Family Secrets

A secret is something that is kept hidden from others or known only to oneself or to a few. In the novel “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini there were three major secrets that affected the character named Amir in a large way. Two of these secrets were kept by him and the third was a secret kept by his father Baba but if affected Amir when it was revealed.
The first secret that the reader is made aware of occurred when Amir watched his friend/servant Hassan getting raped by the town bully named Assef. Amir felt guilty for a very long time because he didn’t do anything to stop the rape from happening at the time and he never told anybody that he saw it happen. Amir felt it was his fault that this happened because he asked Hassan to retrieve his kite so that he could win the kite running race. It was more important for Amir to have the kite retrieved by Hassan rather than to protect his friend because the kite would be proof to his father that he won the kite race. Amir desperately wanted his dad’s approval. This secret caused Amir and Hassan’s friendship to end. Amir became an insomniac and quite anti-social because he couldn’t deal with all of the guilt about this secret.
The second secret that Amir keeps from everyone was how he framed Hassan for stealing his watch and a bit of his birthday money. Amir did this because he felt guilty for not helping Hassan when he got raped. He did this because he is a coward and just wanted Hassan and Ali out of his life so he could try and forget what he did. “... and told what I hoped would be the last in a long line of shameful lies” (pg 104). This affected not only Hassan and Amir’s relationship but also Baba’s relationship with Ali and Hassan. Ali and Hassan ended up quitting their jobs as Baba’s servants and moved out. Baba was upset because he lost a true family friend and a boy he treated like a son. This also affected Amir because his guilt about this situation made him more depressed. He also was sad to see his childhood friend have to leave.
The third secret in this novel involved a family friend named Rahim Khan. He had told Amir fifteen years after Baba died that Hassan was Amir’s half brother. This affected Amir largely because he found out that his father had kept something from him, something that would have affected his decision to help Hassan when he was getting raped. If Amir had known Hassan was his half brother he would have protected Hassan from the rapist. The kite race wouldn’t have mattered because Amir wouldn’t care to impress his dad because his dad was a liar. “How could he have lied to me all those years? To Hassan? He had sat me on his lap when I was little, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, There is only one sin. And that is theft....When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth...the things he’d stolen had been sacred: from me the right to know I had a brother, from Hassan his identity, and from Ali his honor.”(pg 225)
Secrets are kept for reasons that are sometimes unclear. The secrets that were kept in this novel shaped the future of Amir the most.