Everyone has committed sins at least once in their life, whether it be betraying a close friend or stealing that last chocolate chip cookie in the bowl, but all these actions have some kind of consequences in one way or another. A famous quote written by Tom Shadyac explains that “You can't sow an apple seed and expect to get an avocado tree. The consequences of your life are sown in what you do and how you behave.” It’s like how we can either choose to do the right thing or commit a sin since they all follow with a consequence that depends on the action of the person. The novel The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini seems to have a similar view to this. The novel begins with a short cut-in scene of the rape in the alley during Amir and …show more content…
Hassan’s childhood. After the incident involving Hassan, Assef, and the kite, Amir moves to America in an attempt to forget about their past together in Afghanistan. But like a boomerang, the past came back to haunt him along with Rahim Khan’s phone call about Hassan’s welfare and son, Sohrab. In an attempt to try and redeem himself for the sins, Amir goes back to Afghanistan to try and repay back to Sohrab what he couldn’t do for Hassan.
In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Hosseini argues that sin isn’t always just shown through the actions that people do, but also through the consequences that people receive from committing that sin because of their actions. Sin isn’t just something that people recognize as a grave mistake, it’s something that can ultimately impact people in various different ways if not dealt with. A quote from The Kite Runner that supports this takes place in Baba’s study room where he explains to Amir that sin isn’t like everyone believe it be, and that it all contributes to the main category of stealing from others. Also, Baba tells Amir all these things about sin and how it could potentially impact other people, while knowing that he’s done the very same things himself. Baba describes that, “‘When you kill a man, you steal a life,’ Baba said. ‘You steal his wife’s life to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.’” (18) Amir didn’t really understand the exact meaning that Baba was trying to get at when he was a child, but as he grew up after Hassan’s incident, he begins to feel remorse for what actually happens. To take from someone something, that is what the phrase “you steal” means. Without Amir actually knowing about the truth, he stole Hassan’s right to justice by pushing his own responsibilities for taking the money and watch onto him and stole Baba’s right to knowing the truth of what actually happened because Hassan took the lie upon himself and Amir was too ashamed of himself to tell Baba anything about the truth behind everything. Another part of the book that also supports the claim took place briefly after the kite tournament, where Amir asked Hassan to catch the last kite for him, but everything turned a wrong way when Amir, who was trying to search for Hassan, bumped into Assef in the alley. Hosseini also states, “I stopped watching, turned away from the alley. [...] In the end, I ran. I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me. I was afraid of getting hurt.” (77) Like the previous quote mentioned, Amir took away Hassan’s right to justice because Amir ran away from helping him and left Hassan to Assef to deal with because of various selfish reasons. Amir shows his cowardly actions of him by running away, betraying Hassan, because he was afraid to stand up to a bully and to stand up for a Hazara boy that he treasures as much as a brother if he were to have one. Amir, without knowing clearly of the consequences that would follow, decided to betray his best friend, and the after effects of his own action told him that Amir should’ve protected Hassan, even thought he might’ve gotten disgraced for doing that. Amir now has to deal with the heavy guilt and the feeling of committed sin. Hosseini frequently repeats the word “afraid” in this passage. This shows that how Amir was “afraid” to stand up for himself, and for other, in times of needs, and that caused others around to be punished instead of him. Another word from the passage,“I”, shows a very personal perspective to Hosseini’s portrayal of Amir. It showed how Amir only thought about how he was scared in that alley, how he didn’t want to get beaten up for his own friend and brother, and how he was a coward, a selfish individual that only wanted best for himself, not others. Like how cause and effect exists, there’s sins that are enacted with people’s actions and the consequences of executing the wrongdoing.
