A Friend is injured, beaten, and blamed. You stand as a witness and accomplice to his pain, yet your voice remains silent, and it tears you apart. Do you confess? It feels like an impossible choice, but one that should not be taken lightly. Since he was a child, Amir has been carrying the weight of his own guilt for not aiding Hassan during his time of great need. This sin has kept him from enjoying the life that he once knew, because the knowledge that he should have done something gnaws at the back of his head, and the repercussions of his actions have had an opposite effect of what he was expecting. Amir is a coward, but knows he is in the wrong and seeks redemption, as an overwhelming need to be punished grows within him. As time passes, Amir seeks the truths of redemption, and realizes that one can be redeemed through courage, sacrifice, and loyalty. …show more content…
Both sides are at odds, and Amir can not take it any longer. “I watched Hassan get raped’, I said to no one… A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn’t have to live with this lie anymore… I understood the nature of my new curse; I was going to get away with it.” (86) Like a drunk in a cemetery, Amir lies in silence mumbling his sins to ears sealed by deep slumber. In his moment of unheard confession, Amir admits that he wishes someone would hear his whimper, as if it would bring a sort of relief to him, a sense of redemption that would satisfy his needs. In essence, Amir realizes that honesty is the best policy and that a confession is a first step on the road to
The circumstances in which this passage takes place is obviously the time after Hassan's rape, in which the guilt is killing is torturing Amir and he is has realized that the choices that he made that day has truly hurt more people than he could've ever imagined. A metaphor that I found that led me to believe this would be him saying, ". . . the monster in the lake". I think that this metaphor represents the moment in which Amir has begun to acknowledge that he is the person that unintentionally is causing the ones around him to suffer with his selfish actions, the monster. Another metaphor that I found would be, "I was the snake in the grass". This metaphor represents Amir seeing that the people who are around him get hurt by him unexpectedly. Think of Amir as obviously the snake hiding within the grass and he's the predator. Hassan would be the prey
Amir’s struggles, on the other hand, are of an inherently different nature from John’s in that they are internal and Amir is more directly responsible for the cause of his alienation. Amir, having witnessed the rape of his childhood best friend and servant Hassan at a young age, failing to help him, and not telling anyone about it, bears the weight of his sins throughout a large portion of his childhood and adult life. Amir struggles greatly with what he has done in the weeks and months after the rape, leading him to emotionally and physically harm Hassan even more than he has already been
The Maze Runner by James Dashner is an action, adventure, science fiction book. It is about a teenager named Thomas, who arrives in an enclosed environment with no memory of his past. He lives with other teenagers, all boys. Everyday, they try to figure out a way to escape the maze, and seek freedom, but Thomas figured a way out. All of the gladers (the nickname of the people, due to them living in a place called the glade) ran out in the maze, most of them were killed by grievers (monsters that live in the maze), but some of them survived including Thomas. The survivors escaped the maze.
“There is a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (The Bible, Prov. 16:25). Thoughts that come to men stem from their participation in society or their natural state of good and evil. However, society’s morals mask the natural man—who is more vulnerable to natural evil than good. Because of this, every man is susceptible to ignorance and savagery. William Golding exemplifies this idea in his novel Lord of the Flies. When a group of military boys find themselves stranded on a deserted island, their ignorance soon leads to the inevitable savagery present in the end of the novel. The maturation process of Ralph illustrates the fight between man’s tendencies of natural evil and natural good when morals
Amir resents his choice to be a coward when Hassan is raped. His guilt is immediate and it gnaws at him. A few days after Hassan was assaulted, Amir already feels guilt and resentment inside him. “’I [Amir]
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.
