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Theme Of Redemption In The Kite Runner

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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. …show more content…

To feel redeemed, Amir wants Hassan to harm or hurt him so that he can feel better or less guilty of his situation. As Amir and Hassan walk up a hill behind their house, Amir has an idea to make Hassan throw pomegranate at him as compensation for what he did. Amir throws the fruit at Hassan and exclaims, “Hit me back! Get up! Hit me!” (92). Amir yells at Hassan to throw a pomegranate at him since he had hurt him before. Amir wants Hassan to “get even” with him because it will make him feel like being a witness to his assault was not as bad and relieve the guilt within him. After Amir shouts at Hassan, Hassan takes a piece of fruit and smashes it in his own face. He then replies, “There...Do you feel better?” (93). Hassan will not hurt Amir, even after all he has done to him. Because of Hassan’s response, this makes Amir feel worse and he becomes one step farther away from redemption. This signifies how redemption cannot be earned by making the mistake seem not as tragic than it was because this ultimately makes the guilt grow. Amir learns that redemption is not achieved through more mistakes, but through actions that fix the mistake

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The Kite Runner is a novel of love, struggle, and most importantly, redemption. The main character, Amir, is haunted throughout adulthood by transgressions of his childhood and finds himself in a journey for redemption that nearly costs him his life. By the end of the novel, Amir has grown into a respectable man through the criticism from his father, Rahim Khan’s dying confessions and influence upon him, and his own conscience choice to change who he was. Up until this point he acted as a coward in every sense of the word. The most glaring example of this was when he didn’t stand up for his closest friend and half-brother, Hassan, when he was being raped.

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This is an example of Hosseini’s usage of irony to describe Amir’s feelings. Someone who gets beaten should not be laughing and enjoying it as much as Amir did. Amir recalls,” What was so funny was that for the first time, I felt at peace. … I remembered the day on the hill where I had pelted Hassan with pomegranates, trying to provoke him. … I hadn’t felt happy and I hadn’t felt better.

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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.”

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Everyone experiences some type of guilt throughout his or her life. Whether it is on a small or large scale, there is always a sense of wanting to make up for whatever has been done. In the novel The Kite Runner, it is suggested that individuals can make up, or atone, for the bad things that they have done in their past. The author, Khaled Hosseini, explores the ideas of guilt and atonement through Amir and Baba. Hosseini develops the theme of atonement through the development of Amir’s character.

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Amir hit Hassan with pomegranates, until he was out of breath and didn’t have the energy to anymore. But in the end, Hassan refused to hit Amir, and decided to hit himself with the pomegranate, because he could never hurt Amir. Unlike Amir, hurting Hassan again and again, because he was so consumed in his own feelings of guilt. He couldn’t bare to look at Hassan, so he pushed him away. “I buried my head in my lap, squeezed my temples with my knees, like a vice.

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That being said I feel like my feelings haven’t changed too much because I enjoyed reading this book so far and from the start I was intrigued and it only continues to surprise me and makes me want to keep reading. One part that really stuck with me is when when Amir tries to get Hasson to try and beat him up so that he would feel equal to Hassan for not doing anything when he was getting raped early on. So, Amir throws pomegranates at Hassan which only makes Hassan “smeared in red like he’d been shot by a firing squad.”

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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.

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Amir's realization that he had made a mistake, but wanted to mend that mistake is just another step in the right direction of redeeming himself.

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(Chapter 7, pg. 77) Amir, in this instance, struggles between deciding if Hassan was truly a friend of his, or rather, just a servant that plays with him at Amir’s convenience. He justifies at that moment betraying his friend, selfishly vindicating that this ought to be a sacrifice for Hassan being born into that social caste. Almost immediately after not intervening, Amir seriously regrets viewing Hassan as inferior during the rape as well as throughout their whole duration as children, seeing as Hassan did nothing to deserve such torture as he always been good to

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In his mind, he believes that Baba will send Ali and Hassan away, and, as a result, he will finally gain some peace. To Amir’s surprise, Hassan confesses to stealing his gifts without hesitation symbolizing “Hassan’s final sacrifice for [him]” (105). At that moment, Amir realizes that Hassan knew of his betrayal, which added to his already guilty conscience. Hassan could have easily told Baba the truth and he would have believed him because”[everyone] knew that Hassan never lied”, which, in turn, would ruin Amir’s relationship with his father (105). He probably knew that Amir was unworthy of his sacrifice, that he was the “snake in the grass, the monster in the lake”, but he lied for Amir’s own benefit

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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.

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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.

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