Who is Amir?

The Kite Runner is an excellent novel. I really felt that it has been easy to read, but it still has many layers to it. One of those layers, the one I really have focused on, is the layer of human nature.
Human nature seems to be a fickle thing. So many works of fiction are about this very topic. It is an almost obsessive topic because it applies to us, every one of us.
The Kite Runner has a layer to it where we see a little boy asking himself who he is. I found the first 79 pages of the novel were him trying to answer this question. Rahim Khan is speaking with Amir's father and telling him that Amir does not have a mean streak. Amir thinks to himself, "Rahim Khan had been wrong about that mean streak thing" (Hosseini 23). He was so much different than his father, so who was he?
Exploration and discovery, however, are usually not without cost. This cost seems to not only affect him for the rest of his life, but his servant Hassan, too. After Hassan finds a plot hole in Amir's story, Amir thinks to himself, "What does he know, that illiterate Hazara? He'll never be anything but a cook. How dare he criticize you?" (Hosseini 34).
Hassan gives up so much, but he always keeps his integrity. I believe it is this integrity that drives Amir for the rest of his life. He is always seeking to regain that lost integrity.