Amir & Baba

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Discuss the changes in Baba's and Amir's relationship When Amir and Baba move to the States their relationship changes, and Amir begins to view his father as a more complex man. Discuss the changes in their relationship. Do you see the changes in Baba as tragic or positive? 2 I think this is one of the weaknesses of the novel: the change from adoration and fear of Baba while Amir was in Afghanistan, to an almost patronizing view of Baba as he struggles to establish himself in America. Baba goes from being a vibrant and complex character capable of much reader sympathy to being a cardboard version of his former powerful self. This change is never convincingly shown, though it happens. Baba goes from a 'round' character to being a 'flat' character. It is as if he has served the writer's purpose, in Afghanistan, but remains as a kind of embarrassment now that they are in America. No longer useful to the story, he is 'killed off' rather quickly after being effectively killed of as a living, breathing character. It should be his father's moral failures that 'humanize' him, but it seems in reality even more the fact that he now works in a gas station. Amir is such a mean character that he is almost glad that his father has fallen, never mind that the man is working himself to death to pay to educate Amir and give him an aristocratic wedding. It is obscene that Amir accepts the wedding, since he is, more than his father, an American now. He perhaps should have at least entertained the possibility of not allowing his father to spend so much money. His father literally 'dies' for Amir, and Amir seems much too comfortable with this. He forgets Baba too soon, before he has died. 3 First of all, I have to disagree with the labeling of Amir as "such a mean character." I think his relationship with his father is very human. Who has not struggled with a parent or parental figure

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