In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, redemption heavily influences the development of the main characters. It is in Hosseini’s dwelling of the redemption of the characters that the reader can extrapolate his thoughts and ideas about redemption. While redemption seems to be an important theme to Hosseini, the redemption of the main characters in his novels determine who they were as people. With or without someone’s influence/guidance, the main characters that “redeem” themselves willingly choose to do so. All of them, however, change for the better.
In the beginning of The Kite Runner, redemption for Amir was to be accepted by his father. While fighting the last kite in the kite flying competition, Amir thought to
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In his letter to Mariam, Jalil writes, “Now all I can do is ask for your forgiveness. So forgive me, Mariam jo.”(406). With this letter, Jalil attempts to redeem himself by asking for forgiveness from Mariam. Even without success, Jalil’s desperate letter gives the reader reason to view him as a better person than who he was at the beginning of the novel. This redemption also further develops Jalil’s character even after his death. For Mariam, redeeming herself from the killing of Rasheed requires that she turn herself in, which gives Laila the freedom of a life with Tariq. While trying to convince Laila to live with Tariq without her, Mariam says, “It is fair, … I’ve killed our husband. I’ve deprived your son of his father. It isn’t right that I run. I can’t.”(358). Not only does Mariam realize the severity of the consequences of the situation, but she also feels that in order to get over her guilt and redeem herself from the killing, she needs to turn herself in. This notion of getting over guilt shows another definition for redemption that Hosseini uses in the