The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini

Sometimes things are better off forgotten so one does not get too caught up in hatred. When the time comes to forgive someone or even oneself, one might find it very hard. The word forgiveness may have different meanings to some people. For example, some people may refer forgiveness as a way to lose weight off their backs. In Into The Wild, Jon Krakauer highlights the importance of forgiving the mistakes one has made, and the actions people around us make. Life’s experiences are not always easy to forget, nevertheless to move on from those experiences

Life, as we all know is saturated with misfortune. Most of us are able to go through these and learn from and exempt ourselves. Yet, this isn’t always the case. People are faced with bone riveting experiences that often take a long time to get over, if they ever do get over it. These episodes brew in our brain popping up at the most random points often bringing our tone down. Although these experiences may scare us and fill us with ruefulness and penitence, we can’t continue to live in the past and let these regrets habituate us. Self forgiveness is a remedy to healing and to moving on in life, no matter how hard it is.

People are different in many ways. Ranging from colour of their skin to their ethnic backgrounds. How society copes with these differences is what defines prejudice and discrimination. Racism, social class and ethnicity have become a never ending cycle that begins to shape the opinions of how people treat one another. The novel The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini revolves around a society constructed around two socially diverse ethnic groups the Pashtuns who practice Sunni Islam and the Hazaras who follow Shia Islam. Throughout the novel The Kite Runner, a variety of characters have made decisions that affect the overall outcome of the novel which base around ethnicity, race and social class.

The novel The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, is the story of a young, upper class boy by the name of Amir and his friend, a lower class boy named Hassan. While Amir is a Pashtun and a Sunni Muslim, Hassan is a Hazara and a Shi’a muslim, which causes the main conflict between the two. Amir and Hassan learn more and more about their social status, as well as their personal friendships and problems as they grow up in Afghanistan.

Atonement is the focal point of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner as portrayed through Amir’s guilt, the repercussions of his guilt and his effort to remove this guilt by atoning his sins.

“There is a way to be good again”(Hosseini,2). This thought represents the underlying message of the novel The Kite Runner, as author Khaled Hosseini tells a heartbreaking tale of a lifetime spent in the search of redemption for a “past of unatoned sins” (Hosseini, 1). Very often people undergo numerous internal conflicts throughout their lives, and they find that some of their problems change who they are as a person. Most people will not have the courage or the motivation to deal with and fix their problems, however, Khaled Hosseini’s novel inspires people to face and deal with internal conflicts. In the book The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, the main character Amir constantly struggles with guilt about his childhood mistakes and he finds it very hard to deal with them. The ending of The Kite Runner appropriately concludes the story because it portrays a journey of redemption for a childhood betrayal and ends with a hopeful message of new beginnings and freedom from past sins.

​In the novel, “The Kite Runner”, written by Khaled Hosseini, was taken place in Afghanistan during the 1970’s to the year of 2002. Many historical events happened during this time period and Hosseini portrayed it into his novel. Kabul, the capitol of Afghanistan, was a free, living area for many Afghanistan families to enjoy the life they were given. Until one day, Afghanistan was then taken over and attacked. In the novel, Amir, the protagonist, must redeem himself and the history behind his actions because of his past decisions and make himself good again for the Afghanistan people.

sin and forget about it. Amir then faced the long bumpy road to redemption. Khaled Hosseini’s

Can anyone be forgiven or receive the a chance to change for their past mistakes? Many would argue that to become good again, they must pay for their sins. The ones who feel guilt believe they should be punished physically to be rescued from their tormentation. Many avoid the situation or go as far as blaming others for their own actions because of their troubling conflict (Barth). Numerous people feel like they should do acts of kindness as a way to redeem themselves, but to truly become good again one must try to change their own character. Amir from The Kite Runner, recognizes his error and fights to become better when he is given the news of his nephew. He torments himself daily until he decides to take action on doing justice. Hosseini

As a child, we are often told that we can be whatever we want when we grow up. Each child has the potential to be a police officer, a firefighter, or an astronaut. Although every destination in life is reachable, depending on the environment of the child, one might have to work harder than the other in order to reach it. Each environment creates a pathway of right or wrong in what the child should believe in, become, and achieve. In the Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini tells the story of a young Afghan boy, Amir, whose childhood interactions with his father and his Pashtun culture shapes his moral compass. He is especially influenced by the pride he desires to achieve by fulfilling his father 's expectations as well as Pashtunwali, the set of

In Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, the theme, “true redemption is when guilt leads to good” (302), plays a major role in the book. Feeling endless guilt is tiring; it clings to a person and drags him or her down constantly. Amir felt endless remorse his whole life from the way he treated Hassan and after he overheard Baba talking to Rahim Khan about how Amir never stands up for himself. Amir tried to find redemption, but did not succeed until he went back to Kabul to find Sohrab. Amir’s cowardice caused him to live a guilty life, but in the end it led to true redemption.

In the short story “Forgiveness Story: The weak get even, and the great get over it”, author June Callwood (2007) presents the different areas of forgiveness, the reactions of the aggrieved party, the effects of forgiving and unforgiving and the route towards forgiveness. Callwood narrated stories of forgiving, letting go and stopped hating those who had hurt them. In the story Simon Wiesenthal, a Nazi hunter and a Jew, was brought to a camp where a young and dying Jew murderer asked for his forgiveness, not knowing what to do he just kept mum and left the room (p. 1). After thirty years, he contacted different kinds of people with exceptional mind and asked what he had done (pp. 1-2). He received different responses. Others such as Bishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama said that he should have pardoned the young man while others, the likes of philosopher Marcuse, said that a man who had done a heinous crime should not be forgiven because in so doing we are tolerating what is morally wrong (p. 2). This story shows that forgiveness is worth doing it may be hard but for those who have done it they were able to move on and get on with their lives.

“There is a way to be good again” (Hosseini K. 2003) a line delivered by Rahim Khan Amir’s father Baba’s closest friend, to Amir in order to encourage him to help Hassan’s son escape Afghanistan and finally free him from the guilt of his past. The quote also embodies the struggle and salvation the novel The Kite Runner attempts to bring its readers. The book taps raw human emotions about life situations that challenges a person and brings out the best and worst in him, but the book also shows the value of personal redemption.

Plot summary: Amir flashbacks to when he was twelve years old in Afghanistan. He lives with his father, Baba, and has two servants, Ali and Hassan, who are also a father and son duo. The latter two are Hazaras, Afghan’s minority, and as such, are subjected to racial slurs and cruelty. Amir and Hassan are playing when Assef, Kamal, and

Khaled Hosseini once said: “there are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.” Rape in Afghanistan is said to be an “epidemic,” but according to the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of the term is “a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time.” Rape in this country is viewed as something that is inevitable and cannot be stopped. Usually, rape also involves domestic violence, hence the reason they’re paired together. Contrary to common misconception, men are raped as well as women, especially children of both genders. In the Kite Runner, rape is a topic that is prevalent in and throughout the book. Bacha Bazi is even a part of the Kite Runner.