Background of the study

Unfortunately, although every relationship has its capacity to grow into a self- actualizing third self, many do not realize their full potential. If fear or anxiety enters a relationship, there is often a retreat to every relationship has its capacity to grow into a self-actualizing third self, many do not realize their full potential. If fear or anxiety enters a relationship, there is often a retreat to safety needs and old pattern of relating.” James and Savary 106. Thus, one needs a friend to help him develop himself because a good friend will give us an honest opinion and support based on what he sees as an outer person who realizes our potential. Friends can help us give a second opinion in developing ourselves. However if a friend feels hurt because of our honest opinion he may stay away from us. In their book entitled The Heart of Friendship, James and Savary say that close friends like to save prime time for being together and that friendship brings out best and worst in people 140-160. We can also see that sometimes we really need a friend, to whom we could share our love, our feelings, our goodness or badness, our sorrow or happiness, and our thoughts or dreams. It is not easy to maintain a good friendship. If friendship was easy, there would be a lot more of it in the world. It touches almost every feeling and emotion; it calls forth imagination, will, power and action; it can challenge values, test ideas, nurture ideals. In short, we can say that friendship has a significant role in our life. Everyone needs a best friend to support their life. With a best friend we build together a deeper relationship than with others as close friendship requires intimacy. People, who regard friendship as a vital and important thing, need to focus their attention on it. Everything will go wrong if one does not focus his attention on his friendship. The vital concern needs faith. We need to be faithful to our friends and our friend to us. This often takes courage and risk. In friendship, there is no insurance against failure, pain or disappointment. Friendship requires a candid person-to-person relationship of openness and trust, without exploitation and without the psychological games that people usually play James and Savary 140-155. In carrying out our friendship in life, the first important thing to understand is that every choice which leads to a certain action will cause consequences. It means that if we choose to build a close friendship and do an action of openness and trust to each other, then, we have to be prepared for the consequences as our openness or honest opinion may hurt our friends. However, as long as our openness and honesty are sincere and dedicated to support our friends’ potential development, presumably everything will be alright. Paul Peterson states on his website that friendship has some characteristics which differentiate it from any other relationship. They are honesty and trust, emotional respect, and service and loyalty Peterson 1. Firstly, honesty and trust are the most important since an honest affirmation to a friend can help him to be better. Secondly, emotional respect which deals with love, receiving, and understanding will give forth in the sense of understanding of each character, ways of thinking, emotional atmosphere and behavior. Thirdly, it concerns service and loyalty which refers to some helping action that we can do to our friend and be faithful. A literary work like novel can portray such issue described above. As we know, the story in the novel reflects life experiences such as friendship. According to Milligan 3-4 a work of literature is close to reality in life. It can help the readers to see things as they really are. The events in the story can be similar or even the same as what happens in the real life. Through a novel the author tries to state his way of thinking, opinions, expressions, even experiences in life. As a result, a novel can give the readers the knowledge about life or how people face the problem using their feeling and rationale. The Kite Runner which is written by Khaled Hosseini is one of the novels that takes friendship as its main issue. The story is about friendship between Amir as the main character and Hassan, a Hazara slave. The problem arises when Amir wants to gain his fathers love. After the death of his mother in child birth, he and his best friend, playmates and slaves are raised together, often almost like brothers with his father having a special interest in Hassan by providing him with gifts and special opportunities. Insecure in his placement in his fathers affections, Amir decides to create a way to discredit Hassan permanently and have him removed from the household, hoping that his fathers affections will then turn to him alone. One evening when defending Amir from a threat from Amir’s enemy, Hassan is sodomized by the enemy. Surprisingly, not long after that Amir accuses Hassan of stealing his expensive new watch. After those cruelties, Hassan and his father move back to Hazara’s town. Until his death, Hassan remains faithful to Amir and is never angry with him. He maintains his friendship with Amir. The Kite Runner is interesting to discuss because Hassan, as one of the main characters in that novel who has developed friendship, love and faithfulness, touches me deeply and gives me a special meaning. What Hassan does to Amir makes the novel more valuable. This novel teaches us the values of friendship that last till the end of life. Based on those points, I have a strong desire to analyze this novel. The analyses itself will focus on the character of Hassan, especially on the meaning of friendship for him.

1.2 Problem Formulation

Based on the previous description, there are three problems that can be formulated as follows 1.2.1 How are Hassan and Amir described in The Kite Runner? 1.2.2 What are the meanings of friendship for Hassan?

1.3 Objectives of the Study

This study aims to analyze the character of Hassan and the meaning of friendship for him as he always shows to Amir. Besides, this study is also to find out the reasons why he still regards Amir as his best friend after receiving some betrayal and the way he maintains his friendship till the end of his life, including what friendship means for him.

1.4 Benefits of the Study

The benefits of the study are to provide some beneficial information for everybody who reads this study especially for the readers and for the students who take the same study. First for the readers, they can learn many things about friendship including how to build good and healthy friendships and how to maintain them. Second is for the students who intend to have a study in literature, especially who have the same study. They can use this study as a reference.

1.5 Definition of Terms

There are some terms in this study that need some clarification to avoid misunderstanding. They are defined as follows: 1.5.1 Character Character is the person, in a dramatic or narrative work, endowed with moral and dispositional qualities that are expressed in what they say-the dialog- and what they do-the action Abrams 20 1.5.2 Characterization Henkel defines characterization as central to the fictional experience. The principle objective of the creation of the characters in novels is to enable the reader to understand and experience people 86. Thus in this study, characterization means the way the author presents the character. 1.5.3 Motive Worchel and Shebilske define motive in their book Psychology Principles and Applications as the condition that energizes and directs the behavior of an organism 373. Thus, motive is something behind the action. Someone has a motivation in doing an action. In another word, there is no action without motivation. 1.5.4 Friendship In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Psychology, friendship is defined as a special, familiar and highly valued type of human social relationship Manstead and Hewstone 250. In line with the word friendship, Saint Augustine Ed. Sister Marie Aquinas 219 states the meaning of friendship as follows: Friendship is a union between persons who, loving God with their whole hearts, souls, and minds, and loving each other as themselves, are joined for all eternity to each other.