The Cleft Lip
Hassan’s cleft lip is one of his most representative features as a child,
and it is one of the features Amir refers to most in describing him. The split
in Hassan’s lip acts as a mark of Hassan’s status in society. It signifies his
poverty, which is one of the things that separates him from Amir, simply because
a cleft lip indicates that he and his family do not have the money to fix the
deformity. Baba, who is Hassan’s biological father, chooses to pay a surgeon to
repair Hassan’s lip as a birthday gift, signifying his secret fatherly love for
Hassan. Later, Assef splits Amir’s lip as he beats him, leaving Amir with a
permanent scar much like Hassan’s. In a sense, Amir’s identity becomes merged
with Hassan’s. He learns to stand up for those he cares about, as Hassan once
did for him, and he becomes a father figure to Sohrab. Because of this, it also
serves as a sign of Amir’s redemption.
Kites
The kite serves as a symbol of Amir’s happiness as well as his guilt.
Flying kites is what he enjoys most as a child, not least because it is the only
way that he connects fully with Baba, who was once a champion kite fighter. But
the kite takes on a different significance when Amir allows Hassan to be raped
because he wants to bring the blue kite back to Baba. His recollections after
that portray the kite as a sign of his betrayal of Hassan. Amir does not fly a
kite again until he does so with Sohrab at the end of the novel. Because Amir
has already redeemed himself by that point, the kite is no longer a symbol of
his guilt. Instead, it acts as a reminder of his childhood, and it also becomes
the way that he is finally able to connect with Sohrab, mirroring the kite’s
role in Amir’s relationship with Baba.
The Lamb
In Islam, as in Christianity, the lamb signifies the sacrifice of an
innocent. Amir describes both Hassan and Sohrab as looking like lambs waiting to
be slaughtered. Amir says this during Hassan’s rape, noting that Hassan
resembled the lamb they kill during the Muslim celebration of Eid Al-Adha, which
honors Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son for God. Similarly, he describes
Sohrab as looking like a slaughter sheep when he first sees Sohrab with Assef.
Assef and the others had put mascara on Sohrab’s eyes, just as Amir says the
mullah used to do to the sheep before slitting its throat. Both Hassan and
Sohrab are innocents who are figuratively sacrificed by being raped, but these
sacrifices have very different meanings. In Hassan’s case, Amir sacrifices him
for the blue kite. But in Sohrab’s case, Amir is the one who stops his sexual
abuse. In this context, sacrifice is portrayed as the exploitation of an
innocent.
