Kite Runner Redemption Quotes

As a species, we do our best to stay away from pain and suffering, believing them to be destructive experiences best avoided. However, in doing so, people lose the opportunity to develop themselves. Throughout Khaled Hosseini's book, The Kite Runner, multiple characters struggle with guilt. They all selfishly seek to put away the felonies of their past and build a new, untainted existence for themselves, simply wishing for, “…a way to be good again” (Hosseini, 2). However, they believe the only way to atone for their sins is to struggle. This all contributes to the overarching theme of the book: suffering is redemption. Hosseini supports this theme through irony, allusions to redemptive suffering in the bible, and symbolism represented by the

A nagging, all-consuming guilt inhibits him from leading a peaceful life. Amir’s critical need for redemption quickly reaches a culmination after he witnesses the rape of his friend and Hazara servant, Hassan. In attempting to gain the approval of his father, Amir is confronted with his friend, cornered in an alley, as Assef, a local -later pedophilic- bully, undoes his pants. “I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan -the way he’d stood up for me all those times in the past- and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run. In the end, I ran” (77). Immediately, he resents his cowardice. Amir tries to expunge Hassan from surroundings as he realizes something equally devastating and relieving, “…I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it” (86). He realizes the only way to feel redeemed is to be punished. He wants punishment so desperately he tries to force Hassan to throw pomegranates at him. When Hassan, always a selfless and saintly character, refuses, Amir rages and hits him with pomegranates, “’Hit me back!’ I spat …. I wished he would. I wished he’d give me the punishment I craved, so maybe I’d finally sleep at night” (92). Since Hassan refused Amir his outlet for redemption, the guilt builds and builds for years. It sits and simmers like a dormant volcano, the longer he bottles his feelings, the more irrational his need to redeem himself