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Forgiveness in the kite runner
How is forgiveness a theme in the kite runner
How is forgiveness a theme in the kite runner
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Nick Baden
Mrs. Gilbert
Honors World Literature
5 October 2014
The Kite Runner Essay
In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, one of the main themes is forgiveness. Forgiveness is defined as the decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward someone. Many people are wronged in this novel; many characters seek forgiveness and try to make amends for what they have done. The characters of Baba, Hassan, and Amir all exhibit examples of seeking and giving forgiveness. They all show the important role of forgiveness in The Kite Runner.
Baba is the father of Amir and the illegitimate father of Hassan. Ali is Baba’s friend and stepbrother. After Ali marries a woman named Sanaubar Baba has intercourse with her, completely dishonoring
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Ali as well as just betraying him. After Rahim Kahn reveals this to Amir he says, “Sometimes, I think everything he did, feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all a way of redeeming himself “(Hosseini 302). Baba sought redemption in helping others. He felt that if he did enough selfless things he could somehow find a way to forgive himself for what he did to Ali. Another way he tried to seek forgiveness is to take care of his illegitimate son Hassan. According to Amir Baba preaches highly against stealing, that it is the worst sin anyone can commit. After Amir frames Hassan for stealing his money Baba says to Hassan, ”I forgive Baden 2 you”(Hosseini 105). Amir is shocked by this because he thought Baba would throw him out, but he did not. Baba forgives him because he hopes that that same forgiveness can be shown to him. Forgiveness plays the role in Baba’s life as an incentive for him to be a better person. Hassan is a character that has endured many hardships throughout the course of this novel. From his friend betraying him, his mother leaving him, getting constantly abused and bullied, his life is not an easy one. One thing that hurt Hassan the most is that his mother abandoned him and his father. One day she appears at his doorstep, bloody and beaten up. After she reveals who she is he storms off. Rahim Kahn tells Amir that, “He took Sanaubar’s hand in both of his and told her she could cry if she wanted to but she needn’t, she was home now, he said, home with her family”(Hosseini 210). Hassan forgives his mother for abandoning him; through this he is able to fully embrace her. He now can create a relationship with her that he has always longed for. Hassan also is able to forgive Amir. After Amir watched him get raped, after he framed him for stealing his money, and after he just completely shut him out Hassan still saw Amir as a lifelong friend. When Amir travels back to the Middle East he reads a letter that Hassan left for him. Hassan told Amir that, “If you do, you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you”(Hosseini 218). Even after how badly Amir treated Hassan he was still able to bring himself to forgive him. The role forgiveness plays in Hassan’s life is that it helps him to amend relationships that were broken. Baden 3 Throughout the novel Amir makes decisions that he comes to regret later in his life.
Amir always looks up to his father Baba, everything he says he takes to heart and all he wants to do is receive his approval. Amir always heard his father preach about how lying is stealing the truth from someone. Amir becomes enraged when he learns that Baba never told him that Hassan was his brother. Amir then comes to realize that even though his father lied he was still right about some things. Amir said, “Baba had lied about a lot of things as it turned out but he hadn’t lied about that”(Hosseini 227). Amir forgives his father because even though he deceived him he was only trying to what was best for him. Amir comes to the realization that the only way that he can redeem himself is by rescuing Hassan’s son Sorhab. Amir still feels the guilt press down on his shoulders. He is still overwhelmed with regret for what he did to Hassan. After he goes to rescue his nephew he has an epiphany while Assef is bludgeoning him, “My body was broken-just how badly I wouldn’t find out till later-but I felt healed. Healed at last”(Hosseini 289). Amir finally forgives himself for everything that he has done. When he is getting beat to a pulp he feels as if it is atonement for what he had done in the past. The role forgiveness plays in Amir’s life is one of healing. When he forgives his father and himself he feels whole, he feels happy. As if all of his sins have washed from his
soul. Forgiveness is a major theme in The Kite Runner. Baba, Hassan, and Amir all use forgiveness to somehow repair something that was once broken. Baba wants to redeem himself for what he did to Ali, Hassan wants to rekindle his relationship with his mother and Amir, and Amir wants to redeem himself because of what he did to Hassan. The role forgiveness plays in The Kite Runner is one of healing. Forgiveness heals the soul and drives the characters to do good things.
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
Gandhi once said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” Forgiveness is a fundamental concept in To Kill a Mockingbird. When one forgives and shows compassion for another he or she takes the risk that they will be wounded again. Yet, many of Harper Lee’s characters manage compassion for those who are clearly undeserving. These characters attest that while, forgiving is not forgetting, forgiveness can lead to tolerance. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird shows that forgiveness can be liberating, rectifying, and nurturing.
Novel The Kite Runner Essay In the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, there are several major themes. One of the themes that stands out the most is redemption. This theme is shown through the thoughts and actions of the protagonist of the novel, Amir. He is seeking redemption for betraying his childhood best friend and half-brother Hassan.
