The Kite Runner: A Movie Analysis

Amir – Amir yearned for affection from Baba since he believes that he killed his own mother which was repressed. It only comes out when he does not meet his father's expectations. His writing also served an escape from the expectations. If we also look at him in Erikson's theory, he may be in Erikson's 4th stage, Industry vs. Inferiority. We can see that he is not able to defend himself from others; he fully relied to his friend, Hassan. He also was being compared by Baba with Hassan and he feels like he is inferior to Hassan, this also affected his adulthood since he was beaten up by Assef in the movie. He was not even able to stand up and land up even one hit at Assef. What I also saw in the movie was while Amir was in the 6th stage, Intimacy vs. Isolation where he was already yearning for a wife and possibly settle with her even when she had issues in the past.

I can also describe Amir's act of saving his nephew as a thinking of a man at Conventional level, Stage 4 or Social System Morality since it was expected of him as the he was the only relative of Sohrab left. I also saw the development of maturation of Amir, when he was younger he was a selfish boy because he wanted Hassan to leave but eventually, he was able to become a selfless man since he decided to save his nephew.

Hassan – I did not see much development from Hassan since from the start up until he grew old; he stayed loyal to Baba's family and still considered Amir his friend. His development also shows that development's characteristic is plasticity since after he was raped by Assef, he still remained intact with the world. Usually, children that I heard of being raped experiences traumatic disorders. As for him, he just stayed inside his house like he was sick. After that, he went out like nothing happened. Maybe, this is an effect of their culture since their ethnic group, Hazarras, is just a minor group which makes them inferior in the country