Without Guilt

Man has struggled with guilt since the first sin. In the Bible, after Adam and Eve disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit, they discover something new; the feeling of guilt. The same feeling is laced in the pages of Khaled Hosseini’s, The Kite Runner. Amir is a profound example of the destructive tendencies of unmanaged guilt. Not only does Amir’s guilt haunt him continually, it follows him wherever he goes for most of his life. While guilt is not a desired emotion by itself, after reading The Kite Runner, one can’t help but feel that good often comes about because of guilt. In order to illustrate the impact guilt can have upon a person, Hosseini uses aphorisms, similes, and symbolism throughout his novel.

The Kite Runner is plentiful in aphorisms of all different intensity. In fact, the novel actually opens with an aphorism. On the first page, one of the first things the narrator utters is, “That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out” (Hosseini 1). We later learn that the narrator is Amir and the first chapter is him looking back at his life after receiving a call from Rahim Khan. Amir has been trying to bury his past, his guilt, for almost thirty years. Amir is telling the reader what he has learned from a life of guilt. Guilt will work its way out, no matter how hard you try to suppress it. There is an exception though, and it applies to those without a conscious. “A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer” (301). Rahim Khan’s purpose in including this in his letter is to show Amir that he is good and that he has a conscious. Suffering is what makes Amir human; it is how he knows he still good. Amir’s consc...

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...ter. What Amir did was wrong, but because of his extreme guilt, he blows the situation out of proportion and blames himself for too much.

Aphorisms in The Kite Runner give the reader insight to how guilt affects people generally, while similes and symbols give the reader concrete examples. As the novel displays, guilt is a part of everyone’s life. There isn’t much of avoiding it for those with a conscious. Most of the time, guilt has a way of working its way out. It motivates us to atone for our wrongdoings, “…when guilt leads to good” (302). If all this is true, than the idea of guilt, a word with such a negative connotation, is changed. It is not such a bad thing, but possibly a good thing. Guilt is not wrongdoing; guilt is the result of wrongdoing. So if we have done something wrong, guilt is there to make sure we fix it. Without guilt, we are all just Assefs.