ipl-logo

Guilt And Redemption In 'The Kite Runner'

1244 Words5 Pages

“Sad stories make good books”, a continuously disheartening tale, the novel ‘The Kite Runner’ truly embodies this idea. Following the life of a young Afghani boy Amir, the reader is spared no details of what it is truly like to be raised in a country full of religious inequality and political warfare. Although sad, this novel is a very good read and portrays some very relevant and striking messages. One idea in this novel that I found interesting was the message around an individual’s guilt and redemption. Through the ongoing guilt felt by the character Amir due to his childhood actions, as well as the guilt felt by Baba from his previous wrongdoings, we (the reader) are able to see how an individual can be haunted by such guilt for the duration …show more content…

Baba’s remaining life was then driven by a search for redemption, constantly doing good for those around him in hopes to conceal and minimise his guilt in relation to hiding his sons identity. A relevant quote is “I think that everything he did, feeding the poor, giving money to friends in need, it was all a way of redeeming himself. And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.” In extension of this idea the book also says “a man with no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.” I think this quote is also relevant to this idea of redemption as it is saying how it is ok to ‘suffer’ or feel guilt for our mistakes as if we didn’t it would be almost inhuman. Baba’s actions therefore taught me the lesson of how guilt can lead us to doing good things, allowing “bad people to become good people” in their pursuit for redemption. The only thing I felt conflicted about within this idea is whether or not an individual such as Baba should be able to redeem themselves via alternative roots (such as feeding the poor) over the confronting the real situation (telling his son, Hassan the truth).Although having this internal conflict, from this idea I learnt the general message that everyone makes mistakes and that really it is not an individual’s wrong doings we should

Show More
Related
844 Words | 4 Pages

The author puts a lot of moral ambitious character in the story the Kite Runner. Amir is an example of a moral ambitious character. He is evil in the beginning of the story, but as he matures and grows up as an adult. The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini, is a novel about a young boy named Amir and how he grows up in the Afghan war and how life was during the war. Amir's Moral Ambiguity is important to this story because he provides readers to like and hate him.

Read More
666 Words | 3 Pages

It is delineated by natural inclination that people sympathize with others who undergo an unfortunate circumstance or event. However, this type of behavior is dependent on how one uses prior knowledge to judge whether someone is worthy of sympathy. The idea that people tend to draw conclusions based on other people’s decisions and character remains as one of the many underlying themes in literature. In Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, Amir’s character is considered worthy of sympathy by his redeeming actions towards the end of the novel, his good intentions toward Baba, and his ability to empathize with others.

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
889 Words | 4 Pages

Redemption in Family and Friends Holding a terrible truth that can lead to so much guilt can tear a person apart. Not only from themselves, but from others too. In the novel, The Kite Runner, there are many characters with many secrets that the others don’t know about. Two characters of many others are Amir and Rahim Khan.

Read More
377 Words | 2 Pages

In the fiction novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, happiness and redemption are two separate occurrences in life that are achieved in different ways. A critic of the novel writes that The Kite Runner is a “thoughtful book in which redemption and happiness are not necessarily the same thing,” The happiness and redeeming qualities of the characters in the novel are not one and the same; sometimes, one is without the other. This leads to a disconnection between these two aspects. When Amir was a young boy in Afghanistan, the one thing that brought him true happiness was when Baba was proud of him.

Read More
911 Words | 4 Pages

The story “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemmingway depicts the wounding and post-traumatic experience of the First World War of the main character Harold Krebs and his family. Like most soldiers’ experience of the war, upon return to their lives back home, their lives virtually had no more meaning to them. Krebs presents a painful realization in this manner in which he interacts with his mother. She tries to think of her son as a hero and make him feel like one by encouraging him to re-tell his tales from the war. Krebs knows that the impressions his mother is making are not authentic and she, just like the rest of his fellow town folk are tired of hearing and reading the same stories from the war (De Baerdemaeker 24).

Read More
688 Words | 3 Pages

Betrayal is an issue many can relate to, whether it is done by a family member or a friend. In the book The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, we witness betrayal play a vital role in the downfall of the main character’s Amir and Hassan’s friendship, and how betrayal was the reason for why Amir sought redemption in hopes to move on. The novel begins with Amir as an adult, recalling an event that took place in 1975 in his hometown Kabul, Afghanistan and how this event was what changed the rest of his life and made him who he now is. Despite this heartbreaking occurrence of Amir’s reluctance to help Hassan while he was being raped, it was the reason for why Amir later decided to be brave and stand up for what he believes in.

