Emotions can drive one’s actions. Whether it be anger causing an individual to lash out or sadness causing someone to alienate themselves, emotions can change a person. Often emotions can overwhelm and cause an individual to be irrational. In The Kite Runner Amir lets his emotions drive his decisions. The Kite Runner present the story of a young boy fighting for his father's approval and ends with an adoptive parent trying to gain the child's approval. Amir’s emotions and actions make him who he is.
A father's treatment of his children can be a deciding factor in the children's future. Amir and Baba’s relationship is complex. Baba’s ultimately loves his son. However, he is incredibly hard on his son. He wants for Amir to be the man he
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could never be due to his scandalous past. Moreover, he resents that Amir’s mother past away during childbirth. Amir puts thoughts in his own head like “ I had killed his beloved wife” and “The least I could have done was to have had the decency to have turned out a little more like him” (Hosseini 19) This may be the root of Amir’s guilt. He does not feel worthy of his own father’s love. Amir lets his strong desire to gain his father's affection and approval drive him into making some of the wrong decisions. Hassan gets raped in the process of helping Amir.
He had to “ decide who I [he] was going to be. I [he] 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” (Hosseini 77). While Amir had a choice to go save Hassan or run, he chooses to run. Amir was too concerned about Baba being proud of him to stay true to his morals. He did not want Hassan getting any attention after his accomplishment of the day. Amir gets extremely jealous when Baba’s attention is not fully on himself. To justify his cowardice act Amir thinks only of gaining his father's approval instead of the betrayal to his friend. Amir would get upset when Hassan could do anything better than him. Amir would go as far as no longer doing something he liked if Hassan was better. This is a prime example of emotions getting in the way of Amir’s rational …show more content…
thoughts. Guilt has the power to ruin an individual if they do not handle it appropriately.
Amir realises he is incapable of living a tranquil life with his guilt. Guilt drives Amir to make yet another bad decision. Seeing Hassen in the house became too much for Amir to handle emotionally. So Amir conspired against Hassan. Amir’s guilt drives his actions in placing money and a watch under Hassan’s pillow and blaming him for stealing it. Ultimately, his plan worked to get rid of Hassan but not the guilt. Later in the novel, after Hassan has been executed, readers can see that Amir’s guilt still resides in his head. Amir has a dream where he has Hassan tied up and blindfolded. He says “The riffle roars...I see the face behind the plume of smoke swirling from the muzzle. I am the man” (Hosseini 240). In his dream he shoots Hassan. Showing that Amir feels as if he is the one who should be held accountable for Hassan’s death. The guilt follows him wherever he goes. Even when he tries to sleep guilt is there to torment him. Moving the whole way to America was a another failed attempt to escape the families issues in
Afghanistan. When the opportunity to redeem himself from his intense guilt Amir accepts. It was seen as a way to “end the cycle” and to “be good again” (Hosseini 226). The attempt to save Hassan’s son from an orphanage in Amir’s home country was extremely dangerous due to the taliban. His guilt motivates him to be courageous. When Amir finds that Assef, the man who had raped Hassan many years before, was in possession of Sohrab he could have decided to run yet again. Amir goes through a plight situation while trying to protect Sohrab. He became emotionally invested in the child. It became hard for Amir to see Sohrab ignore him. When Sohrab attempted suicide Amir would scream for an immense time. The fight gain Sohrab’s trust became Amir’s next goal.
In the book “THe Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, betrayal is is one of the big themes that occurs in this book. Amir shows the most betrayal of all, like him witnessing Hassan's rape and not helping him at all. That was his cowardly thing that he did and experiences guilt from it. Many years pass since that event he starts to feel what other people felt when he would betray them, like when he was betrayed by his father and Rahim Khan, because he found out that Hassan was his brother and he felt betrayal of trust just as he made the people he betrayed feel.
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.
Then I understood: This was Hassan’s final sacrifice for me…He knew I had betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again’ 5 Amir did not betray Hassan once but twice. The deleterious effects of the first betrayal against his best friend lead him to betray his friend again. But again for his own greed as he wasn’t able to face Hassan so he thought of charging him of theft and making him leave the
Baba, is what Amir called his father. Amir always looked up to Baba. He never wanted to disappoint him. Amir always wanted to be the only boy in the eyes of his father. He was jealous and would do anything for Baba to look up to him or respect him, as his son. Hence, the kite and alley incident. Through all the lies and deception, Baba still viewed Amir as innocent in many ways. Though Baba always wanted Amir to be athletic, play soccer, and display a talent of kite running and flying like Hassan and himself, he still loved Amir and saw his talents as a
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...
