Connections: Assef and Bellatrix Lestrange

The Taliban, a key player in Afghani history and the book, The Kite Runner, are an extreme Islamic group who caused the deaths of thousands over their seven year reign. The death eaters, characters in the Harry Potter books, are a ruthless group who would go to any lengths to please their master, Voldemort, and to cause the most destruction among the wizarding world. These two may seem very unrelated, but they're more alike than they seem...

In Amir's journey back to Afghanistan in The Kite Runner to adopt his nephew, he encounters the Taliban in a soccer stadium. During halftime at the match, they publicly stone a man and a woman to death for adultery. Later on, Amir has to deal personally with Assef, a Talib and childhood enemy. Assef describes how he enjoys causing pain and "ethnically cleansing" Afghanistan of those he and his organization have deemed unworthy of the title of Afghanis. As I read this, my mind jumped to the Harry Potter books and how the death eaters, especially Bellatrix Lestrange, want to get rid of mud-bloods and blood-traitors and others who "dirty the name of pure-blood wizards".

The similarities between Assef and Bellatrix are uncanny: both are individuals acting on the orders of others above them, yet they are natural leaders and hold a certain power over those they associate with. They both strive to be the most devoted to their causes and they are capable of more sadistic actions than the majority of the people they intimidate.

Now, to get down to the roots of their actions. Assef was born to a privileged family in Afghanistan. His father was Afghani and his mother was German, and all the neighbors knew him as a handsome, respectable boy. He was slightly psychopathic as a child and became a rapist at an unusually young age. He seemed to enjoy hurting people because he liked the way they cowered to him. He idolized Hitler and the Nazis, yet he was able to come across perfectly when he was around adults. Similarly, Bellatrix was born to a family of purebloods, giving her a sense of entitlement that she held above others. This ultimately caused her to follow in the paths of many of her kin and become a death eater. She aged and spent time in Azkaban, and by the time she broke out of prison, she wanted nothing more than to be in Voldemort's service once again. She enjoyed torturing Neville Longbottom's parents into madness and made a sport of killing muggles and wizards alike. And despite the terror she'd inflicted, her parents and most of her extended family were proud of her accomplishments.

Obviously, the situations in which these two characters became the way they are anything but similar; Assef grew up in a country where fighting had been a way of life for centuries and Bellatrix lives in a fictional world where the limits of one‘s imagination are tested. What I find most interesting is that such different situations can breed such similar results. It seems that no matter the time, place, or circumstance, there will always be self-righteous people who are willing to cause pain and kill others to make themselves feel like god.

And now we’re led into that dreaded debate of nature versus nurture. The results of this comparison seem to suggest that nature is the cause of such atrocities in the world as genocide and holocaust. But culture and environment can be a contributing factor, illustrated by the similarities in Assef and Bellatrix’s childhoods. Personally, I think counting nature and nurture as mutually exclusive occurrences is naïve, that they are both necessary to breed the types of villains we read about in books and watch in movies. And then there are those who say that we’ll never know the real reason behind why people are the way they are. But the thing I think is most important to remember is that no matter how they come about, people capable of horrific deeds will undoubtedly affect our lives forever.

Best of Week: Culture in The Kite Runner

In our class discussion of The Kite Runner this week, we came across the idea of culture in societies and how important it can be to deciding how to live your life. Previously, Amir fell in love with Soraya Taheri and wanted to talk to her, to get to know her, but he had to be careful of the gossiping of the other Afghans at the flea market and her semi-oppressive father. Finally, he got Baba to put speculation to rest with the formal ritual of asking Soraya's father for permission, something nearly unheard of in our modern American society, before the General was willing to consider Amir as his daughter's suitor. There were also other aspects of the Afghani culture which required careful contemplation before action, mostly regarding Soraya's image. Because of some mistakes she had made when she was much younger, many of her fellow Afghanis didn't consider her trustworthy, or even worthy to be a bride. Their culture guided Amir and Soraya's life for this entire section of the book.

This idea was so powerful to me because it seems foreign, yet I know it's not. It shocked me that in the United States in modern times, people still have to ask permission of their parents and elders before they can make decisions about their own life. I'm so used to the adults in my life telling me to be independent and to make my own choices in order to be a strong individual. But the adults in The Kite Runner want Amir to be anything but completely individual. They even slightly scorn both his and Soraya's career choices as a writer and teacher, respectively, because it's not the best they think their children can be. The adults are so focused on how they appear to outsiders in this foreign country that they would deprive their own children of happiness and passion for life.

It may seem cliche, but upon seeing how life could be for me if I were a slightly different person, or born to slightly different circumstances made me really appreciate what I have. I can be whatever I want, see whoever I want, live wherever I want, and like whoever I want. No one is standing over my shoulder, telling me what to do. I really am lucky to have this, as now I see that many people don't.

I'm not sure I'm going to "use" this knowledge, per se, but I know that it made me see what should have been apparent. And I know I've come to this same realization in the past, but everytime I do, it sparks something new in me. In the past, good things have come from the realization about how fortunate I am, like increased learning about things that I'm passionate about and trying new things, simply because I can. It motivates me to take advantage of every opportunity I have to better my future. The way I see it now, it would simply be irresponsible not to.

Carry It Forward: The Kite Runner

In English class, we are reading the very powerful "faux memoire", The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. A central theme of this book was apparent to me in chapters seven and eight. After the kite running of the winter of 1975, Amir watched Hassan get raped by the neighborhood bully, Assef. As Amir watched, his mind basically shut down on him, too driven by fear for his own fate to make the decision to help his closest friend. He ran away, not thinking about the future, how the fear would catch up to him, or Hassan's well-being. His only thoughts were for himself.

I felt the power of this choice as I continued reading, and time after time, Amir avoided the conflict. He had dozens of opportunities to tell someone what he had witnessed and perhaps regain some faith in himself; each one passed without significance. You could tell that the truth was eating at him from the inside. He couldn't bear to even see Hassan trying to get his life back on track because it meant Hassan was healing from what he couldn't.

Fear dictated his life. It was apparent to me that he would never heal from this one traumatic experience because he couldn't face it head on. He slid past it repeatedly, but no one can ever run away from a problem for long. This is what I will carry forward into the future from this section of the book.

I know that I am a cautious, calculating, and rational thinker most of the time. I'm almost robotic in my thinking. I see a conflict, I weigh both possible outcomes, and I make a decision based on which path will cause me the least amount of pain. But after reading this section of the book, I see the flaws in the way I think. If I only do what will cause me the least amount of pain, I'm neglecting everyone else. I mean, we're all a little bit selfish, deep down, aren't we? However, it's necessary to do something difficult to lessen the hurt in the long-run for the people you care about.

I see now that I cannot let fear of pain or failure drive my life, because what life is that? Living in fear of everything will rob me of friends, relationships, and experiences, and those have value to me. Therefore, I must carry this into my future, to use for any little problem that makes me want to curl up and hide: The more I run, the longer it takes for the problems to catch up with me, but they will catch up with me in the end, and they'll be much more painful the longer I deter them. It's simply not worth it to deny pain. Bravery in the face of my fears is what must drive my life from now on. It'll be difficult to achieve, but it's completely worth the effort.