Baba; The Kite Runner Essay

Baba is the main father figure in the story. He is father to Amir, the main character and from whose point of view the story is told.

Baba is a good person but a hard, discouraging father at the beginning of the story. He is a single parent whose wife died while she was giving birth to Amir a circumstance to which Amir attributes Babas aloofness and seeming indifference to him. Baba raises Amir alone and in Amirs words, molded me to his own liking, in the same way that he molded the world to his own liking seeing the world as black and white and deciding too what was white and what was black. Baba wants Amir to be like him who hunts and plays football, but Amir would rather stay home or play with his friend Hassan, recite poetry, read a book or write stories. Babas cold attitude as a parent makes Amir unable to love his father and in the process sort of fear him too and hate him a little. As a result Amir quietly defies his father and decides he will not succumb to his fathers molding ways.

The silent animosity between father and son ends when Amir joins and wins a kite-flying contest and ties his own fathers record in the number of kites he cut down. Later, the relationship between the two strengthens as they flee from war-torn Afghanistan and in the process Baba shows Amir how he stood up even to the point of risking even his own life in order to save an unknown woman from a Russian soldiers vile intentions. As immigrants in the United States Baba once again shows Amir how he can make personal sacrifices for his sons sake. Forced to live in a foreign country, Baba dies broken hearted but fully resigned to what Amir had made of himself a writer happily married to a wonderful woman.