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Themes of guilt and redemption in Kite Runner
Guilt and shame in the kite runner
Guilt and shame in the kite runner
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Knowing one has broken someone’s trust or his/her own moral code of behavior often leads to remorse or guilt. Khaled Hosseini wrote the moving novel, The Kite Runner, which unfolds a series of unfortunate events, caused by characters’ unethical decisions or actions. It tells the story of Amir, a boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, who is haunted by the guilt of betraying his childhood friend Hassan by abandoning him to be abused. Similarly, Baba deceives his entire family from sharing Hassan’s true identity. Furthermore, Sanubar selfishly abandons her son after giving birth to pursue her own goals. Hosseini’s novel reveals guilt’s power to control lives as it influences people's decisions and pushes them to seek redemption as seen in the characters of Amir, Baba, and Sanubar. In The …show more content…
Kite Runner, Amir’s guilt drives just about all of his decisions he makes throughout the novel until he obtains redemption.
In the beginning of the novel, Amir witnesses his best and only friend, Hassan being raped. He realizes that in that moment he has two choices. He nervously thinks, “I could step into the alley and 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.” (Hosseini, 82) Unfortunately, he makes the decision to run. Amir’s guilt develops from the very moment he runs away from the alley, leaving Hassan to be raped. Hassan has always stood up for Amir throughout their entire lives as he believes that it was what friends did for each other, and the one time Hassan needed Amir most, Amir fails him. The guilt of leaving his friend follows Amir for the rest of his life. Soon after the event happens, he whispers into the darkness that he has watched Hassan get raped. He desperately hopes that “someone would wake up and hear, so [he] wouldn’t have to live with the lie anymore.” (Hosseini, 91) He feels horribly guilty after watching Hassan and desperately
desires for someone to find out the truth so that he could overcome his guilt, but he refuses to actually tell anyone the truth. Amir’s guilt also drives him to provoke Hassan to desire revenge. For instance, when they go out to read stories together, Amir annoys Hassan by throwing pomegranates at him, as an attempt to get Hassan to fight back and punish him for leaving Hassan to be harmfully violated. Though, Hassan, feeling confused, refuses to throw anything at Amir. Amir wants Hassan to fight back saying, “I wished he would. I wished he’d give me the punishment I craved, so maybe I’d finally sleep at night.” (Hosseini, 98) Amir’s guilt causes him to desire to be punished in hope that it would bring peace in mind. Many years later, Amir’s guilt is still driving his decisions and actions. Having moved to the United States of America, he returns to Kabul to gain redemption through good deeds. Amir’s guilt leads him to make the risky decision to return to Afghanistan to rescue Hassan’s orphaned son, Sohrab, from the harsh conditions he has been left to face. His most significant step in his redemption is first to believe he can redeem himself for what he has done to Hassan. On the road to redemption, when he faces Assef who had raped Hassan, he confronts the bully and fights him in defense for Sohrab. Guilt gives him the power to do what he should had done twenty years earlier. Amir does not run or back down, freeing himself from his guilt. Therefore, nearly all of Amir’s decisions and actions throughout the novel evolve from his guilt of not standing up for Hassan when he had the chance and when he needed his only friend most.
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 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.
Actions made in a moment of pain, anger or simple immaturity can take anyone to make mistakes that can change their lives completely. Everyone has something in the past that is shameful, embarrassing and regrettable that is kept present daily. Whether this event happened during childhood, adolescence or early adulthood, this event could haunt and have shaped that person’s life into what he or she is today. In a similar way, the book The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is shaped by a tragic and eventful past that has shaped Amir’s, Baba’s, and Hassan’s lives. The four literary elements that will be used in this essay that Hosseini strategically uses in this book are: irony, simile, metaphor, and personification.
