ipl-logo

Amir's Guilt In 'The Kite Runner'

692 Words3 Pages

Ever since Amir was twelve years old, he had struggled with his sin. A sin that was against Hassan. This sin was that he did not anything to help rescue his friend when he needed him the most. Deep down, Amir had always felt like he should have done something to help. He feels horrible that he had chosen not to do so. Amir is not able to live peacefully because of the nagging guilt that he constantly feels. He continues to have this overwhelming need to be punished. He wants to redeem himself from his sin in order to not live with his remorse any longer. In this essay, I will discuss how the theme of Amir’s feelings of guilt and the want for some type of redemption, are a part of his life while he grows up. Amir does not like the choice he makes, to be a coward, when Hassan is raped. Amir immediately feels guilty and it gnaws at him. A couple of days after Hassan was raped, Amir’s guilt grows as well as his resentment. “I watched Hassan get raped…A part of me [hoped that] someone would wake up and hear, so [that] I wouldn’t have to live with this lie anymore…I understood … my new curse: I was going to get away with it" (86). In the dark, while Amir is lying on his bed, he feels that the guilt is …show more content…

This burden, however, does not get any lighter. Later on, he dreams about how Hassan dies. “[Hassan’s] hands are tied behind him with roughly woven rope…[and see him] kneeling on the street…then the man standing behind him. He is tall, dressed in a herringbone vest and a black turban…The rifle roars with a deafening crack [and] I follow the barrel on its upward arc [to see that] I am the man in the herringbone vest" (239-240). Amir’s guilt never goes away just because Hassan left. The knowledge of the sin still burdens Amir as he goes on into his adult years. This guilt grows greater where he even starts feeling that he is responsible for Hassan’s

Show More
Related
1031 Words | 5 Pages

By leaving Hassan defenceless against Assef, Amir’s disloyalty and inability to stand up for his friend truly emphasises his cruel nature. Amir physically and mentally turns away from the rape. He justifies his decision to leave Hassan by saying “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.”

Read More
1064 Words | 5 Pages

Amir’s guilt leads to going to Afghanistan, fighting Assef, and making a promise to God. By taking on great responsibilities,

Read More
480 Words | 2 Pages

This guilt haunts Amir throughout the entirety of the novel as an obstacle that he constantly tries to overcome as shown when he finds out the truth and says, “I felt like a man who awakens in his own house and finds all the furniture rearranged , so that every familiar nook and cranny looks foreign now. Disoriented, he has to reevaluate his surroundings, reorient himself,” (Hosseini 224). This is the beginning of Amir finding out who he was as a person,and it is a big step to finding his own identity. When Amir finds out it seems as if “every familiar nook and cranny looks foreign” because what he has always used to defend himself was that Hassan was just a servant, but now he was his brother. Amir’s selfishness soon turns unjustifiable and as he now feels that it is time to finally get over his guilt and “reorient himself.”

Read More
844 Words | 4 Pages

The author provides the reader with mixed feeling about Amir. In his childhood in Kabul Amir comes off as heartless person. He is this because he has done evil stuff in his life. In the beginning of the story something bad happens to Hassan, Amir says,¨In the end, I ran.

Read More
907 Words | 4 Pages

Amir makes hassan look like a thief by “planting [his] new watch and a handful of Afghani bills under [the mattress]” (Hosseini 104). Hassan knew of Amirs intentions that Amir wanted him to leave so Hassan lies and says that he stole it in order to remain loyal with his friend Amir. Thus, Hassan and his father Ali, feel like they can no longer serve Baba or Amir anymore and leave forever; Amir never sees him again. It was then that Amir realized how much of a horrible person he was and how undeserving he was to have Hassan. His father realized it was him and forgave him even though his father said “theft is unforgivable.”

Read More
451 Words | 2 Pages

Unfortunately, Amir, one of the victims, had not been young enough to not understand. As a child, he made the mistake of not helping out his half-brother, Hassan. Even if he could have done something, he didn’t because of his cowardice, which was followed by selfishness. Betrayal made Amir the perpetrator. Due to his act of cruelty, he carried stones of guilt over his shoulder which were never shared with anyone but his own mind.

