The True Value of Loyalty Essay

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.

When the Russian soldier asked for half an hour with the lady in the back Baba stood up and spoke against it. Baba had the courage due to his past experiences and adverse situations he has already faced. “I will take a thousand of his bullets before I let this indecency take place.” His personal values and beliefs went against Russian soldiers demands only because incidents before have had an impact on his character and they shaped his identity. Baba constantly tries to do good deeds to redeem and perhaps forgive himself. Another example of shaping identity is society pressure. Baba’s image mattered, how other people saw him and how they treated him was a part of his personal values and self worth. Wealth, status and honor were how he was portrayed in front of society. Society pressure and judgment shaped Baba’s identity and impacted his decisions. He was ashamed to tell everyone that he is Hassan’s father, a father to a Hazzara. He did not want to lose his identity of being a Pashtun or be disrespected due to his past. Just as Amir Baba was willing to deal with guilt and regret for personal desires and searched for true redemption the rest of his life.

After some thought, Amir knows that he must go and find Hassan’s son, his nephew to redeem himself for the things he did to Hassan. Amir thinks to himself, “there is a way to be good again, he’d said. A way to end the cycle. With a little boy. An orphan. Hassan’s son. Somewhere in Kabul” (227). After feeling this sense of redemption, Amir does everything he can to bring Sohrab back to America with him, to help him start a new and better life.

Baba says these words to Rahim Khan while he is talking about Amir at the end of Chapter 3, and the quotation reveals important traits in both Amir and Baba. With these words, Baba sums up one of Amir’s major character flaws—his cowardice—and Baba shows how much value he places in standing up for what is right. Baba is reluctant to praise Amir, largely because he feels Amir lacks the courage to even stand up for himself, leaving Amir constantly craving Baba’s approval. Amir’s desire for this approval as well as his cowardice later cause him to let Assef rape Hassan. The quotation also foreshadows the major test of Amir’s character that occurs when he

Case 37.5: Duty of Loyalty. Edward Hellenbrand ran a comedy club known as the Comedy Cottage in Rosemont, Illinois. The business was incorporated, with Hellenbrand and his wife as the corporation’s sole shareholders. The corporation leased the premises in which the club was located. Hellenbrand hired Jay Berk as general manager of the club. Two years later, Berk was made vice present of the corporation and given 10 percent of its stock. Hellenbrand experienced health problems, and moved to Nevada, leaving Berk to manage the daily affaires of the business. Four years later, the ownership of the building where the Comedy Cottage was located changed hands. Shortly thereafter, the club’s lease on the premises expired. Hellenbrand instructed Berk to negotiate a new lease. Berk arranged a month-to-month lease, but had the lease agreement drawn up in his name instead of the corporation. When Hellenbrand learned of Berk’s move, he fired him. Berk continued to lease the building in his own name, and opened his own club, the Comedy Company, Inc., there. Hellenbrand sued Berk for an injunction to prevent Berk from leasing the building. Comedy Cottage, Inc. v. Berk, 145 III.App.3d 355, 495 N.E.2d 1006, Web 1986 III.App.Lexis 2486 (Appellate Court of Illinois).

Loyalty, does it still exist today? I am of the opinion that it does; after all, our loyalty to God, family and country is what we stand for. Although, loyalty can be described by many other words, such as, faithfulness, commitment, obligation, devotion and allegiance. Therefore, the true meaning of loyalty may be left up the individual.

The backbone of the novel The Kite Runner is Amir’s betrayal of Hassan. It gives a reader the perspective of a young mind forced to make decisions and most of them were not the correct. Amir betrayals of Hassan include being a false friend, choosing to be a bystander when Hassan is raped, and his actions to get Hassan to leave.

Honesty and respect are among many qualities that deep relationships carry, especially loyalty. In Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, he uses two young boys to convey his theme, “loyalty is not freely given, it is learned.” This theme is portrayed as Hosseini uses examples of devotion from his character, Hassan, to teach Amir what defines loyalty. While these two boys grow up together and form a friendship, a life-changing event splits them apart, only to take Amir twenty-six years to discover the truth of their past, their fathers, and their lives.

