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The Kite Runner Essay

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The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, is a poignant and powerful tale about a privileged boy growing up in Kabul with his servant friend. The descriptive and vivid style of Hoesseini’s writing leads the reader through a story of betrayal and redemption. These two actions go hand and hand giving the reader something that they might be able to connect or relate to in their life. Although The Kite Runner is not for the faint of heart, it is still a great book for readers so they can introduce themselves to themes like social class, as well as the theme of shame and guilt. With these important themes, I think The Kite Runner has unquestionably deserved its spot on the AP reading list. The Kite Runner is set in Afghanistan before, during, and after …show more content…

Afghanistan's socioeconomic divide between the rich and poor plays a huge part in the book. Amir, the protagonist of the book, comes from a wealthy Pashtun family, while Hassan comes from a poor Hazara family. Pashtuns are the dominating and wealthy ethnic group in Afghanistan, and the Hazaras are usually treated as less and are discriminated against. An example of this is Amir and Hassan's relationship. Although they have a strong bond as friends, Amir’s selfishness overrides him and he uses his power over Hassan. A way Amir uses his power is towards the start of the book when he uses Hassan's extreme loyalty to make him do anything. Amir can also take advantage over Hassan because of Hassan's illiteracy, due to the fact that most Hazaras don't go to school. Amir usually thinks it is funny in the beginning when he uses his power over Hassan, but it eventually makes him feel crappy about himself as a person. This leads into the next major theme in The Kite Runner, shame and …show more content…

Amir’s shame and guilt is strongly driven by the betrayal of his childhood companion, Hassan. When they were kids Amir witnessed Hassan being raped by Assef, the local neighbor hood bully and all around Hazara hater. In spite of the fact that Amir could have intervened and saved Hassan from a traumatic experience, he instead chose to be a coward and just watch. After a while what he had done made him feel ashamed for his act of cowardice. Amir also felt guilty for not helping Hassan get out of the situation. Another example which ties into the first example of shame and guilt is shown by Amir's inclination to win his fathers love and support. Throughout the book, Amir is always pursuing validation from his father Baba, who is discontent with his son's weakness and lack of confidence and courage. Amir thinks that winning the kite competition will give him what he has always wanted from his father. This is indeed true and his father becomes very proud of him, but Amir gets his fathers love at the price of his friendship with Hassan. Amir's betrayal to secure the winning kite fills him to the brim with guilt as he realizes he sacrificed Hassan for his own gain. These instances that bring Amir shame and guilt, also drive him to redeem himself for all the selfish things he had done in life. Ultimately, the theme of shame

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The words are blunt, unapologetic in nature, resonating with so much truth that it pierces Amir’s false happiness (Hosseini 133). For Amir, the kite brought only a false sense of freedom from his remorse. In reality, he was still entrenched in the battle for his father’s love, still trying to find a way to get all of his father’s attention. The kite-flying competition was an illusion, a dream that Amir could ever be his father’s only son. The reality that Hassan was Amir’s half-brother, and the equitable love that Baba gives them, serves as the anchor that keeps Amir from his own childhood dreams, the truth that Amir could never escape.

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The Kite Runner is an infamous novel, which has managed to grasp the attention of a wide range of individuals, including mine. This particular novel has always been a story waiting to be indulged in, however, I never seemed to find the time. Despite that, when I realized that The Kite Runner was an option available to read, I decided to select it and finally unveil the reason as to why this novel has been so highly praised over the past years. 3. The novel takes place in Kabul, Afghanistan during 1963-1981 and shortly shifts settings to Fremont, California; however the focus remains on the hardships regarding Afghanistan.

