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Personal narrative on life experiences
Personal narrative on life experiences
Parental abuse effects on children
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As a child Amir grew up with a young servant Hassan, who he considered his friend only in private, and treated him as a worker around others. Despite this poor treatment Hassan remained extremely loyal and kind. Amir then witnessed something horrific happen to Hassan and had the ability to stop the act from happening, but chose to run away out of a selfish fear of what would happen to him. “[Amir] ran because [he] was a coward…[he] was afraid of getting hurt”(Hosseini 77). With the heavy guilt this caused him to live with he framed Hassan for theft, the “one sin”(Hosseini 17). Hassan eventually chose to move away, which resulted in little relief for Amir. Amir continued his life attempting to forget from what he had done but realized “It’s
Amir is, to be put bluntly, a coward. He is led by his unstable emotions towards what he thinks will plug his emotional holes and steps over his friends and family in the process. When he sought after Baba’s invisible love, Amir allowed Hassan to be raped in an alleyway just so that the blue kite, his trophy that would win his father’s heart, could be left untouched. In the end, he felt empty and unfulfilled with the weight of his conscience on his shoulders comparable to Atlas’ burden. Unable to get over his fruitless betrayal, he lashes out and throws pomegranates at Hassan before stuffing money and a watch under his loyal friend’s pathetic excuse for a bed, framing Hassan for theft and directly causing the departure of both servants from his household. Even after moving to America, finding a loving wife, and creating a career for himself in writing, he still feels hollow when thinking of his childhood in Afghanistan. Many years later, he is alerted of Hassan’s death and sets out on a frenzied chase to find his friend’s orphaned son. He feels that he can somehow ease his regrets from all of those years ago if he takes in Hassan’s son, Sohrab. He finds Sohrab as a child sex slave for Assef, who coincidentally was the one to rape Hassan all of those years ago. After nearly dying in his attempt to take back Sohrab, he learns that he can take the damaged child back to the states with him. Sadly, Hassan’s son is so
Although Hassan is his best friend, there are many instances where Amir reveals his jealousy, most notable when Baba sees Hassan as the stronger boy, "self-defense has nothing to do with meanness. You know what always happens when the neighbourhood boys tease him? Hassan steps in and fends them off. I 've seen it with my own eyes…” (Hosseini 24). Clearly, Amir hears how his father compares the two, and unlike Hassan who manages to meet Baba’s expectations, Amir grows bitter towards Hassan. He is unable to fight off his envy which later causes him to sacrifice his best friend’s innocence: “Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” (82), and this is all because he realizes “his shame is complicated by his own realization that in part he doesn’t help his friend precisely because he is jealous of him” (Corbett, 2006). From here, Amir develops strong feelings of guilt that induces him to perform even more destructive acts, such as having Hassan and his father evicted from the house. Amir not only loses a close friend, but now he has to continue to live with remorse as he dwells on these memories. The only way for Amir to redeem himself of his repercussions is through a challenging process of sacrifice and self-discovery. Although one is unsure at this point whether Amir succeeds at his endeavors, it is clear that this story
After watching Hassan be raped, Amir tries to atone for his cowardice. According to Hosseini, “‘Get up! Hit me!’ I said. Hassan did get up, but he just stood there, looking dazed like a man dragged into the ocean by a riptide when, just a moment ago, he was enjoying a nice stroll on the beach.” (Hosseini 92). Hassan still does not want to hurt Amir, so Amir did not get any chance to atone. At last, Amir decide to frame Hassan to make him angry, so that Hassan may do something bad on Amir to make Amir feels better. According to Hosseini, “Baba cam right out and asked. ‘Did you steal that money? Did you steal Amir’s watch, Hassan?’ Hassan’s reply was a single word, delivered in a thin, raspy voice: ‘Yes.’” (Hosseini 92). Amir was shocked when Hassan said that. He can not believe Hassan still chooses to protect him when he did such bad thing to Hassan. Hassan knows all the cause and effect of what Amir does. He knows if he tells Baba that Amir is framing him, Baba will believe him and start to accuse Amir. Since Ali and Hassan decided to leave, Baba may also attribute their leaving to Amir’s fault. So Hassan chooses to be the scapegoat for Amir’s mistake again. Leaving from Baba means Hassan and Ali’s fate is good to change, but Hassan still thinks about Amir at that
