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Why Is Guilt Important In The Kite Runner

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Finding a Path to be Good Again Guilt is an emotion of a sinner, but guilt is not an emotion of evil. In fact, guilt is only felt by a conscientious individual who is aware of doing wrong, and through this strange emotion, people learn what wrong is. Therefore, guilt can be an emotion of opportunity to fix wrong if responded in the right way. However guilt can also intimidate as it is a forceful emotion that haunts people when it is not dealt with. In the novel, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni, relinquishing guilt is a process that happens along with characters’ maturation, as they go through stages of avoidance, attempts to be good and confession of past sins. A first action taken in order to relinquish overwhelming emotion of guilt is avoidance. An act of avoiding sins is an impetuous but a natural response. After committing a despicable act, the first instinctively triggered emotion is fear. Fear obscures one’s conscience and causes a person to be cowardly and selfish. Even Baba, a man who is rich, strong, and respected; a man who seems to be perfection in others’ eyes, inevitably becomes fearful when his own sins pressure him. As …show more content…

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. And he will be only able to relinquish this guilt when Sohrab gives him forgiveness and accepts Amir’s confession and apology. Therefore, guilt is relinquished by confession when there is

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Being in war for a long time can make you numb to the people dying around you. People that just got there will most likely be paranoid or have anxiety. Those symptoms show posttraumatic stress disorder. The flashbacks, guilty feelings and nightmares are what happens a lot of times while there in war. Flashing back to the same place over and over would be the worst nights ever.

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Since he was a child, Amir has been struggling with the guilt he has because of his betrayal to Hassan. Khaled Hosseini uses the theme of redemption to show the reader the difficulty of Amir trying to make up for his actions. Amir goes through many difficult trials through his life but the most prominent is the road to redemption he goes on to forgive himself for his betrayal to Hassan. At the beginning of the novel we see Amir in America answering a call from Rahim Khan. After the call Amir says “That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it.

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“The feeling of guilt is your conscience calling your attention to the higher road, and your heart wishing you had taken it.” The poem “I Can Stand Him no Longer” by Raphael Dumas and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe are pieces of literature that develop the thematic topic of guilt using literary devices such as metaphors, connotations, similes and etc. Both stories are about a person who commits a deed that he is later guilty of doing. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a man commits a murder of an old neighbor and tries to hide the crime. However, he later finds himself guilty of doing so and accepts his crime in front of the police.

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He carried the guilt of teasing his best friend, lying to him constantly, getting jealous over him, and trying to get rid of him from their household. Amir carried this guilt for 27 years after the incidents, at which time he came back to make amends to redeem himself. He started by accepting the truth and realising that he needed to indemnify the person he had always wronged as a child. Amir was called by Rahim Khan, who insisted Amir go back to Afghanistan to make up for his actions, and thinking he had no choice but to respect a dying man’s wish, he did. After the phone call with Rahim, Amir thought: "[I have] a way to be good again" (202).

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Shame: A Destructive Force to Man Shame is a very destructive force, especially in the two lives of a father and son, Baba and Amir. In Khaled Hosseini’s book, The Kite Runner, shame is developed as a destructive force. There was an extreme amount of shame generated widely throughout in The Kite Runner, primarily in the lives of Baba and Amir. Although shame can have an effect on people to act in the wrong ways, it can also encourage them do what is most honorable. In The Kite Runner, shown in multiple ways, shame can be an extremely destructive force in an individual’s life by destroying relationships between loved ones.

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An individual, who is guilty, is one who has committed a sin and is aware of it. As individuals we often experience remorse after doing something we are ashamed of. When we experience guilt, we are also experiencing fear, we fear what others may think of us and we fear what we may think of ourselves. It is a source of pain that can follows people around like a shadow until they admit and accept it; it is strenuous to overcome because we fear the consequences. The texts suggests that guilt is an aspect in many lives, we often experience shame and regret for our actions and our thoughts; however when we admit and accept our wrongdoings, we can become more secure and proud, there will no longer be a shadow crowding over our lives, and

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(104) Realizing what he had done and feeling the guilt caused by his betrayal, Amir believes

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When you kill a man, you steal a life... You see, some things I can teach you. Some you learn from books. But there are things that, well, you have to see and feel" (pg. 370). This quote shows Baba's belief in forgiveness and his understanding that some lessons are learned through experience, not just reading or

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That is because his guilty conscience has taken control of his psychological state, and Amir will do anything to remove this burden from his mind. Furthermore, this reinforces the narrative that this is the only way he can redeem himself from Hassan as he later lets Asseff beat him. Unconsciously he is unaware that there are additional ways to experience atonement such as saving Sohrab from the

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Amir learns that redemption is not achieved through more mistakes, but through actions that fix the mistake

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Hosseini portrays Amir’s quest for redemption beautifully throughout his life as an innocent teenager in the enthralling and serene city of Kabul to his life as a family man in The United States of America. Through Amir’s life, Hosseini clearly portrays the fact that all sins can be atoned however grave or futile they may be and by their atonement one can attain self-satisfaction and can be at peace. According to the Holy Bible, and the Old Testament, an act of committing a sin is that which “separates man from God himself” (Anonymous). Baba, Amir’s father believed that “there is only one sin, only one.

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Finally Amir had redeemed himself. Thus, the only way complete forgiveness can occur is when one has truly attempted to atone for the mistakes that one has made which has a meaning to them and not to show anybody else. The way Amir had atoned himself from his sins which had dated long before the winter of

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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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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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Human emotions are very fragile and have extreme consequences on the human psyche. Guilt is one the emotions that can have the most harmful effect on individuals. In Raskolnikov’s case in drove him insane. Raskolnikov feels immediate guilt whenever his rationale for committing the murder is put into question, particularly when he is he kills Lizaveta. The second murder causes Raskolnikov’s guilt, the immediate response was his physical illness, but as that subsided he became increasingly paranoid, especially when something cause him to question his reasoning.

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