“Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.” and in Amir's case he does not redeem himself. It is in Amir’s character to act for himself, even in a mature age, than others. Amir let Hassan be abused and had even taken out his guilt on Hassan. He may take Sohrab under his care but he only did so with the idea that he won’t have to take him back to America with him. Hassan is a constant friend to Amir. He defends Amir even if he knows that he will be picked on. Still, Hassan stood up to every foe that come in front of Amir and when a simple shout could have saved his friend, he froze. So Amir tries to redeem himself for a small mistake, a simple thing such as “sorry” could have do it, by attempting to make Hassan mad at him. The second attempt to release his guilt monster was to make Hassan disappear for good. The greatest magic sketch the little afghan boy could think of was to …show more content…
Sohrab stood up to Assef and used all his will to injury Assef and helped Amir escape. A small child. like Amir was. had wounded a man twice his size and three times his strength. The excuse of Amir being only twelve has been thrown out the window because Sohrab, a child who that day was raped and beaten, had defeated a foe of Amirs. Then, when Sohrab trusted that Amir would save him, like he had done for Amir, he was thinking of sending him to the one place that had scared him the most. He fought everyday and a man who can not see his hands in front of his face was leading him into hell. Amir’s few reasons to save Sohrab was, first, that Rhan khan had pressured him into the whole ordeal with the fact that it was his dying wish and, second, that sohrab would have a place to stay that wasn’t Amir’s house. These acts are only done because Amir knows that when he goes back to America it will all be the same and he won’t have to deal with his past life ever
After some misgivings, Amir agrees to rescue Hassan's son, Sohrab, from an orphanage in Kabul. Amir even squares off against a Talib official who is actually Assef. In order to save Sohrab, Amir has to fight Assef, but Amir get beaten up badly by Assef. Amir can be seen as good because of what he done, he risked his life and almost got killed by Assef, but Sohrab saved Amir by shooting him in the eye with a slingshot. Even though Amir didn’t do anything good in his childhood and most of his adulthood too. He could have only saved Sohrab out of guilt and maybe some good intentions of actually being thought of as a good person for once, “Sometimes, I think everything he did, feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of redeeming himself. And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.” (302). Amir is trying to redeem himself after all these years of being a coward and it pays off in the long
Rahim Khan asked for Amir to come and save Sohrab because he knew about the past and felt this was the way Amir would be able to make up for his mistakes. However, Amir wasn’t willing to risk his life for the son of the man who was not only his best friend, but who had put himself in danger countless times to save Amir. This is very selfish because this boy in in need of help and he simply wants to throw money at the situation and stay out of it. Another example of Amir being selfish was when (Pg 309) they found out that the couple who were going to adopt Sohrab weren’t there so he was willing to just dump him with Farid without any further thought. This is extremely selfish because that is his nephew and he is willing to leave him in war stricken Kabul where the boy has already been abused by the Taliban. He only concern was getting home safe to America and doing the bare minimum to save Sohrab in hopes to clear his conscious. The final example of Amir being selfish was when he said that he hopes that he doesn’t end up letting Sohrab get hurt like he let hassan get hurt, only because he doesn’t want that sin stuck with him too: “I will do all of this one wish: My
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
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.
When he gets, Baba’s friend, Rahim Khan’s call and hears, “Come. There is a way to be good again”(192), he decides to go to Pakistan without any hesitation. Amir has a vital need to be good again and guesses Rahim Khan knows about his past, so he wants to see Rahim Khan to try to begin his redemption. After hearing the stories about Hassan and his son Sohrab, he determines to go back to Afghanistan and saves Sohrab alone. With the strong will to be good, Amir is no longer a coward. Although there are so many difficulties, he eventually saves Sohrab and takes him to America. Furthermore, Amir tries to atone his previous sin. After he saves Sohrab, he spares no effort to make Sohrab happy and earn his trust. “I struggled out of bed and crossed the space between us. ‘I won’t ever get tired of you, Sohrab’… ‘That’s a promise. You’re my nephew’ ”(324). To express the love that he didn’t give to Hassan, Amir becomes another man: He is unselfish and generous. He considers Sohrab as the most important person in his life and tries his best to love Sohrab. In the end, when he sees a steady smile spread across Sohrab’s face while flying kites in America, Amir finishes his
Amir makes mistakes and hurts his friend Hassan, and immediately afterwards he felt guilt, and wanted forgiveness, but Hassan acted like Amir did nothing, which bothered Amir even worse. And that lasted on, throughout his childhood he’s constantly upset about what he has done to Hassan, he doesn’t feel like it can be fixed. 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
Hassan would do anything for his friends and treat everyone, even bullies, with respect because his respectful dad, Ali, taught him to always be loyal to all, and never hurt anyone. Ali was Baba’s servant and long-time friend, and stayed close to him throughout their childhood and adulthood. Amir's actions showed how much of a coward he was. Amir suffered his whole life living with the guilt of knowing that Hassan was raped, much like Baba lived his whole life in guilt knowing that he stole the truth from Ali by committing adultery.
