Redemption In Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner
The novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini presents an enriching story about love, guilt, and redemption. Hosseini uses real, relatable characters by recognizing and honoring the flaw in human nature. He takes you on an eye-opening journey of self-discovery and teaches us that good can always bloom from bad.
In the first part of the book there is a kite tournament, which the characters Amir and Hassan attend. In the competition many brilliantly colored kites with razor sharp string, fly magnificently through the air while trying to cut each other out of the sky. When a kite is cut, it is the job of the kite runner to retrieve it and claim it as their prize. Hassan is Amir 's kite runner, but instead of claiming it as his own he runs the kite for Amir. Throughout the book, Amir is trying to find the kite runner in himself. He is yearning for the freedom and righteousness that he saw in Hassan 's soul. But he is unable to do that until he can redeem his past.
The road to redemption is a long and uncomfortable one, but like the kite tournament it is also very beautiful. Amir 's journey into the heart of Afghanistan isn 't by any …show more content…
means easy. He is faced with violence, lies, death, and most importantly his past. But in the midst of this chaos he is able to experience freedom, freedom from his guilt, from his suffering, from his old self. At one point, his old enemy Assef is beating him into a pulp when some thing unexpected happens, "I don 't know at one point I started laughing, but I did. It hurt to laugh, hurt my jaws, my ribs, my throat. But I was laughing and laughing. And the harder I laughed, the harder he kicked me, punched me, scratched me…What was so funny was that 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…My body was broken-just how badly I wouldn 't find out until later-but I felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed" (Hosseini 289). Because Amir had let Hassan experience pain from Assef twenty years prior, it felt incredibly liberating to finally experience that pain as well. It was a way of getting "even" that lifted some guilt off his chest. The fight with Assef changed Amir in a number of ways, some internal and some external.
After his recovery Amir is left with a few permanent reminders of the fight, but the only one of any importance is a scar running down the middle of his lip. All throughout his life Amir was jealous of Hassan 's courage. He wished for that strength to stand up for him self, but, unable to find it, he wallowed in guilt. Finally, while getting rained on by fists, he finds that courage, that piece of Hassan in himself. And the scar running down his lip represents that discovery. "The impact had cut your lip in two, ' he had said, 'clean down the middle. ' Clean down the middle. Like a harelip" (Hosseini 297). It is a symbol of his newly found inner courage, inner Hassan, and inner kite runner.
With his courage Amir is able to make right the decision to adopt Sohrab. This is yet another way of redeeming his past. By rescuing his nephew he is making up for expelling Hassan out of his fathers house. I believe this is an illustration of how Amir matured while he was in Afghanistan. I don 't think he would have been able to adopt Sohrab if he had been in the comfort of his nice American home where he could hide from Hassan, from Afghanistan, from his past. The brutality and violence accompanied by re-facing Afghanistan, enabled Amir to grow up in a sense and resulted in giving a homeless boy a good family.
As well as serving the purpose of redemption, the adoption also provides Amir and Soraya the child that they were unable to create themselves.
But although Sohrab eats and sleeps in the same house as the two of them, their parent-child relationship is very small. The boy spends most of his time in bed and barely opens his mouth. But somehow in the melancholy of this empty relationship, the author 's last few words leave you knowing that everything will turn out fine. "It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn 't make everything all right. It didn 't make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird 's flight. But I 'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting" (Hosseini
371).
The Kite Runner opened my eyes to some of my emotions. Hosseini brilliantly created characters so real, that you may just think he is writing about you. Amir 's journey of redemption and self-discovery is something that I wish I can experience in my own life sometime. The rewards of redemption are made up to sound so sweet in this book, that I cannot wait until I get a taste.
Work CitedHosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. New York: Riverhead, 2005.
In the first part of the book there is a kite tournament, which the characters Amir and Hassan attend. In the competition many brilliantly colored kites with razor sharp string, fly magnificently through the air while trying to cut each other out of the sky. When a kite is cut, it is the job of the kite runner to retrieve it and claim it as their prize. Hassan is Amir 's kite runner, but instead of claiming it as his own he runs the kite for Amir. Throughout the book, Amir is trying to find the kite runner in himself. He is yearning for the freedom and righteousness that he saw in Hassan 's soul. But he is unable to do that until he can redeem his past.
The road to redemption is a long and uncomfortable one, but like the kite tournament it is also very beautiful. Amir 's journey into the heart of Afghanistan isn 't by any …show more content…
means easy. He is faced with violence, lies, death, and most importantly his past. But in the midst of this chaos he is able to experience freedom, freedom from his guilt, from his suffering, from his old self. At one point, his old enemy Assef is beating him into a pulp when some thing unexpected happens, "I don 't know at one point I started laughing, but I did. It hurt to laugh, hurt my jaws, my ribs, my throat. But I was laughing and laughing. And the harder I laughed, the harder he kicked me, punched me, scratched me…What was so funny was that 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…My body was broken-just how badly I wouldn 't find out until later-but I felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed" (Hosseini 289). Because Amir had let Hassan experience pain from Assef twenty years prior, it felt incredibly liberating to finally experience that pain as well. It was a way of getting "even" that lifted some guilt off his chest. The fight with Assef changed Amir in a number of ways, some internal and some external.
After his recovery Amir is left with a few permanent reminders of the fight, but the only one of any importance is a scar running down the middle of his lip. All throughout his life Amir was jealous of Hassan 's courage. He wished for that strength to stand up for him self, but, unable to find it, he wallowed in guilt. Finally, while getting rained on by fists, he finds that courage, that piece of Hassan in himself. And the scar running down his lip represents that discovery. "The impact had cut your lip in two, ' he had said, 'clean down the middle. ' Clean down the middle. Like a harelip" (Hosseini 297). It is a symbol of his newly found inner courage, inner Hassan, and inner kite runner.
With his courage Amir is able to make right the decision to adopt Sohrab. This is yet another way of redeeming his past. By rescuing his nephew he is making up for expelling Hassan out of his fathers house. I believe this is an illustration of how Amir matured while he was in Afghanistan. I don 't think he would have been able to adopt Sohrab if he had been in the comfort of his nice American home where he could hide from Hassan, from Afghanistan, from his past. The brutality and violence accompanied by re-facing Afghanistan, enabled Amir to grow up in a sense and resulted in giving a homeless boy a good family.
As well as serving the purpose of redemption, the adoption also provides Amir and Soraya the child that they were unable to create themselves.
But although Sohrab eats and sleeps in the same house as the two of them, their parent-child relationship is very small. The boy spends most of his time in bed and barely opens his mouth. But somehow in the melancholy of this empty relationship, the author 's last few words leave you knowing that everything will turn out fine. "It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn 't make everything all right. It didn 't make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird 's flight. But I 'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting" (Hosseini
371).
The Kite Runner opened my eyes to some of my emotions. Hosseini brilliantly created characters so real, that you may just think he is writing about you. Amir 's journey of redemption and self-discovery is something that I wish I can experience in my own life sometime. The rewards of redemption are made up to sound so sweet in this book, that I cannot wait until I get a taste.
Work CitedHosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. New York: Riverhead, 2005.