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The Kite Runner And A Separate Peace Comparison

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The Ghost of Betrayal and the Specter of Redemption: Comparing the Hopeless to the Hopeful in A Separate Peace and The Kite Runner Age is not a factor; mature readers can still approach and appreciate the type of text typically called the coming of age novel that explores the drama of adolescence. Even if the struggles of the protagonists are not exactly reminiscent of our own, we can usually find something with which to identify. Because of the universality of the motif, a defining friendship is often a major component of these novels. Usually the friends we make as we go through the difficult time of growing up are ones that we will never forget, and in both John Knowles’ A Separate Peace and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner a friendship …show more content…

Moreover, it is not easily done. When Gene tries to confess, Finny doesn’t let him, even running from the scene to avoid hearing something that doesn’t fit with his own innocent account of the accident. It is as if Finny is too good; he has such a loyal and trusting nature that he is incapable of believing that his friend would be guilty of something like that. He has even told Gene that he doesn’t believe in teachers or in books, but he does believe in Gene. Running from the awful truth, Finny falls from a stairwell and compounds the injury to his already broken leg. Finally, though, Gene does confess, saying that shaking the limb that caused Finny to fall wasn’t a premeditated act. Of course, Gene, himself, doesn’t quite believe that his own confession is completely truthful; nevertheless, Finny does accept Gene’s words as honest, further proving that Phineas is the better person. Finny later dies of complications during an operation to repair his leg, and Gene is left knowing that Finny was truly good and that he, himself, is a bad person. Therefore, for Gene, Phineas’ death symbolizes the loss of innocence by completing his recognition of the presence of evil in the world because he resolves that, indeed, he himself is capable of perpetrating that …show more content…

Unlike Gene when he was responsible for his friend being harmed, Amir never admits the truth to his friend. Although he had at first told himself that his second betrayal was the ideal solution to assuage the memory of his first, Amir still suffers from his crisis of conscience. In that respect he can again be compared to Gene, who, even as a mature man visiting his old school at a reunion fifteen years later, suffers from the recognition of how the treatment of his friend reflects on his own true nature. Also, Amir visits his old homeland fifteen years after marrying in America and reflects how his act of cowardice has haunted him. Gene visits the gnarly old tree and reflects; it is a reminder of his shame, but he recognizes that he, himself, is the source of it. Similarly, Amir has the opportunity to visit a pomegranate tree under which he and Hassan had spent much time as boys, but it is changed—a reminder that what has been done cannot be undone. Nevertheless, Amir is presented with a possibility of redemption that is not available to Gene because Phineas died as a young man. Amir returns to find that Hassan is also dead, yet he learns that he had lived a happy life with a wife and a son. This alone might be enough to ease some guilt, but he also learns Hassan has left behind a son who is in desperate need of help. The possibility for redemption is compounded

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