Amir's Guilt

It is only natural for humans to make mistakes, but it is how mistakes are resolved that will dictate one's fate. In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, the character Amir, with the events that occur in his life, knows a thing or two about making mistakes. The events that take place in the story causes Amir to struggle in finding redemption for those mistakes. Amir’s feeling of guilt and need for redemption becomes a great part of Amir’s path to growing up. Any person who has endured similar experiences will evolve as a person just the same. Through Amir’s actions, he builds up a great amount of guilt, but through his later actions and gained knowledge, Amir does redeem himself. It can be proven that Amir achieves redemption when one learns

about what he has initially done to feel guilty and what he does to finally be redeemed. Amir must endure both physical and emotional pain in order to find redemption from his past sins as a child.
Amir ends up doing certain things he regrets in his lifetime.

There has been a great deal of guilt that follows. The start of Amir’s “downfall” is when Amir watches Hassan get raped by their childhood bully, “... ‘I’m letting you keep the kite, Hazara. I’ll let you keep it so it will always remind you of what I’m about to do” (Hosseini 78). Assef rushes at Hassan and then the most tragic event of both Amir and Hassan’s childhood occurs. The most important factor of this incident to Amir is the fact that he could do something to stop Assef. But, has decided not to, “I bit on my fist. Shut my eyes” (Hosseini 78). While Amir’s best friend is being raped by their “bully, “ Amir tensed up and tried to avoid looking, not even turning his head. Not being able to fight for Hassan becomes one of Amir’s greatest regrets. His immense guilt soon leads to the close bond being even further ripped apart by when he decides to remove Hassan from his life completely. After Amir’s birthday, he feels guilty with all of the gifts he has received. This guilt, plus the guilt from Hassan’s incident “forces” Amir to try to remove Hassan from their house by putting his new watch and money under Hassan’s bed. Baba then asks Hassan, “Did you steal that money? Did you steal Amir’s watch, Hassan?” (Hosseini 111). Hassan then “admits” to stealing the watch and surprisingly is forgiven by Baba. This is even more devastating because Baba has once said how theft is the worst crime and Amir has framed

Hassan of committing this terrible crime. When Hassan is forgiven, Amir realizes what mistake he has made. Even though Baba tried to convince Hassan and his father, Ali, to stay, they were both too disgraced to stay with them. This would be the last time Amir would ever see Hassan. “I caught one final blurry glimpse of Hassan slumped in the backseat before Baba turned left at the street corner where we’d played marbles so many times” (Hosseini 115). These two vital events do end up spiralling into more problems and greater regret in his life.
Even though what Amir does in his past does cause him guilt and regret, he does realize that he can not run away from his problems like he does by going to America.

Rahim Khan tells Amir that, “There is a way to be good again” (Hosseini 2). Early in the novel, this immediately tells the reader that the narrator has done something wrong in this character’s point of view atleast, but there is a way to redeem himself from his past mistakes. Amir, at this point, has carried on with his life and is living in America with his wife. Even though Amir has a great future as a successful writer, past still haunts him as he has told no one about what happened on those two occasions. He can not get over what has happened and wishes things could have gone differently. When Amir learns about this possibility of feeling forgiven, he decides he must take it. In chapter seventeen, Amir learns all about his old friend Hassan and how he grew up with a family and a wife. But, Hassan and his wife were both killed and only their child, Sohrab, remains. Rahim Khan tells Amir that he has to be the one to take Sohrab back with him. Amir then asks why it should be him and Rahim replies with, “I think we both know why it has to be you, don't we?” (Hosseini 233). For Amir, this proves to him that someone knows and that he knows that Amir feels guilty about it. Amir grants Rahim his wish and sets out to find Sohrab. There is also a little moment where Amir finds a little self redemption and

parallelism. When Amir goes to Wahid’s house (his driver’s brother), he finds the family is rather poor due to their living conditions but still so kind. So, as a way to repay them he “... planted a fistful of crumpled money under a mattress” (Hosseini 254). This directly relates to how Amir slipped the money under Hassan’s mattress, but now it is for a better reason. Also, a major part of Amir achieving his self redemption is when he confronts Assef to rescue Sohrab. The two break out into a fight and Amir starts laughing and Assef asks why as he beats him. Amir explains that, “What was so funny was that, for the first time since the winter of 1975, [he] felt at peace” (Hosseini 303). While getting beat by Assef, Amir feels like this has been a long time coming and is happy that he his guilt is being released because he feels he deserves this. There is a long, hard process of taking Sohrab home with Amir and just because of Amir not giving up on Sohrab he proves his dedication and commitment to Sohrab himself, but also Hassan. No one has expected Amir to take care of anything of Hassan’s except for Rahim. Amir went beyond Hassan’s expectations for him and therefore is redeemed.
In conclusion, Amir does get redemption for his childhood mistake through multiple other actions throughout his life. He learns many valuable lessons and virtues along the way. Amir has felt very guilty for a majority of his life, and many things were required to happen to feel like his life could get back on track. It is not just a beating or picking up a kid from the Taliban. The great amounts of pain that Amir has gone through both physically and emotionally had to happen to bring peace to himself instead of dealing with immense guilt for the rest of his life.