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.