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
Over the course of the novel, Baba implies that he is not proud of Amir and the only reason he knows Amir is his son, is because he witnessed Amir 's birth. He states to Rahim Khan that he thinks Amir needs to stand up for himself more often. Countless times during the novel, Amir feels like he has to fight for his affection, that he has to earn Baba’s love. In order to prove himself worthy of affection and to redeem himself for not being a son Baba could be proud of, Amir yearns to win the kite runner competition. He reminisces on a memory, when all “I saw was the blue kite. All I smelled was victory. Salvation. Redemption” (65). In the aftermath of Hassan’s rape, Amir got rid of Hassan so he would not have to face the cause of his guilt on a daily basis. Amir buries the secret of the rape deep within him, where he hopes that it will not come back to haunt him, which is not the case. “We had both sinned and betrayed. But Baba had found a way to create good out of his remorse. What had I done, other than take my guilt out on the very same people I had betrayed, and then try to forget it all? What had I done, other than become an insomniac? What had I ever done to right things?” (303). As mentioned earlier, Amir is not one who stands up for himself. In order for Amir to redeem himself for betraying Hassan, and not standing up for him earlier,
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. Baba ran from the truth, and so did Amir to protect the family name, even if that meant betraying the people closest to him. Baba was a man more worried about his image than anything, and that is what he taught his son as well. Slowly that is all Amir knew how to do: protect his family and himself, leading him into a life of guilt, and running from people when situations were challenging, instead of making the admirable decision and help a
In the book Amir can be seen as a troubled young boy who is struggling with a tremendous amount of guilty. It is easy to blame Amir’s actions on his guilty and his father’s lack of love for him. The movie does not allow this. The movie characterizes Amir as a young boy who is to blind by his owns needs to be a decent and noble friend. The movie does not do a good job of showing that Amir felt horribly guilty about what he did to Hassan. It portrays Amir as uncaring and selfish. The movie also changes the depiction of Amir as an adult. While the book shows Amir as a man who has not yet learned to stand for what is right until he comes face to face with his past all over again, the movie jumps the gun and shows the change earlier with the change of a scene. The scene that is changed is when Amir and Farid visit the orphanage where Sohrab is supposed to be. In the scene Amir is the one to try and kill the orphanage owner instead of Farid which takes away from Amir’s cowardice persona that is portrayed in the book. The movie makes Amir seem stronger before his time while the book keeps up his weakling persona until he is faced with a situation he cannot help but stand up to. Similarly the characterization of Hassan is just as lacking as Amir’s in the movie. In the book, Hassan is shown as being selfless beyond a doubt and loyal to a fault.
A large part of the novel deals with Amir trying to redeem himself. First with his Baba by trying to win the kite fighting tournament because Amir feels as though his father blames him for his mothers death. The the larger act of redemption occurs when trying to rid himself of the guilt of letting Hassan be rape...
Thinking Baba was dead, Amir already started to worry about his future and how he was going to make it in life by himself. All of Amir’s life he had someone to always count on, he could count on Hassan to fight most of his battle for him and Baba to provide him with food, shelter, and an education. But when it could have possibly been time for Amir to leave the nest he realized how unprepared he was for the world. He also realized that who he was “had been defined by Baba”(Hosseini 174), his whole image was because of his father and not him. Once Baba did really die, Amir was “terrified” of the thought of finding his own way in life because “Baba couldn’t...show the way anymore”(Hosseini 174). In addition, Amir relied on others to get him
Mere minutes ago, I was confronted by my son, my Amir, who was begging me to read what he dubbed a “short story”. This isn’t the first incident I’ve experienced with him showing his breakage from the family legacy. Amir has consistently disappointed and underperformed in important skills, (ones I had mastered at his age) including soccer, kite running, and, self-defense. His short story, which I instead had Rahim read for him, is another example of how Amir is just so stubborn that he can’t focus on the countless skills relevant in his life.
Amir begins his life as a meek boy who desperately clambered to earn his father's’ affection. He was a cowardly, selfish, short minded boy who would even stab his childhood friend in the back for a slim chance at bonding with his dad. He was outshone by his best friend, who would stand between the bullies and Amir, and fight Amir’s battles for him. His father noticed this, and told Rahim Khan “A
This relationship shows how indifference and thoughtlessness for one’s feelings can drive a person to make the bad choices for a father’s love. Most importantly, the relationship between Amir and Baba after living in America greatly increases the lesson that a father’s rejection can cause bad decisions as well as show how a son’s happiness requires a father’s attention. Truly, a caring fatherly