The Kite Runner Essay on Redepmtion

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‘To what extent is The Kite Runner a story of redemption?’ Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner is largely about the life of Amir, an Afghan man who is troubled by his past. Through the experiences of Amir and also those of his father Baba, and his wife Soraya, Hosseini’s main concern is to explore that atonement for our sins is only possible when we confront those events in our lives. It is known from the very beginning of Hosseini’s novel that Amir is troubled by his “past of unatoned sins”. He is a man who cannot escape his past and needs to be accountable for his actions “the winter of 1975”. The event that is at the centre of his story and provides this anguish for Amir, is his act of cowardice against his childhood friend, Hassan, who “never denied” him of anything and had a strong “kinship” with him from a young age. As a child, Amir watched as Hassan was viciously raped by one of the neighbourhood thug’s intent on revenge. The moment Amir runs away from helping Hassan is the moment he begins to run away from his life. Rather than confront his betrayal of guilt for many years, Amir continues to run as a man, finding temporary solace in America. For him, America was a place to “bury” his memories. Amir’s need to redeem himself eventually surfaces as he begins to realise that “it’s wrong what they say about the past... about how you can bury”. When Rahim Khan advises Amir, “there is a way to be good again” he calls upon Amir to return to Afghanistan is find Hassan’s orphaned son Sohrab and to set things right by adopting him. In this way, Rahim Khan challenges Amir to confront his past so he can feel like an “honourable man” and is also a means of “redeeming himself”. As well as Amir, Baba also found his own way “to be good again”, by living with his betrayal of Ali for his whole life even though he did not confess his indiscretion with anyone but Rahim Khan.

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