The Kite Runner is a powerful book contrasting selfishness and selflessness. The book follows the life of Amir, a character who experiences guilt and tragedy throughout his life. While growing up in Kabul, Amir witnesses the imperfect and prejudice society in his country. Within an imperfect society, there are many who are self-invested, and among those, there are those who are selfless. Characters Amir and Hassan possess selfish and selfless traits. The traits that these characters possess are influenced by fear, victimization, and loyalty, ultimately leading them to inaction and action.

“I actually aspired cowardice… Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba.” (Hosseini, 77) Nobody would ever believe that something innocent as kite flying or kite running could lead into an epic tale of betrayal and redemption, however Hosseini, in his novel The Kite Runner, manages to weld this activity with the journey that a man has to make from his betrayer to his redemption. Though Amir is the protagonist in this novel and we’re supposed to want him to come through as victorious, it’s hard with a character like Hassan under his wing. Their situations almost make you hate Amir, without Hassan being so pure, readers might be able to relate to Amir yet his

“A way to end the cycle. An orphan. Hassan’s son. Somewhere in Kabul.”(Hosseini, 227) The “Kite Runner” is a book depicting the betrayal and redemption Amir, Hassan, and Baba go through. There is redemption to all betrayal but finding it is the difficult part. The book was written by Khalled Hosseini and is considered a very impactful book to literature around the world. Even though some things are unforgivable, the central message of redemption to all betrayal is shown by the author through characters, plot, and symbolism.

Wayne Dyer, an American philosopher, once said, “Problems in relationships occur because each person is concentrating on what is missing in the other person.” This is the protagonist's main source of conflict in the book, the Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini. Amir and Hassan appeared to have a brotherly friendship. Even though they grew up together, it was intriguing how Hassan develops a brotherly bond with Amir while Amir does not reciprocate the love. By concentrating on what is missing in Hassan, it causes Amir to become separated from the relationship because Amir values social class over his friendship with Hassan, and stems from his jealousy that comes from an idea that Baba favors Hassan.

Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, depicts the conflicting life of Amir, a young boy who lives in Kabul, Afghanistan. His life becomes complicated at age twelve when he witnessed his best friend and Hazara servant, Hassan, get raped and abused. Amir just idoly stood by but was he feeling helpless, or was Hassan just a servant that meant nothing to him. This is when the question of good and evil comes out. While Amir shows significantly redeemable qualities throughout the book of doing, it does not change that he was toying with the fact that he let such a vial ast be committed in the first place. Later Amir finds out that Hassan was his brother and he tries desperately to do whatever he can to do good things in Hassan's name like adopt

The kite runner is a book about unfortunate circumstances and upbringing of the main character Amir. Impacted greatly by the lack of affection from his father, Amir unintentionally traded his childhood friend’s innocence for a material object during a confrontation with a trio of bullies. He did this by not standing up to the bullies and by not telling Hassan to give them the object when they threatened him for it. The object was a kite, which he believed to be the tether for building a relationship between him and his father. Consequently, Hassan was raped by Assef (the leader of the three) as an act of dominance. Due to the rape Hassan moves out of Kabul where later he and his father are killed. Hassan, however, leaves a son behind, Sohrab. All the above triggered grief and regret in Amir, all of which he perceived to be unatoned until the conclusion of the book. Amir achieves redemption at the end when he tries to connect with Sohrab and brings him to a safe country.

The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, focuses around the life of Amir, starting from his childhood in 1975 to his adult life in 2001. The story starts of by describing the Amir’s early life in Kabul, where he and Hassan, the child of the Amir’s family servant Ali, are inseparable friends who spend most of their days kite fighting in the city of Kabul. This family is strengthened with Baba’s, Amir’s father, affection for both children. However, Baba critiques Amir’s passion of creative writing over other manly activities, and hence considers him weak and cowardly. This is in contrast to Hassan, who Baba is openly proud of due to his manliness. This division between the children is further created with the difference in ethnic backgrounds,