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In Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, Amir suffers from guilt due to Hassan’s self-sacrifice for him but has his own way of avoiding confrontation. Amir’s guilty conscience forces him to isolate

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Amir’s main enemy is guilt because it leads him to blame himself for the death of his mother and for his father’s lack of acceptance of him. Amir takes it upon himself to say that it is his fault that his mother is dead, and that he is the sole reason why his father does not like him for the way he is. He blames himself instead of blaming the possible natural causes of why his mother is dead - he does not let it go. He also does not accept who he is for who he is to his father, he feels the need that his father’s acceptance is not good enough; thus, he seeks the love he needs by doing what his father likes despite disliking such activities himself (examples, sports). Amir does not take in account that there are more reasons outside of his control for why things happen, why the

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This guilt haunts Amir throughout the entirety of the novel as an obstacle that he constantly tries to overcome as shown when he finds out the truth and says, “I felt like a man who awakens in his own house and finds all the furniture rearranged , so that every familiar nook and cranny looks foreign now. Disoriented, he has to reevaluate his surroundings, reorient himself,” (Hosseini 224). This is the beginning of Amir finding out who he was as a person,and it is a big step to finding his own identity. When Amir finds out it seems as if “every familiar nook and cranny looks foreign” because what he has always used to defend himself was that Hassan was just a servant, but now he was his brother. Amir’s selfishness soon turns unjustifiable and as he now feels that it is time to finally get over his guilt and “reorient himself.”

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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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The author had us view Amir as selfish, guilty, and then working towards forgiveness. These characteristics help us to better understand the overall theme of the novel. They showtime stages that one goes through when they are on a path toward forgiveness. The themes of betrayal, guilt, and forgiveness all appear in this novel and are able to be seen clearly through the feelings and actions of

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The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini explicates the life of the main character Amir, and his relationship with his childhood best friend Hassan. Throughout the novel, Hosseini uses irony to show the growth and improvement of Amir’s character. Back when Amir and Hassan were little they used to be close. As children, they used to participate in Kite Fighting tournaments. One day, they went to Kabul with Amir’s father, Baba, to buy kites for the new season.

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Guilt is a major theme that intertwines the luxurious novels, as both the protagonists Amir, from The Kite Runner, and Piscine who is known as Pi, from Life of Pi, struggle due to guilt. To begin, in The Kite Runner the main protagonist Amir, a conflicted boy, makes some rash decisions which leads him to feel guilty. The reason why guilt eats Amir’s soul is because he sees his best friend/step-brother,Hassan, get rapped right in front of his eyes, and Amir did nothing about it. The reason why Amir is nothing to stop this horrendous act from taking place is because he was angry at Hassan for stealing Baba’s, Amir’s father, affection from him.

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Amir is haunted by his old ways which evidently resulted in his desire to fill the guilt with something meaningful. Amir’s aspirations to make amends for his past mistake are presented through his acts of bravery, which he commits in order to assuage the overwhelming guilt he feels after he betrays his friend Hassan. To accomplish this, Hosseini writes Amir as a character who is able to discard cowardice and embrace courage in order to claim the sense of redemption he longs for, ultimately illustrating that guilt fosters motivation to become a better man and make amends for past mistakes. At first, Amir was simply thinking about his personal desires and needs.

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This is a reoccurring theme for several cases, and Hosseini is quite fond of its resurrection. In the novel, the main character, Amir, had witnessed the sexual assault of his friend and half-brother, Hassan. Throughout the book, Amir faces internal struggles including the guilt of not saving Hassan, keeping the information to himself, and constantly avoiding any occurring problems. Guilt is a supreme emotion. It envelops its captive in an overwhelming amount of angst and paranoia; a clear example of this case is the early stages of Amir’s battle. “

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Guilt has an emotional hold on an individual. It becomes a burden that continues to grow if not resolved. Instead of apologizing, Amir avoids Hassan. Hassan, though, never holds his rape against Amir and never brings it up. In fact, Hassan attempts to reconnect their “friendship” with no avail.

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Communist Manifesto By Karl Marx And Frederick Engels The Communist Manifesto is a book written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 and has since been recognized as one of the world’s most influential political manuscripts. Marx was the principle author while Engels assisted and edited. In it, Marx presents an analytical approach to class struggle and the problems of capitalism and his theories about the nature of society and politics. The book came about as a result of a group of radical workers called the “Communist League” in London.

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He resists for Amir whom he loves with his whole heart. Amir witnesses this struggle, but he does nothing; he runs away since “he was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?” (Hosseini 77). Amir has always believed, deep down, that his father favored Hassan, a Hazara, the dirt of Afghan society, over him, his own son. Seeing Hassan reduced to that level of baseness is perversely satisfying for him.

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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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