Happiness is everyone’s main goal in life; however, one cannot define happiness, nor how it is achieved. Happiness plays a pivotal role in the novel “Kite Runner”, written by Khaled Hosseini. The main character, Amir, is on a quest for happiness and strives for it throughout his entire life; however, it is not without struggle and hardship. Amir achieves many accomplishments in this novel which ultimately lead up to him becoming truly happy. One of Amir’s accomplishments that contributed in his quest for happiness is his marriage with his love, Soraya. Another one of Amir’s accomplishments that also contributed in his quest for happiness is the discovery of his father’s flaws. Furthermore, Amir also gained happiness by giving his orphaned nephew,
The Kite Runner is a book about a young boy, Amir, who faces many struggles as he grows up in Kabul and later moves to America to flee from the Taliban. His best friend and brother , Hassan, was a big part of his life, but also a big part of guilt he held onto for many years. The book describes Amir’s attempt to make up for the past and resolve his sins so he can clear his conscious. Amir is worthy of forgiveness because although he was selfish, he was very brave and faced his past.
While Amir is a Sunni, his childhood friend Hassan is Shi’a, an inferior division of Islam. Simultaneously, Amir and Hassan belong to different ethnic groups-Amir is Pashtun while Hassan is Hazara. During his childhood, Amir would constantly mock Hassan’s illiteracy and poke fun at him. But, the pivotal demonstration of pressure from his surroundings that makes Amir commit his own act of cruelty is when he watches Assef rape Hassan for refusing to give him the kite that Hassan caught for Amir. To this, Amir describes the look of Hassan’s face to “a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb” (76). Throughout his upbringing, Amir constantly believed that his father blamed him for killing his mother in childbirth. To Amir, Hassan’s rape is a sacrifice that Hassan has to pay the price, the lamb to kill, in order to win his father over. To justify his refusal to intervene, Amir reminds himself that “[Hassan] was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?” (77). Amir’s surroundings cause him to have a negative outlook on people that his society deem lower. Amir knows he is morally wrong for not helping Hassan, but his need for his father’s love overpowers his friendship. Adding to his pressures, Amir believes that Baba prefers Hassan over him, a belief that further drives him to be cruel to Hassan. As a result, Amir’s motivation for validation and love from his father
Despite living majority of his life with the guilt of not helping Hassan, Amir’s nemesis is yet to come. Destiny plays a huge game with Amir and reveals to him that Hassan is his illegitimate brother during his visit with Rahim Khan. Reacting with various emotions, Amir first decides to head back about to America, but in the end makes the first brave decision in his life by going back to Kabul “…to atone not just for [his] sins, but…Baba’s too” (198). Amir tries to compensate for his sin by rescuing Hassan’s son, Sohrab, from the brutality occurring in Kabul. Amir puts his entire life in jeopardy by facing the oppression in Kabul so he could make a genuine effort in eliminating his sins. In an ideal world, when one truly makes an effort to redeem themselves for their wrongdoings, they are usually gifted with forgiveness. However, in reality, Amir’s heroic act of saving Sohrab, did not free him of sorrow because he still has to live with his nemesis for the rest of his life. By taking Sohrab to America with him, Amir constantly is reminded of his hamartia by envisioning Hassan through Sohrab. This shows how the guilt from a cowardly act leads one into a lifelong feeling of
In the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini the, main Protagonist is a man that goes by the name Amir. Some argue that he is an anti-hero, or not a hero. No. Amir is a hero. Amir is just another person who was lost at one point and needed direction and needed clear the guilty feelings he had. Through these actions he creates a heroic journey, he follows a hero’s path.
Due to Amir’s cowardice during Hassan’s rape, he feels guilty for committing the vilest sin in Afghan culture. “I had one last chance to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan – the way he’d stood up for me all those times in the past – and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run.
