Guilt In The Kite Runner

As Amir grows up in Kabul, he chooses to think only for himself, betraying the person who cares for him the most and in consequence, is overcome by crushing guilt. After Amir wins the esteemed kite flying competition, Hassan faithfully decides to run the last kite for Amir as a prize for Amir’s father, Baba. Hassan is confronted in an alley after chasing down the fallen kite by Amir’s past tormentors, Assef and his friends, who want the kite. Amir finds the boys, assesses the situation, and decides to hide himself in the alley. All the while Hassan valiantly defends the kite to the best of his abilities. He is soon overpowered three against one fight, and Amir watches in horror as Hassan is pinned to the floor and mercilessly raped by Assef. Amir

The quote, “Guilt is a destructive and ultimately pointless emotion” (Crilly, 2012), shows the effect of guilt on a person. Guilt can control a whole person’s life at times, and constantly causes them to think about events that caused the emotion. Two characters in The Kite Runner, Amir and Baba, constantly experience guilt due to important events that occured in their lives. In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the motif of guilt is shown when looking at how Amir lived with the death of his mother, how Amir responded to the attack of Hassan, and how Baba dealt with being the biological father of Hassan.

What if one’s life could be put on hold or paused? Imagine this experience; a bad night’s sleep with a day of work ahead, calling off isn’t an option, and caffeine delivers a mean headache. What if a simple pause button, a life-pause button, was the solution? While this could be a great thing, imagine it’s negative side; what if it was only the user’s life that stopped? Everything else would change but the user’s life would stay exactly the same. This idea is similar both to the movie Click where a man uses a remote to fast forward though his life, and to the way guilt can burden a person. In Kite Runner, Khalid Hosseini uses the character of Amir along with several scenes to convey the same message; guilt can delay one’s ability to move forward in life.

Moral ambiguity in the novel The Kite Runner is a concept Khaled Hosseini, the author, exercises plenty of times throughout the novel, but the few characters that are frequently accounted for being ambiguous are obvious, for instance, Amir and Baba. The Kite Runner is a novel written to express the lives of other people in separate countries. As life advances for the two characters, Hassan and Amir, trauma causes them to get wound up in a landslide of events leading to agitation, redemption, and Amir questioning if his entire life is a lie. In this novel ambiguity means the reader is not sure how the character is supposed to act which causes the reader to question the characters morals. Hassan, for the most part, is a static character who is neither viewed as vague, nor ambiguous in this narrative. Hassan is mainly known for his kind-hearted selflessness and always doing as Amir asks him; however, the reason behind this trait is never stated. Hassan is ambiguous, and that trait is essential for the development of the story, anything stating something different might be a misinterpretation.

“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do,” Voltaire once said. Every choice in life comes with a consequence that follows. A common consequence is guilt, a bad feeling caused by knowing or thinking that you have done something wrong. Amir, the main character in The Kite Runner, discovers the consequence of guilt after making decisions throughout his childhood that were destructive. Khaled Hosseini describes the destructive ability of guilt to consume one’s life through the the relationships of Amir and Hassan, Baba and Ali, and Amir and Sohrab.

The Effect of Guilt and Atonement “Every man is guilty of the good he did not do” (Voltaire). Amir, the protagonist of The Kite Runner, must confront this very notion as he navigates his guilt pertaining to what he did, or rather didn’t do, in the midst of atrocity. Amir grew up in Afghanistan during a period of political turmoil alongside his close friend, Hassan. Hassan is fiercely loyal, protecting Amir from harm and guiding him through obstacles in his life. One day, while defending Amir against a trio of bullies, Hassan suffers through rape and sexual assault - all because he wanted to stand up for his friend.

Guilt is the worst enemy of true happiness and self-esteem. It is indeed the worst thing you can ever do to your soul." Pamella Baron Waldbauer. In the novel Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, the use of guilt is shown throughout the book. The novel shows the power struggles of guilt by displacing the main character, Amir, who does everything in his power to redeem his past actions.

The Power of Guilt Imagine living with so much guilt that it takes over every detail of one’s life. In The Kite Runner, The Scarlet Letter, and The Things They Carried, various characters have the feeling of guilt inflicted upon them. Coco Chanel once said, “Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.” It is clear that guilt can impact one’s life dramatically. It has the ability to create pain, discomfort, regret, and shame.

“For the first time since the winter of 1975, i felt at peace. I laughed because I saw that in some hidden nook in a corner of my mind, I’d even been looking forward to this” (hosseini 289). In the novel The Kite runner a boy named Amir had witnessed his servant Hassan getting raped in an alley and didn’t step up to aid during and after the fact, Amir was living with the guilt knowing he could have helped Hassan but rather he just ignored the fact of what happened. Years later, Amir lives with that same guilt and believes he is being punished for not aiding Hassan. Living with guilt is agonizing until you redeem yourself of that guilt means that all the punishment that Amir is facing is necessary in order for his concise to be cleared up.

Some say it’s ‘bothered conscience’, Some describe it as ‘a feeling of culpability for offences. ‘ but it is much more than that. Guilt is an underestimated aspect of human life. A person living with guilt can be elucidated like a prisoner who dreams to be a free man like Andy Dufresne in the Shawshank redemption. But on the contras Andy was not living with guilt whereas an guilty man like Amir was ; the guilt changed Amir as a boy and made him mentally caged.

“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

“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.

“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 consequences of the past are inescapable and the choices a person makes can influence the rest of his life. There is no way to change the past, so once important choices are made it is impossible to reverse time and change those decisions. Khaled Hosseini explores this idea of having to live with past decisions in his compelling novel The Kite Runner. To enforce the message of how inescapable the past truly is, the main character of Hosseini’s book, Amir, betrays his closest friend and struggles to cope with the haunting consequences of this betrayal. Through Amir’s complex character development and The Kite Runner’s distinctive plot structure, those who read the novel gain a deeper understanding of Amir’s decisions as a result of his past mistakes via Hosseini’s use of foreshadowing and flashbacks. By creating a unique relationship between the past and present in the novel, Hosseini urges readers to ponder the consequences of mistakes and reflect on their own past.

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