Describe social inequality from Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner?

Class distinctions play an enormous role in Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner. In fact, it is the relationship between the story's main protagonist and narrator, Amir, and his childhood friend Hassan that provides the basis for this illustration of the extent to which social inequality determined these characters' fate. Amir comes from an upper-class family, his descriptions of his father, Baba, and the house owned by Baba used to reveal the family's social standing in Afghanistan's capital Kabul:

"Everyone agreed that my father, my Baba, had built the most beautiful house in the Wazir Akbar Khan district, a new and affluent neighborhood in the northern part of Kabul. Some thought it was the perfect house in all of Kabul. A broad entryway flanked by rosebushes led to the sprawling house of marble floors and wide windows. Intricate mosaic tiles, handpicked by Baba in Isfahan, covered the floors of the four bathrooms. Gold-stitched tapestries, which Baba had bought in Calcutta, lined the walls; a crystal chandelier hung from the vaulted ceilings."

This description of the house in which Amir grew up contrasts widely not just with the background he will provide about Hassan, the son of the family's housekeeper, but about most of the country in which Amir's story takes place. Afghanistan, even before the series of coups that culminated in the December 1979 invasion by the Soviet Union and subsequent war of liberation that would inflict massive devastation on most of the country, was one of the poorest nations in the world. That Amir's father would be a wealthy, successful businessman, able to travel to India to purchase extravagant household goods with which to furnish this ostentatious display of conspicuous consumption, would contrast dramatically to the vast majority of Afghanistan's population. In the following description of Hassan and his father Ali's simple quarters, this contrast is illuminated:

"On the south end of the garden, in the shadows of a loquat tree, was the servant's home, a modest little mud hut where Hassan lived with his father."

That an enormous socioeconomic gulf divided Amir from Hassan is but one element of Hosseini's story. These two boys are best friends, but Amir harbors serious deeply-held resentments against this less-fortunate half-brother. While Amir is physically weak and a little timid, Hassan is strong and brave, and Amir makes clear that his father, Baba's, preferences in a male heir lean towards the illegitimate son and not towards the acknowledged prince of this castle. Amir's resentment of his friend/secret half-brother is the catalyst for the chain of tragic events that Amir will carry within himself for the rest of his life. He looks down on Hassan for the latter's socioeconomic status while resenting Baba's respect for the more courageous of the two boys. When Amir reflects upon Hassan's rape by the sadistic Assef, it is that class distinction between him and Hassan that protects him:

"Not for the first time, it occurred to me that Assef might not be entirely sane. It also occurred to me how lucky I was to have Baba as my father, the sole reason, I believe, Assef had mostly refrained from harassing me too much."

When Assef, who himself is the product of a more upper-class environment, is threatening the two boys, he is careful to divide his victims according to class, prompting the following memories from Amir:

"But he's not my friend! I almost blurted. He's my servant! Had I really thought that? Of course I hadn't. I hadn't. I treated Hassan well, just like a friend, better, even, more like a brother. But, if so, then why, when Baba's friends cam to visit with their kids, didn't I ever include Hassan in our games? Why did I play with Hassan only when no else was around?"

The portrait the now-grown Amir paints of himself is not flattering. As he reflects on this period of his life from the safety of America, he is ashamed of his conduct. He knows that he treated Hassan as a servant because the role of class distinctions in the only world he then-knew dictated such treatment. That he stands-by and allows Hassan to be raped by Assef that fateful day is the story's most explicit condemnation of the social inequities that plagued Kabul. Class distinctions dictated that Amir should be protected and that Hassan should be victimized.