Themes

Hassan gets raped because of his love for Amir and, although he finds out that Amir knows about this, he sacrifices himself once again by keeping his silence: “Hassan knew. He knew I’d seen everything in that alley, that I’d stood there and done nothing. He knew I had betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time” (Chapter 9, 57%).

Just like his father, Sohrab is also associated with the idea of sacrifice. When he sees Sohrab for the first time, Amir compares the boy to a sheep: 

Sohrab’s eyes flicked to me. They were slaughter sheep’s eyes. They even had the mascara—I remembered how, on the day of Eid of qorban, the mullah in our backyard used to apply mascara to the eyes of the sheep and feed it a cube of sugar before slicing its throat. I thought I saw pleading in Sohrab’s eyes. (Chapter 22, 47%)...