Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner Essay

Hassan is raped by Assef and Amir witnessed what happened but Amir didn’t help Hassan. Assef raped Hassan because he wanted to humiliate Hassan.

Throughout the novel, Amir attempts to find redemption after failing to stop his half-brother Amir 's rape.

When Assef rapedhassan, Amir remembers a dream he had. Amir is lost in a snowstorm, when suddenly, “a hand reaches out for me”, and he knows that the hand belongs to hassan, “[Amir takes] the hand and suddenly the hand is gone ... I look up and see the clear sky filled with kites” (74). This dream illustrates how Hassan has always been there for Amir. Amir is immediately guilty when he realizes what is happening in the alley with Assef and his gang. He i guilty because he never stood up for his friend and took him and his sacrifices for granted. Of course, Amir immediately regrets not stepping in to help his friend. When Amir throws up in the car, it is a physical reaction of his guilt when talk about the kite tournament is brought up. Baba boasts about how, “ [Amir] has the last kite at home, a beautiful blue kite. Hassan and Amir ran it together” (84). Just the mention of the kite causes Amir to be sick because the guilt is overwhelming. Amir tries to ignore the crushing guilt pertaining to the rape but he clearly has not done anything to try to atone for his sins or to redeem

The story becomes centered on Amir’s quest for redemption as his cowardly instincts restrain him from preventing the rape of Hassan. However, redemption has actually been a big portion of Amir’s life as even as a child he had trying to make Baba, his father, proud as an attempt to redeem himself because Amir believes he is completely responsible for the death of his mother, as she died during his birth. This leads to Amir trying to win the local kite tournament, which results in Amir watching Hassan getting raped because Amir wants to ensure that he can show the last kite that he beat in the tournament to make Baba proud. This moment imposes a ton of guilt on Amir, which sparks his quest to redeem himself. Hosseini

At some point in a every person’s life personal battles dealing with the guilt of a committed sin or discretion will be faced, some larger or smaller than others. Though, through the process of redemption people can find a peaceful state of mind helping to make up for that cause of guilt in the first place. In Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, the quest to seek redemption from major guilt in the past is very evident for one of the books main characters, Amir. Amir has been living in guilt and throughout his whole life has been continually seeking redemption of his childhood when he betrayed his best friend, Hassan. One day, many years late he has the chance to go to Afghanistan to seek back that redemption and find peace for his life.

(Hosseini, 84). In the first place, Hassan was raped because he refused to give up the kite that he believed Amir had earned. Amir sinned when he did not step in to help Hassan and acting as if nothing had happened. Which shows how spineless he was and how he betrayed Hassan’s loyalty by not helping him. Nevertheless, it is because he did nothing that he soon started to feel regret and guilt, which continues to haunt him when he grows up.

The motifs that are being presented in this story are rape, irony and flashbacks. A recurring event that is crucial to this novel is the rape incidents of Hassan and later his son, Sohrab. From the beginning, Assef’s rape of Hassan is the primary source of Amir’s guilt. "I've changed my mind. I’m letting you keep the kite, Hazara. I'll let you keep it so it will always remind you of what I'm about to do” (Hosseini 73). To further elaborate, Amir being aware of the situation didn’t help the case due to his cowardliness. Because of this incident, Amir becomes emotionally distraught leaving him no choice but to set Hassan up for a ploy so that both of them would be separated. Going in hand with rape, irony plays a huge role. Amir realizes he is a cowards for the decisions he makes and only makes these decisions to get Baba’s approval, only to result in overwhelming guilt. To

This book does not only open your eye to life in the Middle East but, has a lot of major conflicts. The one that we are never allowed to forget is the time when Amir did not save Hassan from being raped by Assef. The rest of Amir’s life he lives with the guilt of that moment of his childhood. Amir learns redemption does not always come in the way one would hope. There was