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, follows the maturation of Amir, a boy from Afghanistan, as he discovers what it means to stand up for what he believes in. His quest to redeem himself after betraying his friend and brother, Hassan, makes up the heart of the novel. For most of the book, Amir attempts to deal with his guilt by avoiding it and refusing to own up to his mistakes. Because of his past, Amir is incapable of moving forward. His entire life is shaped by his disloyalty to Hassan and his desire to please his father over helping his friends. Throughout the novel, his attempts to atone for his sins end in failure, as neither physical punishment nor rescuing Hassan’s son, Sohrab, from Assef prove to be enough for Amir to redeem himself. Only when he decides to take Sohrab to the United States and provide his nephew with a chance at happiness and prosperity that was denied to his half-brother does Amir take the necessary steps toward atonement and redemption. Khaled Hosseini uses a series of symbols to reinforce the message that atoning for one’s sins means making up for past mistakes, rather than simply relying on forgiveness from either the person one betrays or from a higher power.
The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, shows how lying and deceit is a counterproductive route when trying to live with a dreadful past, exhibited through the actions of Amir. Amir’s decision to withhold the truth and blatantly lie in several situations due to jealousy and his desire for Baba to be proud of him amounts to further pain and misery for himself and those he deceives. Because of Amir’s deceit towards Baba and Hassan, his guilt from his past manifests itself into deeply-rooted torment, not allowing him to live his life in peace. The guilt from Amir’s past is only alleviated when he redeems his sins by taking in Sohrab, contributing to the theme that the only way “to be good again” is through redemption, not shunning the past.
However, Amir’s happy day turns dark, when an hour later, he witnesses Hassan, his best friend, raped in an alley. He had “one final opportunity to decide who [he] was going to be”. 77. Instead of standing up for his friend and loyal servant, he runs like “a coward.” 77.
Though some may rise from the shame they acquire in their lives, many become trapped in its vicious cycle. Written by Khlaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner describes the struggles of Amir, his father Baba, and his nephew Sohrab as they each fall victim to this shameful desolation. One repercussion of Baba hiding his sinful adultery from Amir is that Amir betrays Hassan for his father’s stringent approval. Sohrab’s dirty childhood also traumatizes him through his transition to America. Consequently, shame is a destructive force in The Kite Runner. Throughout the course of the novel, Baba’s shameful affair, Amir’s selfish betrayal, and Sohrab’s graphic childhood destroy their lives.
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 guilty one is not the one who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” – Victor Hugo. In The Kite Runner, the theme of guilt and redemption is shown through the character development of the protagonist Amir. Hosseini used Amir’s guilt of his past to grow the impression that with regret lies a hope for redemption. Amir is a man who is haunted by the demons of his past.
Guilt is a strong emotion that affects many people around the world. It can either lead people into a deep and dark abyss that can slowly deteriorate people or it can inspire them to achieve redemption. Guilt and redemption are two interrelated subjects that can show the development of the character throughout a novel. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, are two literary works that convey the connections between guilt and redemption and show the development of the character by using theme and symbolism that are present in the novels.
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.
Guilt is the emotion someone experiences after they have done something they believe is morally wrong. People feel guilt when they do something wrong and despite knowing better cause someone else harm, or disappoint someone. People deal with guilt in various ways, but do not necessarily admit what they have done, so they try to overcompensate and do good later on to make up for their mistakes from the past. In the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini a young boy named Amir, is haunted by the sins of his past and follows his struggle with the resulting guilt. Guilt causes people to make irrational decisions because it impairs judgment and consumes a person’s life.
There are two types of people in every given situation, the one who forgives and the one who seeks retribution for whatever deed is done. Everyone’s fate is sealed when they they decide which person they want to be and more often than not they choose the person who fits them in the heat of the moment, the person of vengeance. In the novel The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, the reader is immersed into the world of Kabul with Amir, who is constantly faced with choosing what kind of person he wants to be due to his Father’s inability to shower him with the affection he craves and thanks to his insecurities that plague him and cause him to lash out on Hassan, one of the people in his
In “The Kite Runner” guilt and redemption is a prominent theme. The feeling of remorse, one wishing that he/she had done something differently, is a strong feeling that can take over a person. It can mentally destroy one and lead them to lifelong unease. Redemption, however, is a way to deal with guilt and in “The Kite Runner”, Khaled Hosseini portrays that. Hosseini shows the readers that true redemption is when guilt leads to good. In “The Kite Runner” Khaled Hosseini tells a story about a character’s guilt and how the character redeems himself. In this story guilt and redemption is tied to the bigger picture of family and relationships.