Who Is Amir's Redemption In The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner focuses on Amir, a Pashtun and Sunni Muslim boy who lives in Kabul. Amir has a privileged upbringing as a Pashtun; his father Baba is wealthy by Afghan standards, and as a result, Amir grows up spoiled and selfish. Hassan on the other hand is the loyal and good-natured Hazara and Shi’a Muslim servant of Amir, who is extremely underprivileged and lives in poor conditions. Amir is haunted by the guilt of witnessing the rape of Hassan by Assef and his friends during a kite running tournament and not telling anyone, as well as trying to get rid of Hassan by framing him for stealing his birthday gifts. By the end of the text, Amir has definitely reached redemption for the sins he had committed against Hassan

by adopting Sohrab, forgiving himself, and from maturing into an overall more considerate human being.
One situation where redemption is shown for the sins he committed against Hassan, was Amir’s sufferings to protect and adopt Sohrab. Amir traveled all the way back to war-beaten Afghanistan to save Sohrab from the poverty-stricken orphanages. When he finally finds Sohrab in Assef’s clutches, he gets severely beaten up after being challenged to a fight, “I kept thinking of something else Armand/Dr. Faruqi had said: The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip”(Hosseini 297). Hosseini emphasizes ‘clean down the middle’ to show readers how much Amit’s harelip scar from the fight resembles Hassan’s cleft lip earlier in the text, which shows that Amir has been permanently marked with a scar that will forever remind him of Hassan. Amir’s new injury and rescue of Sohrab makes him similar to Hassan: Amir rescued Sohrab from Assef, just like Hassan had saved Amir from Assef many years earlier. When Amir manages to forgive himself while kite running in the very last moments of the text, he reaches full redemption, “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”(Hosseini 371). When Hosseini compares Amir’s smile to the Valley of Panjsher, it shows that Amir is finally happy and has forgiven himself by allowing himself to truly enjoy kite running even if he’s the only grown-up participating. Ultimately, Amir has been redeemed by saving Sohrab from Assef and Afghanistan, and by forgiving himself for Hassan’s rape.
Another way Amir reached redemption was when he matured into an unselfish and giving adult from a spoiled child due to his traumatizing experiences throughout life.

When Amir was a young boy, he concluded that betraying Hassan was the only way of achieving Baba’s recognition and approval; he was too young to fully fathom the depth of his actions, and when he matured enough to realize, he regretted it immensely. As Amir grew up, he became conscious of his actions towards others and became significantly more considerate. This is shown when Amir tried his best to make Sohrab happy, even when Sohrab doesn’t speak to him, “‘Do you want me to run that kite for you?’ [Sohrab’s] Adam’s apple rose and fell as he swallowed. The wind lifted his hair. I thought I saw him nod. ‘For you, a thousand times over,’ I heard myself say”(Hosseini 371). Hassan said this exact same line, ‘For you, a thousand times over’, to Amir when he ran for the kite in the beginning of the story. When Amir says this line to Sohrab, it represents his repentance for all the sins he committed to Hassan earlier in the text by relegating himself to a job usually given to Hassan. When Sohrab attempts suicide upon hearing that he was going to have to go back to an orphanage, Amir throws himself into religion and prayers, “I bow to the west. Then I remember I haven’t prayed for over fifteen years. I have long forgotten the words. But it doesn’t matter, I will utter those few words I still remember: La illaha il Allah, Muhammad u rasul ullah”(Hosseini 346). This displays how much Amir cares for Sohrab; he’s willing to turn to religion to try and save him even though he had followed Baba’s belief that God doesn’t exist when he was younger. In short, Amir has reached redemption by maturing into a considerate and unselfish

adult.
In all, Amir has redeemed and freed himself from his guilt. Traveling back to war-stricken Afghanistan from America in order to retrieve Sohrab, and finally forgiving himself for the sins he had committed against Hassan proves that Amir has gone through great lengths to change himself from being a troubled child. Going through Sohrab’s suicide attempt developed him as a person and made him into an unselfish and giving character. Sohrab has definitely changed Amir as a person and redeemed him for the sins he had committed against Hassan in the beginning of the text.