Irony is cleverly used within this narrative and aids Hosseini to position the audience to ponder about the messages being conveyed. The novel’s most extreme irony and greatest tragic point is Amir’s selfish decision of not preventing Hassan’s rape. Amir does not intervene during Hassan’s rape due to his fear of losing the blue kite, the key to Baba’s heart (p.67). However by choosing the decision not to stop Assef, Hosseini displays Amir as the coward Baba dreaded he would become, “A boy who cannot stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything” (p.22) as he unwittingly allows his best friend to experience such abuse due to the narcissistic desire of pleasing his father. Through this irony, Hosseini confronts the audience to question whether Amir is deserving of redemption and to dislike Amir’s character due to his cowardice behaviour. Moreover, Assef, the antagonist, who had raped Hassan and the reason behind Amir’s guilt, becomes the path for Amir to obtain redemption nearing the end of the novel. As the novel progressed, Amir returns to Afghanistan to adopt Sohrab, Hassan’s son. However, Amir ends up rescuing Sohrab from being raped by Assef and feels emotionally restored when he accepts the beating from Assef when rescuing Sohrab, “Healed at last…” (p.266). By successfully conveying the irony of Amir facing Assef again but as

egarded as a brilliant portrayal of painfully honest deception of identity, betrayal, deception and atonement. “The Kite Runner” is considered to be Khaled Hosseini finest novel. It is cleverly narrated through Amir eyes, as he tells the the journey of his past, escaping from his taunted childhood while torturing himself with his own remorse. Disloyalty and redemption play a decisive role throughout the novel to highlight key ideas and further our understanding of the novel as a whole.

On the day, when Amir won the local tournament and praise from his father, he sends Hassan to run for the last cut kite, for a trophy. As Hassan is making his way back with the kite, he runs into Assef and his two henchmen. Assef gave Hassan the choice to hand over the kite or face his wrath. However, Hassan was too stubborn and loyal to hand over the kite, so Assef beat and raped him. Amir witnessed this all happen, because he was searching for Hassan at the time but he was too cowardly to stop it.

Amir, the protagonist of the novel, is a man who grew up in Afghanistan but made a life in America. He is a successful writer who is married but unable to have children. However, he struggles with guilt from his past. He mistreated his loyal companion, Hassan, and did not prevent the brutal rape Hassan endured to keep the kite he retrieved for Amir. Guilt over his selfishness never leaves the Afghan man, and he searches for a way to atone for his wrongdoing. Although he realizes depth of his selfish negligence, it is too late to repair the damage done. However, as Amir grows, he matures into a much more noble character. His life-threatening rescue of Hassan’s son Sohrab serves as a form of penance and redemption for Amir. He finds some deliverance from his crushing guilt by doing for Sohrab what he had failed to do for Hassan. Throughout the novel, Amir progresses from a selfish, jealous child into a self-sacrificing, mature adult.

Amir’s character represents a development of the human spirit. He is inherently good in his thoughts and actions early on in the story, but the reader can see him begin to evolve. The actions of others, more specifically his father and Hassan cause him to become plagued with aforementioned themes of evil. He sees himself largely influenced by greed and an ability to abuse his power over Hassan. The evil metamorphoses Amir into a character driven by self interest at the deprivation of others. Amir feels challenged for his father’s love by Hassan and uses his social status and educated ability to impose himself over Hassan when they read together. This abuse of power shows the corruption within Amir that develops into greed as Baba continues to distance himself from Amir. This selfishness climaxes when Hassan is defiled by Assef and Amir says

The Winter of 1975 everybody’s life took a turn at some point and all the secrets came out soon. “I STOPPED WATCHING, turned away from the alley. Something warm was running down my wrist. I blinked, saw I was still biting down on my fist, hard enough to draw blood from the knuckles.” (Hosseini 77). Amir was in shock, he had just witnessed his longtime friend, his half brother, his best friend get rapped and he didn’t do anything he just ran away like a coward, and that is when the guilt kicked in with Amir. instead of helping or at least going to get help like tell his father or Ali he just ran. Hassan knew that Amir had witnessed it but he

In the book, “Kite Runner” by BLANK the main character's name is Amir and his change in character sets a important role in the story. Amir overall is a sensitive, intelligent, and creative person but he also grew up with a sense of entitlement. He was born into a rich and successful family in Afghanistan. Amir loved his father so much but he felt his father never loved him and blamed him for his mother's death; she died during childbirth. Following his mother's death he got into poetry, writing and storytelling.