Best of Week - is Assef a sociopath?

The most important thing we discussed this week was whether or not Assef is a sociopath.  This is because it will help us determine how to analyze characters in the future.  Granted, we will probably not encounter too many more situations exactly like this one, but it is the practice doing this sort of thing that will be useful in the long run.  Plus, understanding characters may be the most important skill we learn in english class because we will use it every second of every minute of every hour of every day for the rest of our lives.  We will use it not only reading books, but also in real life when we encounter other people and have conversions with them.  It will also help us in our writing when we are trying to understand our own characters.

I do not believe Assef is not a sociopath.  While his moral compass is certainly broken, he is capable of seeing emotion in others.  Someone said the definition of a sociopath is someone who does not know what he is doing to others, is incapable of understanding it.  Assef knows what he is doing to others, and he knows all the moral rules.  He proves that at the party when he is able to make small talk and impress parents.  He just doesn't care.  That is universally understood, I believe.  So, while Assef is a terrible person, he is not a sociopath.  We need to find a new word to describe the likes of him.  Does evil work for you guys?

But why is Assef this way?  What set of experiences has led him to this awful personality?  There are two points I will make.  

First, a persons personality is determined strictly by their experiences.  All babies are born good, and it is what has happened to them that determines what sort of person they become.  They don't know any better than what they are taught by their friends, their teachers, and most of all, their parents.  While their nature certainly plays into it a little bit, I do no believe that the random matching of genes is enough to create something so horrible.  

Second, Assef had horrible parents.  At the party, Amir commented that his parents look practically scared of their son, of what they had created.  They had somehow not given him the ability to feel guilt for what he has done, to feel sorry for other people.  The alternative is that he had great parents who were just awful people, but that doesn't explain how they behaved at the party.  they must have simply not cared about who he was or what he became.  After all, they let him have the brass knuckles he used to take off someone's ear, they obviously can't care too much.