There’s always a price to pay for every treat that is gotten. During a phone call from Rahim Khan, Amir finds out the truth about his childhood and the real brother ties between him and Hassan. He ends up trying to figure out what actually happened and goes back to Afghanistan to rescue Sohrab to try and redeem himself for what he’s done to his brother. Amir explains that, “My suspicions had been right all those years. He knew about Assef, the kite, the money, the watch with the lightning bolt hands. He had always known. Come. There is a way to be good again, Rahim Khan had said on the phone just before hanging up.” After the phone call, Amir felt really shook of the overall situation, it was like his nightmare coming true because his fear of others knowing about the situation came true with Rahim Khan. To be more specific, “the kite” had been an important object that represented both the sin that Amir committed and Hassan and Amir’s childhood friendship. These objects that Rahim Khan mentions all somehow relates to Amir’s sinful memory and Amir wants to make up for that past by helping Rahim Khan help Hassan’s son, Sohrab. By help Sohrab to a better life than he has now, Amir begins to feel less guilt and shame for what happened to Hassan even though he couldn’t personally make it up to him, so he does it through his son. Amir also states
that “What Rahim Khan revealed to me changed things. Made me see how my entire life, long before the winter of 1975, dating back to when that singing Hazara woman was still nursing me, had been a cycle of lies, betrayals, and secrets.” This quote was trying to explain that Amir never intended to find out the truth about how his entire childhood was actually far from the truth, but Rahim Khan wanted to give Amir a chance to find out and try to make up for the sins that their parents did by letting Amir know. Amir tries to take in the information given to him by Rahim Khan and thinks that it was a process of “lies, betrayals, and secrets.” This phrase points in the direction of how people break each other, by lying and not telling them the truth, by betraying them and stabbing them in the back when they need them the most, and keeping secrets away so that no one could ever find out. Baba hid the fact that Hassan and Amir were blood-related brothers with a different mother while Amir hid the truth from Baba and the rest of the people about Hassan being raped and taking the watch and money and letting Hassan take the blame. These things point to the facts that both Baba and Amir “lied” and held “secrets” to hide the truth from others. Both of these quotes above catches the main character, Amir, in the action of going through the consequences of committing sins. In both these quotes, Amir is led through a series of events that allows him to find out surprising new from his childhood and begins to regret his actions as a child. As a result of this even deeper hole of shame, he goes back to Afghanistan to try and make up for his mistakes by devoting himself to helping other children in Afghanistan, and especially to Sohrab, to make up for what he couldn’t make up to Hassan. Through the novel The Kite Runner, Hosseini shows the cycle of sins and how it can have different levels of impacts based on the type of sins committed. Hosseini argues that sin isn’t always shown in the actions that people do, it’s also shown in the consequences, like karma, that comes to us like a boomerang for what we’ve done. Amir goes through this cycle of sin and consequences multiple times throughout the novel and learns through these experiences to make better choices. Like Tom Shadyac states, “You can't sow an apple seed and expect to get an avocado tree. The consequences of your life are sown in what you do and how you behave.” The choices that people make in life always has some kind of aftermath to them, no matter what kind, good or bad, of choices. Taking that last piece of chocolate, secretly putting trash in a place that you thought no one would ever notice, all of these actions will eventually have a repercussion effect of some kind.
Page 2 - “I sat on a park bench near a willow tree. I thought about something Rahim Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an afterthought. I looked up at those twin kites.”
Mark Twain best described courage when he said that, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear” (Twain). Both in The One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and Watership Down by Richard Adams, the authors deal with the topic of courage and each share a similar view on it as this quote. Indeed, both authors suggest that courage is not accumulated simply by acts of heroism, but rather by overcoming fears and speaking one’s mind as well. These books are very similar in the way that bravery is displayed through the characters in an uncommon way. Firstly, an example of bravery
As he grows into a man and pushes his regrets to the side - though not ever completely out of his mind - he learns to live through and accept the pain he caused both himself and his best friend, Hassan. Towards the end of the novel, Amir goes to great lengths to earn the redemption he feels he needs in order to finally be at peace. The Kite Runner asks the audience what it truly means to be a good person - do we need to be born with goodness in our hearts, do we live the way that is comfortable and right according to ourselves, or do we have to constantly fail and prove that we are good?
Throughout Amir’s journey to absolve himself from the internal and distressing pain he has felt ever since witnessing the devastating altercation in the alley, trying to reach a standard his father, Baba, would approve of also took a toll on his childhood. Baba often speaks of how he cannot fathom the fact that Amir is a part of his bloodline. (quotes quotes quotes) Trying to achieve the perfect son status that Baba wanted Amir to be clouded his mind so greatly that, during the moment, Amir did not show compassion towards Hassan’s troubling moment of need. What matter most was retrieving the last fallen kite to his father to prove he was not a mistake that Baba made Amir believe he was. Even after Baba’s death, his actions brought more despair and uncertainty to Amir’s complicated life. The secrets and lies that were kept from Amir and even Hassan could have altered the fate of both men. (quote quote quote) Throughout the novel, Amir could arguably be considered as selfish, rude and mean toward his half-brother Hassan. However, since Baba never told the two about their true relationship Amir grew up disliking Hassan because he did not know that they shared blood. Knowing their true identities possibly could
People need redemption from our continual sin, otherwise, we just wallow in the shallowness of that aspect of our lives. Sin stays with an individual and effects the way their lives are lived. Unless they confront their past the sin will always be present. For example, Khaled Hossei’s , The Kite Runner explains how Amir- one of the main characters in the novel redeems himself because he undergoes strong guilt from his past sins. By examining Amir’s sins in his childhood, in his teenage years and in adulthood, his attainment of atonement is revealed. Particularly Amir atones for his past sins of being an eyewitness of Hassan rape who is his most loyal and devoted servant. He is influenced by this moment because he realizes that Hassan always
In Kite Runner there are many lesson that could be learned and many things are shown to the reader that the author is trying to point out. “It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime, Amir” he said” (Hosseini 142). One thing you do can change your whole life and make things either more difficult or easier. The scene in which Baba tells Amir about Soraya past in Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, is important because Hosseini uses it to establish one thing you do can change your whole life and make things either more difficult or easier through Soraya running off with a guy, Amir watching Hassan get raped, and Baba lies.
