The truth is that Amir is more like Baba than he knew. Like father like son, Amir follows his father’s footsteps by keeping Pashtuns and Hazara’s separate, continuing the cycle of guilt until Amir breaks the cycle for both Baba and himself by doing what is right, out of love. The guilt begins with Baba and threads through out his life into Amir’s life, until unconditional love cuts it out of the cycle. One act of selfishness, begins the cycle. Baba betrayed his friend in the worst way an Afghan man could be disgraced: “How had Ali lived in that house day in and day out, knowing he had been dishonored by his master in the single worst way an Afghan man can be dishonored?” (225) Baba stole Ali’s honor.
After learning of Hassans’s death and orphan son, going back to Afghanistan is Amir’s last chance to redeem himself, he is brought to the realization that finding Sohrab is something he has to do in order to be able to live his life with a clear conscious. When returning to Afghanistan, Amir is confronted by Assef, an old enemy with unsolved business. Amir is beaten senselessly very
After leaving Afghanistan at the age of eighteen. Escaping inside the tank of a gas trunk, after the attack of Russians on Afghanistan. Amir had no reason to go back, until one day when Rahim Khan tells him about Hassan’s death. However the most shocking part of the letter concerns Hassan’s real father, which is Baba. Amir stands up for Sohrab by fighting Assef for him.
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.
Baba, betrays Ali by sleeping with his wife and consequently took away his “naang” and “namoos” (honour and pride), an unacceptable act in Afghan culture where all a man had was his pride. This new information also affects Amir’s relationship with his father and builds on the recurring theme of father-son relationships “Fifteen years after I’d buried him, I was learning that Baba had been a thief” which makes Amir think of Baba as less of the ideal Afghan man he imagined his father to be. These findings also shock the reader and affect our relationship with Baba as we see him in a different light, we remember with Amir as we have been told the stories from his childhood perspective, we know revisit them but with Amir’s new perception and understanding of the events, the signs that Baba was Hassan’s real father become
He makes the anticipation of bad news worse than the bad news itself. As Kumalo “arrives” at the point of sorrow, it is a relief because although he still feels crushed to know all that has become of his son is a murderer, he at least stands on solid ground. This is shown when he goes to visit his son before the trial and loses respect for his brother because his brother refuses to try to grieve. He knows that by refusing to do so, his brother is also refusing to heal. Kumalo knows that there is no purpose in extending the journey, because then he would just be extending the pain.
Huck is adopted by the Widow Douglass in an attempt to “sivilize” him. Huck constantly discards the ideas of obedience taught to him. Due to his childhood Huck chooses to fake his own death and run away from his father, Pap. This is the first major deceit that appears in the novel. As Huck escapes he leaves behind clues to mislead his father and community, “I took the axe and smashed in the door.
An example can be drawn from Najaf Mazari’s memoir “The Rugmaker of Mazar – e – Sharif” where the protagonist, Najaf, is an asylum seeker. Najaf comes from the Northern part of Afghanistan in a city of Mazar- e-Sharif and is a very down to earth person. He is someone who puts his family, religion and country as one of his top priorities. This all changes though when the Taliban begin to take control over Afghanistan and begin to capture and torture all the Hazara people. Surviving the ordeal once, Najaf’s family comes to the conclusion that it is too dangerous for him to stay in Afghanistan and they must send him away.
Emma Patrick Mrs. Reitz Honors English II 22 November 2010 (Critical Analysis Final Draft) The Unbearable Guilt Guilt is a mental obsession with the idea of having done wrong. Guilt has more control over some people, than it does to others. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, an infinite amount of guilt is expressed. Both Arthur and Hester are forced to cope with their living guilt in different, yet interesting ways. Within Arthur’s coward self lies his guilt, and openly, lies Hester’s guilt.
Additionally, he needs to take the beating he should have taken in 1975 before he is able to feel “better”. As part of his redemption to Hassan, he adopts Sohrab as his child atoning both for his and his father’s mistakes and putting Hassan’s blood back to his rightful place in the family. Alternatively, Baba never truly atones, preferring to run away from his sins then to face them. Although it is suggested, that Baba building the orphanage is a symbolic representation of his attempt to repent for his sins, he never finishes this as he leaves, allowing his orphanage to be destroyed, and Afghanistan itself destroyed. Kite runner shows the equally damaging actions of both Amir and Baba, towards their loved ones and society.