Pride: The Deadliest of Sins

"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." This quote from chapter 17 is an example of one of the main themes of the entire novel. Throughout, it seems as though the Afghani people are genuinely more concerned with society's perception of them than the lives of those closest to them. While this is a terrible generalization, this quote loosely supports this. The theme is pride. No one is willing to let their name be blemished in any form, even if it means keeping a boy from his father and another from his brother. Also, had Amir known that Hassan was his brother all along, he would not have felt quite so abandoned by his father every time he showed Hassan attention. It is Amir's intense need to please his unforgiving father that leads to his standing by as Hassan gets violently raped. While the people in the novel see pride as the only thing they truly have, they do not seem to realize that it is that pride that keeps them from truly enjoying all they actually have.