What is courage? Courage is the ability to defend someone when faced with a dangerous situation as opposed to cowardice. In Khaled Hosseini's novel "The Kite Runner", all the characters demonstrate the balance between courage and cowardice in their own ways and for various kinds of reasons. Firstly, characters like Hassan, Soraya and Baba describe this certain quality of courage, secondly, characters like Amir, Sanubar and Hassan describe the quality of cowardice, and finally characters like Sohrab, Farid and Zaman describe the balance between courage and cowardice. The author, Khaled Hosseini, portrays the contrast between courage and cowardice by using these characters in the novel to represent the universal quality of being human. When Amir and Hassan met Assef, who is also a bully with brass knuckles, and his two friends, Wali, and Kamal, Assef shows courage by saying, “You're right agha. But maybe you didn't realize that I'm the one holding the slingshot. If you make a move, they will have to change your nickname from Assef 'the Ear Eater' to 'One-Eyed Assef', because I have this rock aimed at your left eye” (Hosseini 45-46). Although Hassan was afraid of Assef, who is much older and more powerful, due to his love towards his best friend, Amir, he threatens Assef with a slingshot saving Amir and preventing them from being attacked by Assef. Furthermore, later in the novel, Hassan portrays his love and loyalty towards his Amir by promising to bring back his blue kite after the kite tournament and not handing it over to Assef, when he was cornered by them. Show courage by saying, “Amir agha won the tournament and I ran this kite for him. I handled it fairly. This is his kite” (Hosseini 77). As a result, he is raped by Assef for his courage and bravery. This shows how he has always been loyal and faithful to his half-brother, even though he never knew that Amir was, in fact, his half-brother. Hassan“Amir, Hassan and their fathers live together in an affluent neighborhood of Kabul. Hazaras act as servants of their Pashtun superiors, but are also part of the family, clashing with the social norm” (Spiegel 2007). This was a courageous act as the entire Pashtun community is against the Hazaras living in his family as they have violated from the normal rules and expectations of the Kabul community and in a way it would be considered a deviant act. This not only demonstrates his act of courage but also an act of kindness, since Baba could have simply thrown Hassan and Ali out of the house after the death of his father, who raised Ali. As a result, Baba becomes angry with Amir, when asked if he would consider hiring new servants from Amir, while Baba replies, “You make me feel ashamed. And Hassan... Hassan isn't going anywhere, do you understand?" (Hosseini 95). Baba is not the bravest character in the novel, however he was braver than Amir. This is because Baba was able to redeem himself from his past mistakes by doing charity, building an orphanage, helping the poor and so on, although he was unable to admit the truth to society. In a way he was braver than Amir because he was able to reveal his truth to his neighbor, or business partner, Rahim.