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Overcoming Guilt In The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini

945 Words4 Pages

Overcoming guilt and redeeming yourself
The story, The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini in 2003 is based in Kabul, Afghanistan but eventually moves to California. The novel is written in first person and talks about the past using extended flashbacks, from the time period of 1975-2001. It is written as a confessional/redemption story.The book The Kite Runner is the story of an Afghan man named Amir. Amir lives a good life with his Father, Uncle, and cousin which turns out to be his half brother until after a kite flying tournament where Hassan gets raped and Amir doesn't do anything to help. Amir tries to get Hassan in trouble but it doesn't work, Hassan and Ali request to leave. Amir and his father leave for America where he meets a girl named Soraya who he marries. Amir finds out Hassan had a child and goes to get him back in Pakistan, it take everything he can to …show more content…

Amir is speaking on the phone with Soraya and after he realizes: “I’d betrayed Hassan, lied, driven him out”(165). Amir comes to his senses and knows that he messed up. Amir also realizes something about Soraya: “Soraya Taheri was a better person than me. Courage was just one of them”(165). Amir knows that Soraya had enough courage to admit the bad things she had done in her life. Soraya told Amir that she regret her decisions when she was younger and Amir thought: “I knew all about regret”(180). Amir acknowledges that he wasn't happy about his bad decision to not help Hassan. These quotes show that Amir is accepting failure and is moving on from his betrayal. Amir has moved from trying to forget about this betrayal to realizing that he messed up. This part of the book helps develop dynamic

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After Amir meets with Rahim Khan and knows the fact that Hassan’s son, Sohrab, was in the orphanage, it is time for him to seek redemption. Amir decision of bring Sohrab to Pakistan is because of not only Rahim Khan’s request but also a way to be good again. It is his first active step he takes towards atoning for his past and it demonstrates Amir’s first conscious decision to think of another before himself, even it means risking everything he has, including his life and the welfare of his family. Amir now understands that he can endeavour to gain redemption by sacrificing himself to rescue Sohrab. As Amir continues to find Sohrab and tries to save him from Assef, he is willing to sacrifice himself for a chance to get Sohrab back.

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In this essay, I will be arguing why utopias are not enjoyable to those who live it, only to those who create it. There are many examples of utopias that are awesome for whomever created it, but horrendous for those who must survive there. The House of the Scorpion, “The Most Dangerous Game”, and Adolf Hitler’s utopia were all great for the creator, but not the citizens who must get through the harsh conditions. In The House of the Scorpion, El Patrón creates his own utopia in Opium.

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After he talks to Rahim Khan, he tells him the Hassan not only his childhood best friend but his half brother. Amir tries to help Hassan's own son, Sorab, who is his nephew that is locked in a orphanage. He ends up finding out that a taliab took Sorab. He is shocked when he finds where he is. He finds out that the head person there is Assef.

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In Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, Amir struggles to cope with his inaction during Hassan’s rape. Overwhelmed with guilt, Amir devises a plan to get Hassan and Ali dismissed so they would no longer be a constant reminder of all the times Hassan had protected him and his failure to do the same. The guilt of betraying Hassan burdens him for years, and even after he and Baba move to America, he carries the weight of his actions with him. However, after he accepts Rahim Khan’s request to rescue Sohrab and bring him to safety, Amir strives to leave behind the selfishness and cowardice he had previously succumbed to. Amir progressively begins to forgive himself for his injustices towards Hassan as he recognizes his evolution from a coward

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After rescuing Sohrab from Assef, Amir feels like he is making up for not being there for Hassan. Amir did something that was truly brave and noble. By saving Sohrab and giving him a better life in America, Amir was able to find a way to be good again. Just like Rahim Khan said he would over the phone. Amir will never be able to fully forgive himself for what happened in the winter of 1975, however, by working to become a better person, he can slowly redeem himself and move forward with his life.

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Amir risked his life for Sohrab, Hassan’s son, to repay the wrong he commits toward Hassan. The recurring theme of sacrifice for the ones you love is presented all throughout the novel through Hassan, Baba, and Amir. Hassan and Amir are divided by economic differences throughout their childhood.

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Novels can augment our perspective on the nature of mankind. One such book is Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner. The book follows a character named Amir as he goes through life as a child as well as his deep friendship with a boy named Hassan. A series of unfortunate events escalate a conflict prompting Amir with the need to resolve them. The book begins in medias res, until a phone call prompts the book to start back in the years of his youth.

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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 is the main focus of the novel; it basically starts with his childhood all the way until he’s an adult. He was one of the most wealthy people in Afghanistan, until the Russian’s take over later on. His father, Baba, is very respected by others. Baba never paid much attention to his son, also his honesty with him was very poor. Therefore, Amir would spend most of his childhood with his servant, Hassan.

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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.

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Thus, glancing towards either direction to make sure that ‘the coast is clear’. He deprives Hassan and Ali from the house they have served faithfully for a long time, thereby stealing the truth from Hassan and depriving them of a home they knew well. Amir is driven by both the greed for his father’s attention and the guilt of being helpless when Hassan was raped. The reason why he couldn’t remain under the same roof as Hassan was because he felt guilty that he hadn’t tried to stop the rape and save his friend. The reason why he couldn’t step in to save his friend was because he was not strong enough and wanted to please his father at any

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The saddest part was that Amir was there watching from a distance and was unwilling to help his best friend due to his lack of courage and inability to stand up for himself. Up until adulthood, Amir had to carry the baggage of betraying Hassan by not being there when he most needed him, this guilt tormented him to the point where he moved to America with his dad, Baba, as a way to escape his

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The true relinquishment of guilt does not happen only by forgiving self, but being forgiven by a person sinned to. As Amir loses Sohrab’s trust, he confesses “[he has] done a lot of things [he] regrets in his life and maybe none more then going back on the promise [he] made [Sohrab]” (374) and tells Sohrab he will wait until he is ready to forgive. Amir sincerely apologizes for what he has done to Sohrab instead of avoiding like as he did during his childhood. Through his confession, Amir acknowledges that he is the one to blame for Sohrab’s tragic action.

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Guilt is an emotion that comes from believing one was responsible for a particular mistake whether the assessment was accurate or not. (Powell)It can be described as “a bothered conscience” or “a feeling of culpability for offences”. One feels guilty when there is a feeling of responsibility for an action one regrets. (Barker, Guilt and Shame).A wrongdoer must deal with guilt by making atonement- by making reparation and penance. How a person deals with guilt long term is what really affects their future.

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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.

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