Amir's entire life had been haunted by what he saw happen to Hassan. Although he was a child at the time, he couldn't accept his shortcoming during a time of need. He was jealous of his father for being able to stand up for himself and others and Hassan's undying loyalty to him. He developed a pattern of behavior - of covering up his mistakes and hiding his past – that he could not rid himself of until he suffered like Hassan did. He made it up to Hassan by saving his son, and he made it up to himself by suffering the way he
Amir went through a tough battle with guilt. He saw his friend get raped and did nothing about it, he blamed himself for his mother's death and he felt bad for thinking that he wanted another man as his father. All this guilt he kept inside. But one day he ran into Assef, Assef and him got into an altercation. He got vanquished by Assef, the man who raped Hassan. While he was he felt relieved of the guilt that he had, another way he helped himself relive his guilt is by taking care of Hassan's child. Nevertheless everyone has felt somewhat guilty once, we all handle our guilt differently, yet we shouldn't act badly. We should do good, fix our wrongs and should have the idea that guilt can make you do good
In the story The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, I find that Hosseini uses an abundance of symbolism to get his point across to the readers. The collection of quotes Hosseini writes had me stop to think about what the meaning behind his words was. It really made me think deeply about the meaning of each quote. He states the quote, and leaves it for the reader to decide his or her own musings to it. His words truly caught my attention. “With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can’t love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little”
This one decision left a stain on Amir for the next thirty years. A quote on pg. 88 states “I wish someone would wake me up, so I wouldn’t have to live with this lie anymore” This quote explains how guilty Amir felt after seeing Hassan get raped as he desperately sought for anyone to find out but didn’t chose to tell anyone the actual truth. Another example from the text is when Amir tries throwing pomegranates at Hassan, as an attempt to get Hassan to fight back and punish Amir for choosing to leave Hassan. However, Hassan refused to throw any pomegranates at Amir, but instead smashed one into his face. A quote on pg.94 states “I wanted Hassan to fight me back for the way I failed him” This quote indicates that Amir wanted Hassan to fight him back, so he could have the “punishment [he] craved” (93) This demonstrates that Amir wanted to feel the act of being punished for his wrongdoing, similar to how Hassan was brutally raped due to Amir’s apparent mistake. Amir’s guilt forces him to travel across two countries to seek redemption for the mistake he made. 15 years later, Amir’s guilt led him to make the hefty decision of returning to Afghanistan “to be good again” (189) by rescuing Hassan’s orphaned son, Sohrab, from the terrible conditions he was left to face in Kabul. Amir sees this as an opportunity to redeem and free himself from
While Amir defeats his final obstacle to win Baba’s approval, he reciprocally falls down and fails to show courage in Hassan’s rape. Amir assumes that Hassan “was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” as he watches Assef sodomize Hassan, and he “actually aspired to cowardice” (77). The atonement of Amir’s sins to Baba sparks the commencement of Amir’s betrayal to Hassan. Furthermore, Amir runs away and hides from his sins in Amerca knowing that he cannot gain the courage to redeem himself and completely fulfill his quest to adulthood. Nonetheless, Rahim Khan provides Amir an opportunity to accomplish his redemption. After decades of hiding, Rahim Khan calls Amir to tell him to “come” back to Kabul since “there is a way to be good again” (192). Amir must successfully accomplish his final obligation to complete his quest to maturity. In addition, Amir must stop hiding like a boy and begin to stand up like a man. As Amir returns to Kabul to save Sohrab, and ultimately redeem himself, he must fight Assef one last time, which results in Amir’s “body being broken – just how badly I wouldn’t find out until later – but I felt healed. Healed at last” (289). Amir now receives his deserved punishment and, most importantly, he learns to stand up and finally matures into a man. Although Amir completes his quest to adulthood, readers must realize that Amir must ultimately grant Sohrab a
William Golding’s book Lord of the Flies focuses mainly on a group of boys’ who have been stranded on an uninhabited island where they face many problems with themselves and others. One of the many dilemma’s within this story was the division of power between Ralph and Jack. They both had qualities of a leader, but they had different intentions with where they wanted to go; Jack was primarily the villain in this story showing savagery, while Ralph was civilized. So, why do the boys’ join someone who is cruel? Jack knows that he can manipulate their fears and use activities that are relatable to them because they are still little kids. Although it might seem devious, Jack is intelligent by using these tactics because they prove to be
Following Amir witnessing the rape of Hassan he felt as if he was in a situation where he was forced to keep the fact that he witnessed it happening hidden from everybody. Amir was terrified to face the consequences of not having the courage to stick up for his best friend, but he soon found out that being forced to live with this was a much worse fate. Even directly after it had happened this was clear, “I was glad I didn’t have to return his gaze. Did he know I knew? And if he knew, then what would I see if I did look in his eyes? Blame? Indignation? Or, God forbid, what I feared most: guileless devotion? That, most of all, I couldn’t bear to see” (Hosseini 78). Soon
Hosseini shows that it is Amirs immense guilt that drives him to want to make things right and to earn redemption. We learn the basis Amir's guilt through his memories. It is caused by a lack of response at a time when his loyal servant and close friend Hassan is in trouble. Amir makes a conscious decision to hide in the distance and just watch, not because he was afraid. He sacrifices Hassan in order to earn his fathers attention and affection. This decision results in Hassan suffering though a traumatic experience and is the root of Amir's lasting regret.
After he had just witnessed his own “bestfriend” get raped, Amir wants to make things right: “I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of