Read More
1226 Words | 5 Pages

In the novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini tells the story of Amir, a young, Afghan boy who learns about what it means to be redeemed through the experiences he encounters in his life. The idea of redemption becomes a lesson for Amir when he is a witness to the tragic sexual assault of his childhood friend, Hassan. As a bystander in the moment, Amir determines what is more important: saving the life of his friend or running away for the safety of himself. In the end, Amir decides to flee, resulting in Amir having to live with the guilt of leaving Hassan behind to be assaulted. Hosseini shows us how Amir constantly deals with the remorse of the incident, but does not attempt to redeem himself until later in his life when Hassan has died.

Read More
1237 Words | 5 Pages

Hosseini portrays Amir’s quest for redemption beautifully throughout his life as an innocent teenager in the enthralling and serene city of Kabul to his life as a family man in The United States of America. Through Amir’s life, Hosseini clearly portrays the fact that all sins can be atoned however grave or futile they may be and by their atonement one can attain self-satisfaction and can be at peace. According to the Holy Bible, and the Old Testament, an act of committing a sin is that which “separates man from God himself” (Anonymous). Baba, Amir’s father believed that “there is only one sin, only one.

Read More
1355 Words | 6 Pages

However, he also turned out to be someone who tried his best to confront his sins and redeem them by building orphanages, fixing Hassan's harelip, and helping others in general (Li Cunxin, Levy98's Blog). Unlike Baba, Amir was afraid of confronting his sins. In the novel, Baba, with reference to Amir, says, "A boy won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything" (page 22, chapter3) which foreshadows how Amir was unable to face his sin, unlike

Read More
1498 Words | 6 Pages

Even Baba, a man who is rich, strong, and respected; a man who seems to be perfection in others’ eyes, inevitably becomes fearful when his own sins pressure him. As

Read More
751 Words | 4 Pages

Sacrifice, one the most prominent themes in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, clearly determines a person’s unconditional love and complete fidelity for another individual. Hosseini’s best-selling novel recounts the events of Amir’s life from childhood to adulthood. Deprived of his father’s approval and unsure of his relationship with Hassan, Amir commits treacherous acts which he later regrets and attempts to search for redemption. These distressing occurrences throughout his youth serve as an aid during his transition from a selfish child to an altruistic adult.

Read More
421 Words | 2 Pages

To undo this guilt he does different actions in the positive way that show how his actions are now used for positive good deeds. Amir grows to become someone willing to die for Sohrab and believes Sohrab to be a part of his family which is ironic because Hassan was never able to become a part of their family due to social pressures. After Amir recognizes that Hassan knew all along Amir has a bigger feeling of guilt which is only washed away through constant deeds. One service is when Amir places the crumpled money for a positive outcome rather than to chase someone out, “ Earlier that morning, when I was certain no one was looking, I did something I had done twenty-six years earlier: I planted a fistful of crumpled money under a mattress ( 242) ”. As Amir grows as a character after ridding himself of different guilts he develops and grows by changing different actions that he has committed in the past as a sin.

Read More
882 Words | 4 Pages

Amir’s Redemption in The Kite Runner In The Kite Runner, Khalid Hosseini writes that Amir makes mistakes, and because of that, it takes his entire life to redeem himself. Throughout The Kite Runner, Amir is looking for redemption. One of the reasons why Amir redeems himself was to fix the wrong he did to Hassan in his childhood. On the other hand, many may believe that Amir didn’t earn anything and rather wasted his time in Afghanistan.

Read More
1306 Words | 6 Pages

Redemption, the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil. In the novel The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini, the theme of redemption is evident throughout the book. Hosseini himself explained redemption in his own way, stating “true redemption is… when guilt leads to good”, and this “fiction is inspired by his memories of growing up in pre-Soviet-controlled Afghanistan and Iran, and of the people who influenced him as a child.” (768 Gale) The theme is shown through each and every character, whether it be Amir the protagonist or Sanaubar, the mother of Hassan.

Read More

More about Guilt And Redemption In 'The Kite Runner'

Related Topics

Open Document