Hassan
Outer characterization
Hassan is one of the most important characters in the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Hassan was born in 1964 and is one year younger than Amir. Hassan lives with his father, Ali, who is Baba’s servant. Physically, the element that makes Hassan stand out is his cleft lip, which is corrected surgically when Hassan is ten-years-old.
Hassan is also Hazara, an Afghan ethnic group that has distinctive mongoloid features:
I can still see Hassan up on that tree, sunlight flickering through the leaves on his almost perfectly round face, a face like a Chinese doll chiseled from hardwood: his flat, broad nose and slanting, narrow eyes like bamboo leaves, eyes that looked, depending on the light, gold, green, even sapphire. I can still see his tiny low-set ears and that pointed stub of a chin… (Chapter 2,10%)
Hassan’s ethnicity is also the main reason why he and Ali often get bullied, being called “flat-nosed” by children in the neighborhood.
After leaving Kabul, Hassan moves with his father to a small village outside Bamiyan. He gets married to a woman named Farzana and has a son called Sohrab, after his favorite character from his favorite book. Both Hassan and his wife are executed by the Taliban after being accuse...