Read More
1089 Words | 5 Pages

Amir first realizes the depth of his cowardice as he watches Assef rape Hassan in the alley and thinks, “I could step in into that alley, stand up for Hassan—the way he stood up for me all those times in the past—and accept whatever happened to me. Or I could run” (Hosseini 77). He has an epiphany that he could choose to be brave and selfless like Hassan and step up to Assef regardless of any physical consequences. However, despite his understanding that the noble choice would be to interfere and stop Assef, Amir is unable to act on it because his fear of Assef overwhelms him. The guilt that consumes Amir in the weeks following Hassan’s rape indicates that he understands the extent of his selfish behavior and needs to resolve it before he can forgive himself.

Read More
906 Words | 4 Pages

While being beaten up by Assef, Amir feels at peace. He feels this ways because he feels that as he is taking the hits from Assef, it shows that he would do anything for Hassan. He is redeeming himself in a way that he is standing up not only for Hassan but also for Sohrab. Amir also stands up for his family, redeeming himself. " Hassan is dead now.

Read More
931 Words | 4 Pages

He would do anything for Hassan to make up for his childhood. After finding Sohrab, Amir comes face to face with Assef, Hassan 's rapist. “Another rib snapped, this time lower. What was so funny was that, for the first time since the winter of 1975, I felt at peace. I laughed because I saw that, in some hidden nook in the corner of my mind, I’d even been looking forward to this…

Read More
726 Words | 3 Pages

Although, Amir shows many acts of kindness and selflessness, in the end, he was not able to truly redeem himself. To begin, Amir started his journey to redemption with conviction and confession although he was not very successful. The guilt bothered Amir very often even in his adulthood when he believed he had been denied “fatherhood for the thing [he] had done.” (188) Almost immediately after Amir watched Hassan get raped he believed he had done something wrong. He believed he could not have children with Soraya because he did not help Hassan, but he does not confess until more than fifteen years later.

Read More
806 Words | 4 Pages

If someone makes a wrong decision, just like Amir has done it will linger for their entire life just like when everything is good in his life and he still thinks he does not deserve any of it. Even if someone does something to try to fix their guilt, it may not be enough. Not all guilt will destroy a life, but the longer it sits in the body the more damage it can do. In today's society guilt is prevalent when it comes to the suicide issue that we deal with on a daily

Read More
1675 Words | 7 Pages

Amir fails to protect Hassan. Amir put his needs before Hassan’s needs. As a consequence of Amir’s failure, Hassan is raped by Assef. Amir feels his betrayal as guilt for what he allows to happen.

Read More
421 Words | 2 Pages

The final guilt Amir struggles with is his guilt of apathy where he physically commits the action and instead of standing as a bystander becomes the person who committed the act, which gives him a different form of guilt. Amir feels apathy guilt through betraying his friend and kicking Hassan out of the house because he is a witness to the crime Amir has committed. Amir has guilt because he chases Hassan out, “I flinched, like I’d been slapped… Then I understood: This was Hassan’s final sacrifice for me… And that led to another understanding: Hassan knew.

Read More
765 Words | 4 Pages

Hassan, on one hand, was brave and did not fear defending people he cared about, like when he, “held the slingshot pointed directly at Assef’s face,” (42) when the bully confronted Amir in an aggressive fashion. When the tables turned and Assef proceeded to rape Hassan, Amir proved to be cowardice by running away because, “[he] was afraid of Assef and what he would do to [him],” (77). Loyalty was also one of Hassan’s prominent qualities as shown when although, “[h]e knew [Amir had] seen everything in that alley,” he was willing to rescue Amir, “once again, maybe for the last time,” (105). Contrastingly, Amir not only betrayed Hassan but attempted to have him and his father dismissed from service by lifting, “Hassan’s mattress and [planting his] new watch and a handful of Afghani bills under it,” (104). Yet despite all this, the two boys still had a sincere love for one another, although it may have been temporarily painful.

Read More
1031 Words | 5 Pages

Hosseini’s use of language, sin and redemption reveal to us the foundations of moral growth. As Amir ages, he experiences and grows to understands guilt and remorse. His actions and growth allow the reader to observe a journey of

Read More

More about Amir's Guilt In 'The Kite Runner'

Related Topics

Open Document