Amir’s development from being “a boy who won’t stand up for himself,” to a man that stands up for the morally responsible thing to do (22, Hosseini). When Amir was a child, he tried to escape from his sins in the past by hiding them with lies. However, this only made it worse for Amir, causing him to be an insomniac for much of his life and putting himself through constant torment. Only when Amir became a man, like Baba wanted him to be, was Amir able to face the truth of what he done and put himself on the path of redemption. Even when Amir was suffering a violent beating from Assef, Amir was able to laugh because he knew he was doing what he should have for Hassan years ago. Amir’s development from a child, who lies in order to cower from their own mistakes, into a man, someone who is not only able to admit his sins, but atone for them, is essential to communicating the theme of redemption being the only way to settle with your
It is not often that Amir’s love for Baba is returned. Baba feels guilty treating Amir well when he can’t acknowledge Hassan as his son. Baba discriminates against his son Amir by constantly making him feel weak and unworthy of his father. Baba once said to Rahim Kahn, “If I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own eyes, I’d never believe he’s my son” (Hosseini 23). Amir doesn’t feel like a son towards Baba since he seems like such a weakling. This neglect towards Amir causes him to feel a need to be accepted by Baba to end the constant discrimination from his father and he will do anything for it. “I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” (Hosseini 77). Amir did not stop the rape of his good friend for one sole purpose. Amir felt that he had to betray his own half-brother to gain th...
Baba is a very high standing man in Kabul, but seems to be extremely harsh to Amir when he was a child. He is a very large, tough man who was very well known in the town and as Amir stated in the novel, “Lore has it my father once wrestled a black bear in Baluchistan with his bare hands” (Hosseini 12). This small detail of Baba makes it known to the reader that Baba is a man of great courage and strength. Some may think that an honorable man is one with no flaws, but many disagree. Every human being makes mistakes, including Baba. When Amir grows up and goes back to visit Rahim Khan in Afghanistan, he finds out that his father lied to him his entire life about Hassan being his half-brother. He also finds out from Rahim Khan that all Baba had back then “was his honor, his name” (Hosseini 223). He did not tell Amir and Hassan that they were brothers because they had a different mother and that would have made their entire family be looked down upon in the town. He did it for their own good, and wanted for them both to grow up as honorable men, like himself. There is a difference in making mistakes and trying to do what’s best to fix them, rather than making the same mistakes over and over again, which is what Amir seemed to do in the novel. Amir was the exact opposite of his father, which made it very hard for them to have a
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
First, Baba’s looming shame of his affair prohibits him from being a proper father to Amir and Hassan. Baba fails to inform Amir that his best friend, Hassan, is actually his half-brother because of this affair. Years after Baba’s death, Rahim Khan tells Amir of Baba’s act of adultery. With this betrayal, Amir begins to question everything he values in his father, stating that “Baba had been a thief. And a thief of the worst kind, because the things he’d stolen had been sacred: from me the right to know I had a brother, from Hassan his identity, and from Ali [Hassan’s “father”] his honor. His nang. His namoos” (Hosseini 225). Despite his guilt, Baba makes a vow with Rahim Khan and Ali to keep the affair a secret from his own sons, causing a distortion
“For you, a thousand times over.” In The Kite Runner by Kahled Hosseini, there is a recurring theme of redemption that is portrayed by various literary devices. Kahled excellently juxtaposes devices such as irony, symbolism, and foreshadowing to show redemption within his first novel.
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
...mption comes up over and over. This holds true for Soraya, who needs Amir to forgive her before she can marry him and Rahim Khan, who needs Amir to forgive him for keeping Baba's secret before he dies. "I know that in the end, God will forgive. He will forgive your father, me, and you too ... Forgive your father if you can. Forgive me if you wish. But most important, forgive yourself." Amir is not able to forgive himself until the very end of the novel, and then sees and feels his redemption.
While Baba attempts to live his life according to the Afghan saying, “Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end.crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis [nomads]” (Hosseini 356), Amir strays from this traditional perspective. Baba chose to continue his life unmindful of his past, while Amir, eventually decides to confront him. Although both Baba and Amir have acted immorally, the choices they make find redemption affect the success of their individual attempts. In the novel, Amir’s quest for atonement is more effective than Baba’s because he acts virtuously, while his father, acts selfishly. Ultimately, Amir is the more successful of the two because, in opposition to Baba, he seeks holistic atonement and is willing to make sacrifices to achieve redemption.
Betrayal, redemption, and forgiveness are all major themes in The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini. The novel also focuses around the theme of a broken relationship between father and son as well as facing difficult situations from ones past. Amir and Hassan are best friends with two completely different personalities. Each character in the novel faces their own hardships and eventually learns to overcome those difficulties. Beginning with betrayal then the characters have to make their way to gaining redemption and forgiveness from others, as well as their self, is carried on throughout the novel. It is a continuous story of the relationships between Amir and his father Baba and facing their challenges from the past every day of their present.