Best of Week

One of my favorite observations made in discussion was Eli's suggestion that Amir was not a hero but really just a selfish coward. I agree with him to some extent, that Amir does not fit the stereotypical cookie-cutter standard of a literary hero. He is not perfect at all, and he knows it. He repeatedly writes that he is a coward, sometimes contemplates if it is a bad thing, but knows that cowardice is not a good thing. Amir knows he's far from perfect, which makes him such a believable character, but I as a reader actually like Amir, not because he IS a coward and DOES run away and do what's best for himself at the expense of others, but because he has been through hell in his life, and he still tries to blame himself for all the things that go wrong. He is a person for whom i keep reading about so in hopes that something good happens to him. Hosseini breaks all the rules for writing a "hero" for his story, but he made a really powerful character as a result.