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Essay On Khaled Hosseini's 'The Kite Runner'

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A moment in someone’s life can define who they are for the rest of it; sometimes it is a bad moment that leads them to seek redemption for the rest of their life. Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner is a dramatic novel that describes the life of a man named Amir, who lets his half-brother, Hassan, get raped and does nothing. This moment defines Amir’s life; eventually, after his guilt builds up, Amir gets Hassan and his father Ali to leave his house, and then Amir moves to America. In America, he lives a normal life and gets married, until one day when his father’s friend Rahim Khan asks him to save Hassan’s son Sohrab from an orphanage in Afghanistan. Eventually, Amir decides he must go save Sohrab, and when he does he figures out there was …show more content…

Amir begins to pray and says: ”I will fast during Ramadan and when Ramadan has passed I will go on fasting, I will commit to memory every last word of His holy book, and I will set on a pilgrimage to that sweltering city in the desert and bow before Ka’bah too. I will do all of this and I will think of Him and every day from this day on if He only grants me this one wish: My hands are stained with Hassan’s blood; I pray God doesn’t let them get stained with the blood of his boy too.” (346) Amir’s prayer is very interesting because it is for him, and not for Sohrab. This is an extremely selfish thing to do because time and time again Amir puts himself before everyone else. His selfishness has come to the point that he would say, “I pray God doesn’t let [his hands] get stained with the blood of [Sohrab] too,” this comment is showing how Amir’s initial reaction is to worry about his conscience. When Amir is making promises to God, Hosseini uses hyperbole, which is the over exaggeration of words or phrases. Hosseini uses hyperbole to make the point that Amir is in a desperate state, and that in his desperation he is making false promises to God. For example, Amir says, “I will commit to memory every last word of His holy book,” even though his promises were said in the hope of Sohrab being ok; they were said so that Amir wouldn’t have to feel guilt. Amir’s selfishness and false promises foil the intent of his prayers; this keeps him from

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