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Compare And Contrast The Kite Runner And Antigone

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A moral or lesson is a message that is conveyed to be learned from a story or an event. The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir and his childhood living in Afghanistan with his friend Hassan and Antigone is a greek mythology play about Antigone the daughter/sister of Oedipus, the play follows Antigone on a journey of family loyalty. Works of literature often teach the readers a social or moral lesson, both The Kite Runner and Antigone teach a very well build lesson that affects the reader's moral ethics. Both works of literature have similar themes throughout the storyline that changes the reader's understanding which leads both the novel and the play to have two very different morals.
Loyalty comes in different forms and is also a major
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Betrayal leads straight to the lesson of both the stories because this is when the author decides the characters fate by reflecting back at the choices the characters made. One of the most significant themes in Antigone is betrayal. While Creon opted for civic duty, Antigone opted for family loyalty, however this is ironic because Antigone ended up betraying her uncle to be loyal to her brother Polynices; this is the main conflict of the play that helps the author decide Antigone’s fate and the moral of the story, an example of this is in scene 2 “[Antigone] There is no guilt in reverence for the dead” (Sophocles 210). In this example, it is clear that Antigone does not feel guilty for betraying Creon and his law. The moral of Antigone is very depended on this theme of betrayal. In The Kite Runner we see a similar act of betrayal as Antigone. Amir betrays Hassan for Baba which is again ironic because Amir betrayed family for family. An example is when Hassan was getting raped: “[Amir] 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 what ever would happen to me. Or I could run. In the end, I ran” (Hosseini 77). Amir betrays Hassan even when he knew Hassan was always loyal to him, this again affects the moral of this novel heavily because Amir knows he has to face the consequences of his…show more content…
In The Kite Runner, the main lesson readers learn is redemption. Amir makes a mistake but in the end, learns from it. An example of this is when Assif is beating up Amir: “[Amir] What was so funny was that, for the first time since the winter of 1975 I felt at peace. I laughed because I saw that, in some nook in the corner of my mind, I had been looking forward to this." (Hosseini 289). This quote shows us that while Assif is beating Amir, Amir’s guilt is dieing down and he is at peace. This also shows that Amir would do anything for Hassan and in a way he is redeeming himself for what he did to Hassan. The moral of The Kite Runner is that no matter the sin, there is always a chance for redemption. The themes of loyalty, sacrifice and betrayal that are present throughout this novel leads to the lesson of redemption for Amir. In Antigone there are multiple lessons that the play teaches us, one of them is that too much pride is going to lead to misfortune and another one is don’t try to change your fate. Both Antigone and Creon faced their misfortune for having excessive pride. The Kite Runner and Antigone starts off with all the same themes but in the end both Amir, Hassan, Antigone and Creon have different fate. For both Hassan and Antigone, their loyalty takes them to their graves. The lesson readers learn from
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