Guilt In Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner is the first novel of Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. It tells the story of Amir, a boy from Kabul, Afghanistan, whose closest friend is Hassan, a young Hazara servant. Novel turns around these two characters and Baba, Amir’s father, by telling their tragic stories, guilt and redemption that are woven throughout the novel. Even in the difficult moments, characters build up to their guilt and later on to their redemption. Their sins and faults alter the lives of innocent people. First, Amir and Baba fail to take action on the path to justice for Ali and Hassan. Moreover, Amir and Baba continue to build up their guilt due to their decisions and actions. Although Amir builds up more guilt than Baba throughout the novel, he eventually succeeds in the road to redemption unlike his father. After all, Amir and Baba have many chances to fix their atonements but Baba chooses not to and Amir does. Baba uses his wealth to cover up his sins but never atone himself while Amir decides to stand up and save Sohrab and finally finds peace. Amir and Baba’s reaction to sins essentially indicate their peace of mind and how they react to guilt and injustice.

“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.” – Voltaire. Guilt is an emotion that comes from believing that you were responsible for a particular mistake (usually the violation of some moral code) whether or not this guilt is accurate. In the novel The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, the main character Amir portrays guilt as being destructive. Amir’s experience leads to him feeling guilty for the rest of his life. This guilt breaks up the relationships he once had, it also affects the people around him. In the novel The Kite Runner, Khlaed uses Amir to show how violence leads to betrayal, then guilt and at some point destroys relationships between people. This is mostly proved in the novel by the impact of violence on Amir which

While Amir is lying in the dark, with nothing but his own thoughts, he feels that his guilt is taking over his life. He realizes that he is going to get away with his betrayal and yet he feels terrible. He decides that the only way he is going to live with his remorse is to ignore Hassan, blot him out, so he does not have to think about his sin. Amir’s guilt is so great that he cannot bear to have Hassan under the same roof, so he commits another sin. He lies to his father and accuses Hassan of stealing. “…I took a couple of the envelopes of cash from the pile of gifts and my watch, and tiptoed out…I lifted Hassan’s mattress and planted my new watch and a handful of Afghani bills under it…I knocked on Baba’s door and told what I hoped would be the last in a long

In Amir's desperate attempt to get out from under feelings of crushing guilt, he planted his birthday present of a watch and some money under Hassan's mattress and told Baba. "I knocked on Baba's door and told what I hoped would be the last in a long line of shameful lies." (pg.104) But when Hassan replied "yes" to stealing, Amir "flinched, like I'd been slapped. My heart sank and I almost blurted out the truth. Then I understood: This was Hassan's final sacrifice for me." (pg. 105) Amir said he loved Hassan in that moment, more than he ever loved anyone but he didn't tell the truth. He remained silent hoping that the stealing would get them fired and he could "move on, forget, start with a clean slate...be able to breathe again." (pg. 106) However, Baba forgave Hassan for stealing, to Amir's complete shock, but Ali insisted they leave anyway and that broke Baba's heart.

Guilt has the incredible power to change an individual’s perspective and affect them for the rest of their life. The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, is a world-renowned novel published in 2003 that tells the story of a young boy named Amir who grows up with the guilt of having failed to fight the group of boys who raped his closest friend. One of the main themes Hosseini emphasizes in the novel, is the powerful affect of guilt on one’s self. Different characters such as Amir, Sanubar and Baba use the guilt that exists in every one of them as a motive to their actions to further develop the plot. Amir, the narrator of the novel, witnesses his closest friend, Hassan, get bullied by an older boy named Aseef and decides not to

“Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt”-George Sewell. Guilt is just like fear, it will always haunt you until the day you be strong enough to face them. The book The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini shows these two statements throughout the story. In the book in different situations when the characters faced their fears and dealt with their guilt. Different situations in the book would have maybe had a different outcome if some guilts and fears were faced and dealt with. Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, teaches the reader that guilt is just like fear it will hunt you until you until you face through Amir trying to overcome his guilt by facing his fear of Assef and getting beaten by him to forgive himself for the things he had done in the past,(3)and when Amir felt guilty when he made Hassan and Ali leave.

