Examples Of Redemption In The Kite Runner

In the novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini portrays the story of Amir, a young Afghan boy who learns about what it means to be redeemed through the experiences he encounters in his life. The idea of redemption becomes a lesson for Amir when he is a witness to the tragic sexual assault of his childhood friend, Hassan. As a bystander in the moment, Amir determines what is more important: saving the life of his friend or running away for the safety of himself. In the end, Amir decides to flee and as a result, he lives with the guilt of leaving Hassan behind to be assaulted. Hosseini shows us how Amir is constantly dealing with the remorse of the incident, but does not attempt to redeem himself until later in his life when Hassan has died. He acts with the motive of relieving his own guilt rather than from the goodness of his heart and redemption from the person he hurt, Hassan. Amir is an example of how humans often tend to think that redemption is forgiveness of self and feeling content, however, the act of redemption should be recognizing a mistake and working towards a change to fix that mistake. In order to be redeemed, the first step is understanding the mistake and the path towards redemption. After Hassan’s rape, Amir knows that he had not done the right thing and turned his back on Hassan when he had an opportunity to help him. Amir admittedly says, “I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run” (77). We