Nicole Hamaway
The novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini tells the story of Amir, a boy who faces numerous complications; such as, living in the household of an unloving father, and ultimately fails miserably when he tried to impress his father. His cowardice is revealed after witnessing the rape of his best friend, Hassan. With a guilty conscience, Rahim Khan tells Amir to travel to Afghanistan, in which Rahim says “there is a way to be good again” as a last attempt of redemption for Amir’s past shortcoming. In the Kite Runner, Rahim Khan sagely advice ultimately steers Amir to the path of goodness.
After winning the kite running contest Amir feels overjoyed. Hassan runs the kite so
that Amir could have the perfect entrance into his house, with his father finally proud of him. But after searching the town for Hassan, Amir can’t find him anywhere. Then as Amir turns into an alleyway he sees what happened. Assef, the local bully who they have had past altercation with, and his two sidekicks pinned down Hassan. Assef lower his pants and Amir had just watched his best friend is raped. He had just witnessed the best day of his life turn into his worst. Amir ran, “I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me. I was afraid of getting hurt. That's what I told myself as I turned my back to the alley, to Hassan. That's what I made myself believe. I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that 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. Was it a fair price? The answer floated to my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara, wasn't he?”. (140) Amir regrets his cowardice for the rest of his life.
An adult Amir, twenty years later, still regrets the decision he made that day. After receiving a letter from Rahim Khan, Baba’s best friend asking him to go back to Afghanistan to pick up Hassan’s son, Sohrab who lost both his parents and . When Amir was growing up he felt Rahim Khan as a father figure because he didn't feel a real love from Baba, like he did with Rahim. Amir decides to go and travels to Afghanistan. When Amir goes to see Rahim, Rahim tells him what orphanage Sohrab is at. When Amir goes to the orphanage the person who works there says that Amar has been taken by somone. That someon was Assef. When Amir and Assef meet again in epic battle. They begin to fight. This was Amir’s first fight of his life and he got beaten up badly. A bruised and bloody mess Amir still tries to fight for not only his life but for Sohrab. Sohrab asks Assef to stop, he doesn’t, following in the legacy of his father Sohrab takes out his sligshot and shoots a metal object at Assf, it hits him in the eye and the object is lodged there. Sohrab ends up living with Amir in the Middle East for a bit of time, due to problems with the adoption. Sohrab ends up in America, but doesn’t talk because Amir asked if he would be able to stay in an orphanage for a short amount of time but Sohrab wouldn’t and luckily he didn't have to. This is how Amir become good again.
In the novel the Kite Runner Amir become good again by fixing the bad decisions he made in his youth. In the Kite Runner, Rahim Khan sagely advice ultimately steers Amir to the path of goodness.