What is courage? Courage is the ability to defend someone in a dangerous situation, as opposed to cowardice. In the novel “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, all the characters demonstrate in their own way the balance between courage and cowardice for various reasons. Firstly, characters such as Hassan, Soraya and Baba describe this certain quality of courage, secondly, characters such as Amir, Sanubar and Hassan describe the quality of cowardice and finally characters such as Sohrab, Farid and Zaman describe the balance between courage and cowardice. The author, Khaled Hosseini, depicts the contrast between courage and cowardice using these characters from the novel to portray 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 haven't noticed that I'm the one holding the slingshot. If you move, they will have to change your nickname from Assef “the ear-eater” to “Assef the one-eyed”, because I have this stone pointed at your left eye” (Hosseini 45-46). Even though Hassan was afraid of Assef, who is much older and powerful, due to his love for his best friend, Amir, he threatens Assef with a slingshot while saving Amir and preventing him from being assaulted by Assef. Furthermore, later in the novel, Hassan describes his love and loyalty to his emir 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. He shows courage by saying, “Amir Agha won the tournament and I flew this kite for him. I handled it fairly. It’s his kite” (Hosseini 77). As a result, he is raped by Assef for his courage and bravery. This shows how loyal and faithful he has always been to his half-brother, even though he never knew that Amir was actually his half-brother. Hassan “Amir, Hassan and their fathers live together in a wealthy neighborhood in Kabul. Hazaras act as servants to their Pashtun superiors, but are also part of the family, in contradiction to the social norm” (Spiegel 2007). This was an act of courage since the entire Pashtun community is against the Hazaras living in their house as this violated the normal rules and expectations of the Kabul community and it would be considered, in some sense, a deviant act . This shows not only his act of courage, but also his 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 recruiting new servants from Amir. Baba replies: “You bring shame to me. And Hassan... Hassan isn't going anywhere, 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 giving charity, building an orphanage, helping the poor, etc., although he was not able to admit the truth to society . He was braver than Amir in a sense because he was able to reveal his truth to his relative or business partner, Rahim.