The unreliable narrator

The silence of Amir’s life was disrupted by a sudden phone call from an old friend, dating back to the childhood, deeply buried with all the effort. The voice, long lost in the ruins of war and struggles for existence, brought to surface a story of bond, friendship, love, hate, betrayal, guilt and redemption. The age of the narrator when the harm was done and the extent of his self-accusation make him hard to blame. His guilty feelings foreshadow him narration throughout the story, which greatly impaired his ability to observe objectively. Just like Holden Caulfield tends to view the surrounding negatively, Amir always blames himself for all the faults.

Born as the son of a well-respected Pashtun, Amir is expected to be as successful as his father, if not better. Trying desperately to please Baba and willing to sacrifice everything to gain his affection, Amir is burdened with the guilt of not being similar to him ever since he could remember. For Amir, Baba is the hero of his life. He is strong and masculine, “lore has it my father once wrestled a black bear in Baluchistan with his bare hands. (p13)”. He is authoritative, in a culture where everyone tends to exaggerate, nobody has ever doubted the tale. His nickname is apt enough to label his tough and powerful nature, “Toophan agha—Mr. Hurricane (p13)”. The fame and respect didn’t come easily, however, since Baba isn’t a man of conventions. He is scornful of the religious dogmas taught in schools, referring the teachers as “self-righteous monkeys (p18)”. He planned and directed the building of the orphanage himself, with no previous knowledge on architecture. Ignoring people’s advice, he started a career in business instead of studying law as his father, and proved everybody wrong with his wild success. Marrying one of the most respected ladies in Kabul, he once again settled people’s disbelief. He is generous, not only the orphanage was entirely funded by him, he also gives money to people in need and help them find jobs. Being a man of honor, he has his own system of judgments—black and white, and nothing in between. There’s nothing as a compromise in his dictionary, what’s right he supports with all he could, what’s wrong he fights against, even risking his own life in front of Russian soldier’s gun, when he stood up for a woman he didn’t know about.

“With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking (p16).” Rather than being a pride of his father, Amir stood as a shadow, living miserably in Baba’s shining lights. Being who he is, Amir couldn’t fit into Baba’s world. He used to sit outside father’s smoky room and listen to their chatter and laughter. Feeling ignored and not cared about, he took it as his own fault. His biggest sin before the kite running competition was not being like Baba, the tough and proud man. Amir has a quiet, non-violent and weak nature which prevented him from standing up for himself or anyone else. Baba was disappointed with his interest in literature, and his lie to conceal the fact Hassan was the one who stood up for him in street fights every time.

What makes Amir’s situation even worse was his mother died giving birth to him. He blames himself for taking his mother’s life, and robbing his father of his beloved wife, while not being able to compensate it.

From Amir’s point of view, the heroic man is his source of respect, fear and frustration. Because they have totally different personalities, it was nearly impossible for them to communicate and understand each other. Most of Amir’s the knowledge of father came from other people’s talk. Never received love from a mother, he’s even more desperate for father’s love. Yet father’s so hard to approach, let alone to please. Even after he won the kite running competition, the harmonic atmosphere couldn’t last long. It was bitterly ironic, a guilt that haunts him for years and a sacrifice of a buddy can’t even exchange for a bridge to reach his father. But the result is inevitable, though unknown to Amir at the time.

The misunderstanding was cleared gradually after they moved to US. Baba’s love was proved to be more contained than absent. However hard the work was, he wouldn’t let Amir quit school to help, and was proud for his son to get into college. Still didn’t quite understand his son’s pursuit in writing stories, he was proud Amir finally accomplished something. With the little money he made with tons of sweat, he bought his son a car. And later they went into a restaurant and a bar to celebrate the graduation. What it took for them to come close and understand each other, was Baba’s coming down from that superior stage, to a place he worked to support his son, and spiritually his son supported him. At the time when they were in Kabul, all that was impossible, social life and his “important work” were enough to occupy Baba and let him ignore the alien son. Baba was too high and far away to reach, and too busy and helpless to understand his son.

