The Kite Runner by by Khaled Hosseini: Blinded by Guilt

The Kite Runner: Blinded by Guilt

A person’s childhood is the foundation that paves the way for the rest of one’s life. Memorable events can trigger certain emotions in a child and, as a result, change the nature of that person as an adult. Set in the 1970s in California, the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is told in flashbacks as the reader follows the main character through his resolutions to lifelong conflicts. The novel traces Amir’s mixed feelings of love and jealousy towards his best friend Hassan. Although they each came from different economic and social classes, they grew up in the same household facing hardships, resent, and deceit together. The two boys reach a turning point when the neighborhood bully savages Hassan while Amir watches and does nothing. The guilt for that betrayal will rule his life for the next 20 years. Through the use of metaphors, irony and foreshadowing, Amir’s childhood experiences haunt him into his adulthood.

Khaled Hosseini’s use of irony is predictable yet unlikely. Inability or refusal to follow up on some request, however, results in guilt and the memories in relation to the incidents that emerge many times in Amir’s life. For instance when the Russian soldier asks for a woman in the bus, Amir’s father says to the translator, “Tell him I’ll take a thousand of his bullets before I let this indecency take place”( Hosseini 116). After hearing this Amir feels ashamed that while his father would give his life to save someone because Amir did nothing to save his best friend. “I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan, and accept whatever would happen to me. Alternatively, I could run. In the end, I ran” (77). It is ironic that Amir runs away from Assef in the alley and ...

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...forever. “Looking back now, I realize that I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years” (1). The past cannot be forgotten, and will always influence Amir’s present actions and thoughts. Amir realizes that his past is dictating his present. His experiences as a child have carved him into what he is today.

Amir goes through the feeling of guilt and after putting the effort to do something special for a person who was in need for help in the first place, he redeems himself. In addition, Amir indulges in a feeling of guilt at very young age and gets rid of it after a long period. In The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini conveys a very beautiful message, which is if something bad happens; guilt should not be bottled up. However, we should remember the event that causes it; if we do not remember it, we tend to commit the same act repeatedly.