17/11

Assef's character
 'I saw a splotch of dried blood on his left sleeve. I found it morbidly fascinating that he hadn't changed clothes after the executions'. Here Hosseini is deliberately trying to make Assef seem unpleasant and odd and draws on echoes of how he was before, when he was younger. 'Wearing dark John Lennon glasses', makes Assef seem like a Western character and therefore out of place in Afghanistan, he should not be there. It shows Assef's hypocricy at him being against Western values. 'Saw marks on his forearm', shows Assef is a herion addict which is moral hypocricy as, according to himself he is 'purifying people'. 'You enjoyed the show today?' shows that Assef takes pleasure in executing people. 'He was almost panting' shows Assef was frantically excited by the thought of death and killing. 'Only rested for food and prayer' shows Assef thinks his brutal massacring is somehow 'holy'. Amir says Assef acts as if it was some 'great party', showing Assef's distortion of reality. Assef sees Hassan as 'my boy' which displays his 'ownership' of Hassan and the fact that he sees him as his. The fact that Assef's 'hands slid down the child's back', shows how Assef is sexualising Hassan and it makes us feel uncomfortable. This shows Assef does not have the best intentions for the child and is inappropriate. Amir says he is afraid he might 'conjure him' making Assef seem like some sort of 'demon' and having 'supernatural powers'. Overall Assef is conjured up as a horrible character who we are supposed to dislike and think badly of.

The end of the chapter is told by Amir who is barely conscious and is therefore very brief. There are specific details about certain things, 'i watched the way his sandals pounded'... but not others, 'then i was looking up at the roof'. Because it's sketchy, it allows us to build up our own idea of what's happening and is evidence of how seriously injured Amir is. Amir ends up doing the same thing Assef did, laughing when he's being beaten up. That was Assef's 'enlightenment', this is Amir's, he becomes 'at peace'. On p.251 there is a future projection which foreshadows what happens to Amir.