Amir wakes up after fighting Assef in the hospital thinking about Sohrab, “for some reason I can’t think of I want to thank the child” (Hosseini 293). Sohrab is the first thing Amir thinks of when he wakes up in a groggy state in hospital. Sohrab was willing to attempt to save Amir’s life, a man he barely knew, even though it meant risking his own life. In this way, he was able to not only physically save Amir but also mentally because he allows Amir to complete his mission and redeem himself. While struggling against Assef, Amir thinks, “...for the first time since the winter of 1975, I felt at peace...I hadn’t been happy and I hadn’t felt better, not at all. But I did now. My body was broken...but I felt healed. Healed at last.” (Hosseini 289). Sohrab feels guilty for what he did to Assef, although it saved himself and Amir. Amir tells him, “There are bad people in this world, some people stay bad. Sometimes you have to stand up for them. What you did to that man is what I should have done to him all those years ago. You gave him what he deserved. He deserved more” (Hosseini 319). While talking to Sohrab, Amir acknowledges that he was wrong and that he could have avoided all his guilt, if he had only stepped in against Assef. But he had not, so part of Amir making up for his sins was to stand up to Assef, and win a fight against him. However, in the end, Sohrab is the one
As a young boy he made the wrong decision in life by letting Hassan get raped, which led to his guilt. The guilt grew to the point where Hassan and Ali had to move out of Baba’s house and start a new life away from Amir. Hassan’s son Sohrab is a significant character who represents Amir’s hope for redemption. Sohrab led to Amir’s redemption by giving Amir the opportunity to do good for his past actions. On the quest for redemption, Amir achieves the redemption he desired through his fight with Assef.
After weeks of secrecy, a brutal fight, and battles with the immigration office, Amir is able to return to America with a bright perspective of his new home albeit broken, beat, and scarred, and a new adopted child, Sohrab. The developed Amir is brought out with his interaction with General Taheri. In the novel, Amir shows his new found ability to stand up for himself with the quote, “‘And one more thing, General Sahib,’ I said. You will never again refer to him as a ‘Hazara boy’ in my presence. He has a name and it’s ‘Sohrab’” (361).
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).
Amir’s redemption is a large part of the novel and is carried out almost entirely until the end of the story. He travels to rescue Hassan’s son, Sohrab, from the orphanage he was placed in after the death of his parents. He promises to find him a safe home with someone but after time passes he feels like this is not enough. He then speaks to his wife and decides to take Sohrab back to the United States with him and take care of his as if he was one of his own. Earlier in the novel when Baba is speaking Amir over hears his conversation as he is referring to him stating, “A boy who won 't stand up for himself becomes a man who can 't stand up to anything” (Hosseini, 22). Thus meaning that if he is able to stand up for himself as a young boy, when he is grown he will not be able to stand up for anything that is in his future. This is true throughout the story until he stands up for himself and Sorhab when he is arguing with his life long bully, Assef. Amir lacked the courage to defend himself in the novel until he finally took charge and went against
With the courage he built up to get back into his community, he wants to do everything in his power to help that community. He wants to help others who went through similar experiences as him in order to make himself feel like he has redeemed himself. Similarly in The Kite Runner, Amir tries to redeem himself by going to Afghanistan and saving Sohrab, Hassan’s son. The biggest way that Amir can help Sohrab escape his brutal life in Afghanistan, is by bringing him to America. Amir says this to Sohrab, “ ‘Would you like to come live in America with me and my wife,’ “ (336).
First, In the end did Amir really get his second chance? When Amir was a child he did some very sketchy and dishonorable things. Which lead to putting him and his best friend on edge, was the time when Amir witnessed his raping. Also putting family last in his mind, even making some of his family to leave. That's why he takes the last chance he has to redeem himself by going back to Pakistan.
Amir's blunt rejection to Rahim Khan’s request to bring Sohrab is an act of betrayal to Hassan. He betrays Hassan one more time, even when Hassan dies as a loyal friend. Through the book, Amir’s ongoing troubles haunt him as the years go by, but I believe he would take any opportunity to redeem himself.