The Kite Runner

• Compare/contrast Amir and Hassan. What is Amir’s problem? What are Hassan’s strengths? Are they friends?
• Amir is the only son of a wealthy widowed man. Amir thinks his father doesn't love him because his mother died while she was giving birth to him. Amir lives a privileged life and has almost everything he could want except, he feels, his father's love and approval. 
• Hassan is the son of a servant that has been with Amir's father for over forty years.  He is usually well liked and a hard worker. A group of boys in the movie are racist against him because he is a different ethnicity than Amir who he is always with. 
• Amir's problem is that he is more interested in making up stories than fighting his own battles. He doesn't have the strength to do what is right even when he knows what is happening is wrong.  Amir and Hassan are always together and Hassan is the more forceful and outgoing of the two. Hassan's strength is that he is loyal to a fault. He would do anything for Amir. I think that they are friends even though Hassan has grown up as a servant to Amir's family. They are almost like brothers but Amir just isn't a strong enough person to help Hassan when he is in trouble and because of that their friendship unravels for a while. Their relationship changes but not for the better. 

• One of the issues of the story is the relationship of fathers and sons. Discuss one event that illustrates something about father/son relationships.
• I feel like the event that really illustrates a component of father/son relationships is how when Amir wins the kite cutting championship. Even though Amir's father always loves him, it took Amir winning the event for his father to express his feelings. I have even seen this with my own daddy and I am a girl. Sometimes I  feel like fathers just don't know how to express feelings without a reason.