And he strives to do things throughout the novel to achieve that. One good deed he does trying to be good again, was when he goes back home, he is at a house with Farid and three scraggly boys were looking at Amir. Amir thought they were looking at his watch, but when he gave it to them they ignored it. He later realizes they are looking at his food, not his watch. That they are just hungry. So the next morning he puts money under a mattress. “Earlier that morning, when I was certain no one was looking I did something I had done twenty-six years earlier: I planted a fistful of crumpled money under a mattress.” (Hosseini 242) He also tries to find Hassan himself. But upon arriving Rahim Khan tells him that Hassan and his wife have been murdered by the Taliban. “Hassan protested. So they took him out to the street.” “No,” I breathed. “And order him to kneel” “No. God, no.” “And shot him in the back of the head.” “No.” “Farzana came screaming and attacked them” “No.” “Shot her too. Self-defense, they claimed later” “But all I could manage was to whimper “No. “ (Hosseini 219) Amir gets more upset after this, thinking he can’t possibly fix this anymore. But he realizes he has one final chance at redemption, saving Hassan’s son,
He dishonours Ali in “the worst way an Afghan man can be dishonoured”(Hosseini, 238), by sleeping with his wife. Furthermore, due to his sense of pride and honour, he also becomes torn between Amir, who was the socially legitimate half and Hassan, the illigitimate half. He is a “tortured soul”, as he could not love Hassan openly and therefore neglects Amir of the affection and fatherly connection Amir is yearning for. Ironically, during Amir’s childhood, he tells him that, “there is only one sin. And that is theft…When you lie you steal someone’s right to the truth,” (Hosseini, 237), yet he stole from his children the right to know they were siblings, as well as Hassan’s identity. When he sees Amir, he is reminded of his feeling of guilt each time, which puts a huge strain on their relationship. Nevertheless, he uses those feelings of remorse as motivation to do good, as when he was feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, saving the woman from being raped, giving money to friends in need and subtly doing acts of kindness towards Hassan, he slowly redeems
The only reason that Hassan got raped was that he was trying to get a kite for Amir. Now the kite acts a reminder to Hassan of his wrong-doing and it will now begin to haunt him for a long time. Although when in America, Amir does not get reminded about Hassan, deep inside he still feels guilty. Amir immediately begins to feel the most guilt when he goes to Iran when Rahim Khan, Amir’s childhood friend, asks him to come. He feels that Rahim Khan has reminded him of his “past of unatoned sins”(Hosseini 2).
After the entire faithful years of serving Amir’s household Ali has been betrayed by Amir. After the abhorrent incident Hassan had experienced Ali encountered Amir if anything had happened the night before and Amir lied to his face. Not even hesitating Amir lied to him without thinking on what Amir was going through after the rape. Amir betrayed Ali’s trust knowing what his son has experienced. Not even once in Amir’s thought on what Baba had told him "When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth…” (18) which he had remotely taken away from Ali. The day Hassan was being framed for stealing Amir’s watch and envelopes with money he caused pain knowing Hassan would ever steal. Ali has lived for years in Baba’s home to spot Amir when he was lying “[he] was a lair, a cheat, and a thief” (105) but at the end Ali was glad that it was all over at the end of the day he was only a servant.
Assef is the character responsible for Amir’s guilt. He is the one who raped Hassan and if he did not, the story would be changed drastically. He is the source of evil in the novel. The sociopathic qualities he demonstrates are very evident. Assef if very different from the other characters in the sense that he never feels guilt and has no conscious. Baba and Amir both are able to redeem themselves but Assef has no remorse after his actions. Assef believes that “Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns … we are the true Afghans, the pure Afghans, not this Flat-nose here. His people pollute our homeland.”(40) Assef bullies Hazara’s such as Hassan as he believes people like him should not be in Afghanistan. His actions are very rude and he never apologizes
While thinking of human flaws and goodness, the character Hassan from the novel ‘the kite runner’ said ‘for you, 1000 times over’ to his best friend Amir to show his loyalty. This created the main focus of the storyline of Amir‘s mistakes and their consequences. These mistakes question if Amir could ever redeem himself, but him putting effort to fix his mistakes by taking in Hassan’s son and standing up to Assef shows he is a redeemable character.