautiful and intelligent

• There is a shadow of shame over her, as she once ran off with a man and had to be dragged home by her father:

  • She feels ashamed of this, but is also furious about the double standards in society and how she is treated negatively for it, while there would be no shame on a man

• She is tough and opinionated, but respectful of her culture:

  • She trains to be a teacher once married to Amir, even though it is against her father’s wishes

• She is desperate to be a mother and seems to live with some depression over their inability to conceive:

  • She hopes Sohrab can be their chance at parenthood

Assef

• Assef appears in the novel as both a child and an adult, and is shown to be a violent bully in both time periods

• As a child, he is known for wearing brass knuckles to beat other children, especially Hazaras:

  • He is outwardly and openly racist, in favour of ethnic cleansing

  • He considers his favourite book to be a biography of Adolf Hitler

• Assef rapes Hassan after the kite festival:

  • He encourages his two friends to also rape Hassan, but even though they fear him, they say no

  • He claims the rape would not be a sin because Hassan is Hazara and, as such, does not matter

• Assef shares some similarities with Amir, as he grew up with privilege and wealth

• When he is seen again towards the end of the novel, he has joined the Taliban and becomes a leader:

  • He takes to killing Hazaras and perpetuating bigotry, racism and hatred on Hazaras

• Assef has a strange sense of honour, believing the Taliban guards with him should let Amir go if he wins their fight as he has earned his chance to walk away:

  • He mostly wins their fight, but just like Hassan once saved Amir using his slingshot, Sohrab does the same, hitting him in the same eye to allow Amir and Sohrab to escape

• He is unambiguously an evil character, but the fact he is not killed proves that his is an evil that cannot be easily removed from Afghan society, even in defeat

Ali

• Ali is Hassan’s father, a friend and servant to Baba’s family

• Like Hassan, he is a poor Hazara who is treated with little respect, and also has a physical deformity, in this case a severe limp:

  • As with Hassan and Amir, Ali is betrayed by Baba when Baba sleeps with his wife and leaves her pregnant with Hassan

• He learns of what happened to Hassan in the alley, and how Amir stood by, but remains quiet to protect his son and Amir:

  • He allows Hassan to take the blame for Amir’s deception, so to protect his son, even at the cost of their home and the life he knows

  • This is proof that he is a dedicated and self-sacrificing man until the end

• Ali is notably faithful, and is one of the few characters shown with prominent and traditional Muslim beliefs

General Taheri

• The General is Soraya’s father and a well respected man in the Afghan community that Baba and Amir find in America

• He was once a general in Afghanistan, and appears to remain ready for a return once Afghanistan is free, living on welfare in America so that he can depart once his government needs him:

  • It is also a sign that he still believes in the pride of his position, and will not take a job he sees as beneath him and his position

• He saves Soraya from the man she had run away with, which is seen as an act that saved her life

• He is traditional and strict, but charming and respectful of others:

  • He does not approve of Amir’s flirtation with and interest in his daughter, unhappy with the lack of respect to tradition that Amir shows

  • When Baba asks for his permission for Amir to marry Soraya, he approves, and tells Amir that he is happy that the traditions have been followed

  • He does not approve of Soraya teaching, but does not forbid it, and loves his daughter deeply

Farid

• Farid is paid to drive Amir back to Afghanistan from Pakistan, and at first shows him very little respect:

  • He sees Amir as someone who is not truly Afghan because he deserted Afghanistan for America

• He and his family struggle in poverty, and the fear of constant violence in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan:

  • He is representative of the struggle Afghans faced in Afghanistan at the time, fearing violence from war, or persecution and violence from the Taliban

• At 14, he joined the Mujahideen:

  • Later in life, he married two times and had had seven children, although two were killed

• It appears that Farid and Amir will not get along, but once Farid learns of why Amir has returned, he is apologetic and helps Amir find Sohrab

• His anger at Amir’s privilege reminds Amir that he has wealth that has always kept him comfortable:

  • Amir leaves his watch and a considerable amount of money behind when he leaves Farid’s home

Sohrab

• Sohrab is Hassan’s child, and has many similarities to Hassan that help Amir see him as a shot at redemption for the sins of his past towards his old friend:

  • They are described as being breathtakingly similar in appearance, are born and raised in the same hut, kite-run with Amir, carry and successfully weaponise a slingshot to save Amir from Assef, and both are sexually abused by Assef as children:

    • Decades after Hassan promises to take out Assef’s eye with his slingshot, Sohrab does, firing a sharp shard of wood through his eye

• He is so similar to Hassan that it is clear the author uses him as a stand-in for Hassan, so that Amir is finally treating Hassan with the respect he deserves, but via Sohrab

• He withdraws into himself completely after the sexual abuse he endures, and flinches when touched:

  • He attempts to kill himself after he is rescued by Amir, driven to depression by the abuse of Assef and the death of his parents

  • His suicide attempt brings Amir back to his faith, revealing that he does believe in God as he begs Allah to save Sohrab

• At the end, he has moved to America with Amir to live with Amir and Sohrab:

  • He is withdrawn and sad, but a slight smile in the final chapter when kite-running with Amir sets up the shot of a hopeful future at the novel’s denouement

Sources

Hosseini, K. (2003), The Kite Runner, Riverhead Books