The Kite Runner explores the consequences of attempting to rebel against unjust leadership. To what extent do you agree with this view? Remember to include in your answer relevant detailed exploration of Hosseinis authorial methods.

Hassan is an interesting character to look at further, as he could be used an example where rebellion isn’t explored enough. Despite attacking Assef, this isn’t done out of a political motivation to defeat an oppressor, it’s done to save Amir, a very personal motive. To fully explore a rebellion against unjust leadership Hassan would need to attack or resist the prejudice placed on him and fight agains the Pashtun ruling class. Instead, his kind and gentle personality makes him completely submissive to characters such as Amir. If we take Hassan as the political protagonist for instance, he never rises up and overthrows his oppressors. When the Taliban come and kill Hazara’s on mass, Hassan takes his family to live in a quiet area where he is still eventually killed by the Taliban. Everything he does, he does for his own personal motivations, even if those are often selfless and good natured, he does little to rebel against unjust leadership in the grander scheme of things and he dies before reaching any kind of satisfying conclusion. Even when he’s threatening Assef with the slingshot, he refers to him as “Agha” (as does Sohrab), Amir intelligently notices this when thinking back and tells the reader: “I wondered briefly what it must be like to live with such an ingrained sense of one’s place in a hierarchy”. Uncharacteristically of social and political protest writing, Hassan appears to do very lithely to resist the indoctrination and the prejudice placed on him. You could argue that Amir however is the obvious political protagonist in the novel, but his story isn’t much different. Whenever he fights against unjust leadership, his motives are explicitly personal in nature. For example if Amir really wanted to help save Afghanistan from oppression, he would’ve come back sooner to fight against the Taliban, he did no such thing. Farid, the man who helps Amir travel across the country, has lived through Afghanistan as a warzone and looks at Amir as a tourist, going as far to saying he has “always been a tourist” in Afghanistan due to his privileged upbringing. Farid suggests Amir doesn’t understand the real Afghanistan and although Farid grows to earn respect for Amir. Once Amir finds Sohrab he tries to get out of the country as quick as he can, he watches the poverty and despair and does little to stop it after his job is done.

Amir and Hassan however aren’t the only characters to analyse in reference to the statement. Baba shows the reader and Amir why rebelling against unjust leadership must be done for political and principled reasons. First of all to some extent, his philanthropy is an example of resistance against the prejudiced Afghani society. Baba is well known for instance for setting up an orphanage, even without any architectural experience, he succeeded and helped the orphans in Kabul. This shows an awareness of his own privilege and the want to use it to combat inequality and unfairness in Afghanistan. We learn however that this his perhaps simply born out of his guilt for his infidelity with Sanaubar and his failure to acknowledge Hassan as a son. Another key scene with Baba however is when he stands up to the Russian soldier in order to save a woman from getting raped. She is helpless, and even Baba is in a very vulnerable position, unable to defend himself against a gun, yet he still rebels, asking the Russian: “where his shame is… War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.” Baba shames the Russian and saves the woman, he selflessly rebels against unjust leadership and demands that principle and decency must be upheld. This is a political act that undermines the brutal authority of the Russians and is designed to show Amir and the reader why standing up for not just yourself but also others is crucial.

Arguably the novel however equally explores the consequences of not rebelling against unjust leadership. The most obvious example of this is Amir’s failure to stand up for Hassan when he’s being raped. “I ran because I was a coward… I was afraid of getting hurt…I actually aspired to cowardice”. For Amir, he simply didn’t have it in him to save Hassan and he does pay a price for his cowardice. For the rest of his life he his haunted by the events in that alleyway, the sentence “for you a thousand times over” rings in his head over and over again. He is mentally traumatised by his own failure, the consequences are dire, Hassan loses his childhood in the process and will never be the same again. When Ali and Hassan are set on leaving, Amir can even see the hurt and hatred in Ali’s eyes: “Ali glanced my way and in his cold, unforgiving look, I saw Hassan had told him.” For the reader this is infuriating and deeply sad, Ali is a lovely character, one who has always looked after Hassan and Amir. Hassan despite not being, is still like a son to this man, and the hurt and pain Amir causes is horrific for Amir and everyone involved. Baba’s ignorance to the situation and Hassan’s final sacrifice of saying he stole the watch and money really emphasises the unfairness of the situation.

Hosseini does indeed explore the consequences of rebelling against unjust leadership, but at the end of the day the vast majority of this instances are motivated entirely by personal reasons and therefore are not fully explored in reference to social and political and protest writing. In fact both Amir and Hassan do little active rebellion against unjust leadership and the novel focuses on a lack of rebellion and the consequences of that just as much, if not more. The Kite Runner, while exposing us to many examples of rebellion therefore does not definitively explore these ideas enough to constitute itself as a true social and political protest novel.