The guilt that Amir feels due to his destroyed relationship with Hassan haunts him throughout his entire life. First, Hosseini uses the scene of Hassan’s rape as a haunting source of

As he leaps after the kite, he yells, “For you a thousand times over!” over his shoulder (Hosseini 67). While chasing down the kite, Hassan runs into Assef. Assef demands the kite as payment for previous embarrassments, but after Hassan refuses, Assef decides he will take something even more precious from him. At this point, Amir comes looking for his best friend and his trophy. He witnesses Hassan getting raped and quietly slinks away, not brave enough to protect his protector. Worse, Amir never acknowledges the incident, wounding Hassan deeper than any physical abuse. Ashamed of himself and his cowardice, Amir decides that the best way to be rid of his guilt is to make Hassan leave. He plants money and his watch under Hassan’s mattress with the hope that Baba will throw the thief out. Baba forgives Hassan, but Hassan and his father decide to leave anyway.

When you do something wrong and you know you shouldn't have done it you feel guilty, right ? Well so does Amir, at least his own kind of guilt. Amir watched Hassan get raped and did nothing to stop it. The summer following Hassans painful misfortune, Amir and Hassan spend less and less time together they don’t play outside as much they had before, so when Amir asked Hassan,

In the novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini tells a notable coming-of-age story portraying the actions and thoughts of Amir, a penitent adult living in the United States and his reminiscence of his affluent childhood in the unstable political environment of Afghanistan. Throughout the novel Khaled Hosseini uses character description to display his thoughts on sin and redemption.

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner is a remarkable coming-of-age novel describing and revealing the thoughts and actions of Amir, a compunctious adult in the United States and his memories of his affluent childhood in the unstable political environment of Afghanistan. The novel showcases the simplistic yet powerful ability of guilt to influence decisions and cause conflict which arises between Amir’s childhood friend and half-brother, Hassan; Amir’s father, Baba; and importantly, himself. Difference in class The quest to become “good again” causes a reflection in Amir to atone for his sins and transform into the person of which he chooses to be.

Hosseini conveys the turning point when Amir gets on the right path to learning and understanding the true nature of sacrifice by attempting to redeem himself. Amir plants money and his new watch that he got for his birthday under Hassan's bed to make it look like Hassan stole it. Baba brings Ali, Hassan and Amir together and Amir explains that “They’d both been crying; [He] could tell from their red, puffed-up eyes...they stood before Baba, hand in hand, and [he] wondered how and when [he’d] become capable of causing this kind of pain” (105). Hosseini uses this scene to demonstrate the true colors of Amir that he is a liar. This scene also highlights the loyalty that Hassan has towards Amir and his family and but it is not the same from Amir to Hassan. This illuminates Hassan’s loyalty most more than other scenes because as you can tell Baba and Ali were very surprised about what (they thought) Hassan had done because nothing like this has ever happened before. This explains one of the many sins that Amir has and reveals the lying and

Amir stumbles upon an alley. In the alley, he sees the Hassan trap by three boys named Assef, Kamal, and Wali. All they asked of Hassan is to give up the blue kite. However, Hassan’s loyalty and friendship toward Amir prevented Hassan to give up the kite. As the tension built, Assef lets Hassan have the kite, but in-return he does unthinkable. Assef rapes Hassan as Amir watched unnoticeably from the alley (Hosseini 62-66). This was Amir’s chance to prove his true friendship by stepping in to save Hassan. Instead, Amir ran “because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he could do to me. I was afraid of getting hurt. That’s what I told myself as I turned my back to the alley, to Hassan” (Hosseini 68). According to Amir, “Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” (Hosseini 68). “He was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?” (Hosseini 68).

“I lifted Hassan’s mattress and planted my new watch and a handful of Afghani bills under it… Then I knocked on Baba’s door and told him what I hoped would be the last in a long line of shameful lies.”(Hosseini,104)- The guilt building up in Amir is causing so much tension between him and Hassan that he just wants Hassan to leave. However it won’t be easy because his father will not fire his “family”. Theft is the only sin Baba cannot tolerate and Amir knows this.

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