Father-Son Relationship Analysis

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Father-Son Relationship Analysis

Mostly, the relationship between fathers and their sons are not healthy ones. Therefore, the sons end up developing masculinity and suffering from loneliness, especially during their childhood. However, I think that men starve for better relations with their sons, and so do the sons, but they deny it. In the studied paragraph, the case is similar where Amir seems to crave for his father’s attention. However, his father was always pre-occupied elsewhere, leaving his son stranded. The author, Khaled Hosseini, shows details of how the young boy thought of his father’s extravagance. Also, the father is portrayed as an outgoing man of class, who loved having fun with his friends. Therefore, Amir was left out lonely in most of the meetings with the friends, which made his relationship with his father a poor one.

The author states that Amir was always willing to develop a positive relationship with his father. For instance, where he says that ‘Sometimes I asked Baba if I could go and sit with them…’ Thus, the relationship could be defined as strenuous, which means that one party put in a lot of effort to establish a friendship. However, Baba could always reject the plea by his son and tell him that he was not allowed to join in an adult conversation. Through the description of the homestead by the son, it shows that he did not approve of his father’s spending habit. Amir seems dissatisfied with the expensive make-over of his father’s house that made it outstanding in the surrounding. The dissatisfaction can be seen from the phrase in the paragraph, ‘Some thought it was the prettiest house in all of Kabul.’ According to this statement, it seems that the author excluded Amir’s approval of the house by use of the word some. If only Amir believed that the house was the prettiest, the tone would have been different.

Likewise, the relationship could be said to have been a complicated one. At times, the author states that when Amir was a child, a photo was taken of him and his father. Baba was holding the boy, meaning that he was loving and caring. However, the author says that Baba looked tired and grim, which could be explained as a lack of interest and boredom for spending time with his son. Similarly, the son does not seem interested in his father as his fingers are curled around Rahim Khan, who was Baba’s best friend. There, the author suggests that the relationship between both the father and son was complicated since the son was young.

The author also portrays hatred, where he claims that Baba would close the door behind the son and send him away to read his books. Amir was not comfortable with this treatment, and therefore, he would curl himself up by the door, wondering why his father would never allow him the space to be together with him. The sentence, ‘…leave me to wonder why it was always grown-up’s time with him,’ shows that Amir was willing to be loved by his father, and he craved for his affection (Ahmad, pg. 133). However, Baba did not seem to care as he continued discussing with his friends instead of ensuring that his son was okay emotionally. Therefore, Amir is a lonely and sad young boy while his father, Baba, is a fun-loving and extravagant man who cares less about the feelings of his son.

Work Cited

Ahmad, Wassem. “Thematic Study of Khalid Housseini’s Novel. The Kite Runner.” Research Review International Journal of Multidisciplinary 3.5 (2018): 131-7.