Symbols--the lamb

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"Hassan didn't struggle. Didn't even whimper. He moved his head slightly and I caught a glimpse of his face. Saw the resignation in it. It was a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb."

Symbols-- Amir's first story

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"well...if I may ask, why did the man kill his wife? In fact, why did he ever have to feel sad to shed tears? Couldn't he have just smelled an onion?"

Symbols--the cleft lip

"The face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin-boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a Chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped smile."

Symbols written anaylsis

The black notebook represents the first story Amir wrote as a child. The story symbolizes Amir’s first step towards becoming a writer, but more importantly it symbolizes the irony in Amir’s own actions- becoming what his father feared he would become in trying to gain his approval, trying to find happiness but instead earning a life time of guilt and shame. Most of the ironies in Amir’s life come from the consequence of actions he thought would make him happy, much like the way the man in his story kills his own wife to cry more gold but finds himself devastatingly unhappy. The lamb in the story symbolized Hassan’s role in Amir’s life; like a lamb, Hassan was sacrificed for Amir’s benefit, and like the lamb he understood what was happening and acted submissively. On another level, lamb is associated with innocence and purity, the slaughter of the lamb like Hassan’s assault, signified the loss of purity. Hassan’s cleft lips also have great symbolic value. Amir at the beginning of the story describes the lips as a characteristic most representative of Hassan. The physical deformity denotes his lower class status and poverty directly, because it indicates his family does not have money to fix it for him. The cleft lip is also symbolic of happiness, because visually it forced Hassan’s mouth into an unchanging smile. The year Hassan’s lips were reconstructed, he was raped and emotionally scarred. From then on he never smiled in front of Amir. The cleft lip condition returns near the end of the story on Amir’s mouth, after he rescues Sohrab from Assef and finds self-redemption. It signifies that he is now happy, and also that he is now taking on Hassan’s role as Sohrab’s father. The deformity originally branded Hassan as a low breed and social outcast, but its meaning evolved throughout the novel and into a blessing instead. In this respect, the cleft lips are very similar to the scarlet letter. 

Irony-- What Amir wanted VS what he got

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“I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba.” 

Irony- Assef's role in Amir's life

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 “I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."

Irony-- the unfolding resemblance between Amir and Baba

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"Please think, Amir jan. It was a shameful situation. People would talk. All that a man had back then, all that he was, was his honor, his name, and if people talked...we couldn't tell anyone, surely you can see that."