The secret that contributed to Amir’s sufferings is Hassan’s identity. Revealed after Baba’s death, the truth added another dimension to Baba’s personality and brought him closer to Amir. In fact Hassan was the result of Sanaubar’s temptation and Baba’s infidelity, not Ali’s son. Ever since Hassan was born, Baba has been suffering greatly from his own guilt, and his inability to provide Hassan what he should as the real father. Because of the difference in their social status, Hassan became Amir’s servant instead of brother, and lived in a small hut at the back of the house with his “father” Ali. As they both grew up, Hassan showed more similarities with Baba than Amir did. Being a servant, Hassan always stood up for Amir and served as a loyal protector. He was honest and good-natured, but Amir was jealous for every bit of Baba’s care for Hassan. Fed by the same nursing woman, they were often reminded of “a brotherhood…a kinship not even time could break (p11)”. But Amir couldn’t understand the “brotherhood” at that time, and couldn’t tolerate the share of Baba’s love. Without the knowledge of the real relationship between Baba and Hassan, Amir took Baba’s behaviors as a punishment. He believed it was because Baba didn’t like him that he treated him the same as Hassan.

Amir’s greatest source of guilt came from what he had done to Hassan, and what he didn’t do to save him. Ever since their early childhood, Amir has been humiliating and testing Hassan. He spent a lot of time with Hassan, although the line between master and servant was ambiguous, he never crossed the border as to refer Hassan as his friend or brother. To him, Hassan has never been a friend, but a buddy to play with, a dog to kick, and a wall that protects him from other nasty kids. He confessed reading Hassan stories to enjoy the superiority of his own literacy, when Hassan asked him the meaning of a word, he never let go of the opportunity to laugh at his ignorance. Though fully aware of Hassan’s intelligence and his ignorance was due to the lack of opportunity, Amir consciously prevented Hassan’s intellectual development. Instead of encouraging his curiosity in knowledge, Amir always stopped when Hassan became better at something than him.

As cruel as he has described himself, Amir’s reactions merely showed his human weakness. It was originally impossible for him to regard Hassan as a friend because of the difference in their social status. And it’s natural for Amir to be envious of the care Hassan received from Baba since his own bitter struggles were fruitless. The only way he could feel compensated was to torture Hassan. Despite the fact that Hassan was the one that encouraged, helped and understood him most, his role as a servant assured Amir whatever harm he did to him, he wouldn’t betray. Amir himself saw Hassan in a inferior position, being laughed at and humiliated by neighborhood kids, who couldn’t get formal education no matter how much he craved knowledge. From moral judgments, taking advantages from such a suppressed person was in anyway guilty, and that’s how Amir judged himself. But those faults were only minor comparing to the time after the kite running competition. His weak nature prevented him from standing up for Hassan behind that wall, and facing Hassan afterwards reminded him too much of his guilt and cowardice. With cruel lies that hurt all of Hassan, Ali and Baba, Amir drove away the physical reminder, but it haunted him from then on.

Regarding their social status, no doubt Amir was superior to Hassan. But looking at their spiritual aspect, it’s reasonable to say Hassan felt sympathy towards Amir. Although his father was physically impaired, and disrespected just as he was for their Hazara background, Ali was so fond of him, their relationship was far closer and more pleasant than Ali and Baba’s. For Hassan, Ali was the fragile and sensitive child that needed to be taken care of, and loved.

Not only Ali’s narrative is unreliable regarding the people around him, his perceptions of the environment are biased, too. Living in a well-off area with a rich father, he has never seen what real life was like until the war. Just as the drive Farid said, “you’ve always been a tourist here, you just didn’t know it.(p245)” The beautiful houses, well-attended backyards and servants give him the false impression that Kabul is the paradise. He has never experienced the hardship in life and known how people struggled to live before. When coming back from US, he was astonished by the beggars lining the streets and houses blown off into ruins.

In the Kite Runner, Amir’s inexperience as a child, his nature that caused him to be guilt-ridden, and his limited perceptions all contributed to his unreliability. The aspects he couldn’t see as the narrator, are indicated in ways of environment and other people’s talks. And in this way his character becomes more believable and reasonable. Narrators are unreliable because of their subjectivity, no one is able to observe without judging or relating to personal experiences and distort facts. All narrators are in a sense unreliable because writers are all fallible. Due to their own experiences and what they want to express, the works are going to reveal unconscious assumptions of culture and ethics of the writers. It is hard to say whether the lack of feminine characters is a result of Muslim culture where women are not generally considered as important as men, since the writer is clearly very careful with his word choices. There’s no offense against women in the novel, but the discrimination wasn’t portrayed until Amir’s marriage. It was revealed through Soraya’s father and his dominant role in the family.