“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like there's nobody listening, And live like it's heaven on earth.” Said a famous writer named William W. Purkey. Throughout the Kite Runner there were many mistakes that were made that each person let control their entire life. But like this quote says, you have to let those things go and continue to live your life and not let your mistakes define you. ? In the novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini’s repeated the use of rape, sickness, and sacrifice to represent many different things throughout the novel.
Amir spends most of his adult life trying to forget about his cowardice during Hassan’s rape, yet he is awarded with a physical reminder of Hassan. After recuperating from Assef’s attack he endures to rescue Sohrab, Amir has a scar that resembles the one Hassan had during childhood. This is both ironic and symbolic. His new scar makes him like Hassan, similar to how his rescue of Sohrab (bravery) made him like Hassan. Amir rescued Sohrab from the same perpetrator, Assef, that Hassan did for him. The event is further ironic because both Sohrab and Hassan use a slingshot to save Amir. The slingshot represents two generations and symbolizes standing up for what is morally right. Amir’s scar can be viewed as a --- of courage and dignity. He is
Firstly, Amir becomes courageous after knowing Hassan is his half-brother, therefore he decides to face the challenge of finding Sohrab. For instance, Amir is transforming to think positively after knowing the truth: “Rahim Khan had summoned me here to atone not just for my sins but for Baba’s too” (238). Amir is convinced by Rahim Khan that he has the responsibility to save Sohrab from the orphanage, since they share the same blood. Amir also has to atone the sins from his past and Baba’s sin of lying through redemption. Secondly, the atonement Amir receives from Assef’s beating enables Amir to be freed from his guilt. For example, Amir says: “…for the first time since the winter of 1975, I felt at peace. I laughed because I saw that, in some hidden nook in a corner of my mind, I’d ever been looking forward to this…I felt healed. Healed at last.” (303). Amir feels a sense of redemption because what he did not do for Hassan, he can now do for Sohrab. Amir “earns his freedom” to leave Assef’s house as well as healing his guilt from the childhood. Thirdly, at the end of the novel, Amir finally finds his redemption through flying kites with Sohrab and running the kite for Sohrab. For example, “I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But I didn’t care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lips. I ran” (391). Amir running the kite for Sohrab symbolizes that he has redeemed himself from the guilt he has from the past, and the kite is no longer a symbol of his guilt. Finally, Amir has found redemption by acting courageously instead of cowardice, and he is no longer running from the past anymore; he is running towards the
“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.
The story The Kite Runner is centered around learning “to be good again.” Both the movie and the book share the idea that the sins of the past must be paid for or atoned for in the present. In the book, Amir can be seen as a troubled young boy who is struggling with a tremendous amount of guilt. It is easy to blame Amir’s actions on his guilt and his father’s lack of love for him.
The hardships that life reveals can either affect a person in a negative or positive way. They can strengthen or weaken the development of one’s character. Khaled Hosseni’s The Kite Runner is a novel that tells the story of two boys – Amir and Hassan, his childhood friend and servant– who spend their lives attempting to overcome their obstacles. These obstacles create experiences that will shape them for the rest of their lives. Firstly, Hassan and Amir share similar hardships, however Hassan learns and grows from them, and Amir lingers over the negativity, allowing it to destroy his life instead of moving forward. Secondly, Amir is always rescued, which allows him to feel a sense of entitlement, while Hassan fights his own battles, resulting in a greater amount of inner strength. Lastly, as Amir and Hassan become adults in opposite ends of the world, they battle hardships that are very different. The differences within their adulthood continue to show who is the more honourable character. Ultimately, in Khaled Hosseni's The Kite Runner, Hassan is a stronger character than Amir, despite the fact that they both battle similar hardships.
Amir also committed a sin that affected him negatively throughout his life. This sin occurred when Hassan, Amir’s best friend during his childhood, was getting raped by Assef. This situation occurred when the children were chasing kites. Hassan got the kite first, but Assef insisted that he wanted the kite. Assef also had a racial and religious prejudice against Hassan. Because Hassan did not give the kite, Assef decides to rape Hassan as a “punishment”. Instead of helping his friend out, Amir just walked away from the scene and let Hassan get violated in one of the most vulgar ways. After this incident, Hassan quietly walked back home and gave Amir the kite for which he was confronted by Assef for. The kite in this situation proves to be an important symbol. Whereas earlier in the novel the kite represented happiness and fun to Amir, in this situation it represented sin and guilt to Amir. 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).
Loyalty is one of the only things that can hold the bonds of family and friends.
In a lifetime, one will face an abundance of personal battles in their decision making. When bad decisions result negatively, people find peace mentally in redeeming themselves of their sin through redemption. In Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner”, the main character, Amir, commits a sin and goes through great lengths to find redemption. Using metaphors, personification, and irony Hosseini expresses the theme of sin, suffering and redemption. Achieving redemption is a long journey people seek after suffering the consequences of sin.