Forgiveness In The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is told from the point of view of a boy, Amir, living very nicely in Pakistan. It tells about him growing up all the way to adulthood while along the way seeing and even being a part of terrible sins happening to him and his loved ones. Although he has seen much sin, he has seen much forgiveness too and that lefs him eventually to forgiving people who have done him wrong and redeeming himself from doing wrong to someone he could not ask for forgiveness from. Forgiveness not only develops the story, but the characters as well. In order to lead to guilt and eventually receiving forgiveness, one must first do something wrong. Throughout the story, every main character did something bad, directly or indirectly,

In Amir’s case, as explained before, he knew he was never the child Baba wanted to be, stronger and self confident. To make up for this, Amir did everything he could to be a great child for Baba by doing things to make him proud. In fact, the last time Amir and Hassan ran kites together was during a neighborhood tournament which Amir won. He wanted more than anything to make Baba proud and when he cut the final kite he saw Baba “pumping both his fists. Hollering and clapping. And that right there was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of life, seeing Baba on that roof, proud of me at last” (66). These few sentences basically sum up how much Amir craved to have some kind of gratification from Baba and finally he had it, and obtained it from doing something he loved to do. In this moment, he felt accepted by Baba and he felt like he might have made up for being the reason his mother was dead. Little did he know that things would eventually go back to the way they were, not because of him but, because Baba had guilt deep inside of himself. Although he got the praise from Baba that he craved so much, Amir found it hard to appreciate it because he hadn’t protected his friend like he should have and because of that, Hassan got terribly assaulted. “He [I] finally had what he’d [I’d] wanted all those years. Except now that he [I] had it, he [I] felt as empty

For Amir, his guilt lead him to redeem himself to the one person he hurt the most: Hassan. There are two ways he managed to redeem himself and drown his guilt, his first way far nicer than the second way. “There was a way to be good again,” (227) Rahim Khan had told Amir and that way was “With a little boy. An orphan. Hassan’s son. Somewhere in Kabul,” (227) who needed to be saved from the poor conditions and poverty and adopted by a good family (eventually Amir’s). If Amir went to Kabul and found Hassan’s son, Sohrab, and gave him a good home and everything he need, then that would be the best things Amir could do for Hassan; it was a way to redeem himself for all his wrongdoings to Hassan in the past. Although this eventually took away all his guilt, a brutal beating from Assef to get Sohrab from him had made things better for Amir. Before the fight “he [I] hadn’t been happy and he [I] hadn’t felt better, not at all,” (289) before his meeting with Assef “But he [I] did now. His [My] body was broken… but he [I] felt healed. Healed at last” (289.) He felt he got the punishment, although brutal, that he deserved. That he suffered as much or even more than Hassan did all those years ago in that alley. He felt at peace that he finally got his punishment for