Well....I'll begin with Amir....and keep udating as and when I get the time...
--------------------------------------------
At the beginning, before the fateful winter of 1975 happened, Amir was very real for me. His jealousy, his feeling superior to Hassan, everything about him was real; all in all , he was just the type of characters I love to read about: grey, human.
But after the rape of Hassan was described in the novel, I thought , really, that Amir was just as bad as Assef.
Oh , all right, so he was a coward, and cowardice doesn't make a person, "bad", so to speak.
But, my problem with him was he didn't even comfort Hassan after that terrible event. Felt guilty. Just.
That was when I felt that maybe a real person in that situation would have behaved differently. Shown a little bit of sympathy, tried to indirectly comfort Hassan, make him happy again.
But though my opinion of Amir had changed after Hassan's rape, I felt that there was scope for, as the author says, "redemption".
I was disappointed. Amir met Rahim Khan, realized that Hassan was his half-brother, and saved his son from Assef.
But I felt he was doing it all because he shared his father with Hassan. Like he wouldn't have saved Sohrab from Assef if he were just the son of "his" hazara servant. I don't know why, but the way Hosseini wrote it, I kept on feeling that Amir was doing it all only because Sohrab was his nephew.
Plus, after saving Sohrab, he forgets all about that terrible orphanage, the hunting ground of Assef!
Of course, he wouldn't have been able to do anything substantial to save the poor children, but, atleast, he could have been shown to feel sorry about them later when he returned to America!!!
That was when I totally lost faith in Amir's character.
Will continue later.
88