Guilt In The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini

Everyone has wronged someone in their past-- whether it was with an unkind word or with a betrayal. In Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 novel The Kite Runner, the main character, Amir, has to live with the guilt of wronging his servant, best friend, and secret half brother, Hassan, by watching passively as he gets raped. The Kite Runner tells of Amir, an upper class Afghan, and his childhood, immigration to America due to the Russian invasion, return to Afghanistan, and subsequent settling of debts. Amir’s guilt from not preventing Hassan’s rape causes him to drive Hassan away, and the guilt from both of these actions follow him throughout his life until he finds and adopts Hassan’s son and his nephew, Sohrab. A recurring motif throughout the novel is that the only way to right a wrong, and get rid of the accompanying guilt, is not to run from it, but to actively do good for the wronged parties, as shown by Amir’s interactions with Hassan’s son Sohrab, the various kites throughout the book, and the

Since Amir never quite returning Hassan’s loyalty led to Hassan’s rape and his leaving Amir’s household, Amir adopts Hassan’s son to raise as his own. He promises to do this with the same words Hassan told him-- words he could not say to Hassan without lying-- “For you, a thousand times over” (67, 371). Amir would be as loyal to Sohrab as Hassan was to him. Also, after Amir rescues Sohrab from the Taliban, he realizes a bond had formed between them: “A kinship exists between people who've fed from the same breast. Now… I saw that a kinship had taken root between us too. What had happened… had irrevocably bound us” (320). Hassan and Amir’s kinship is broken because of Amir actively trying to break it (92), but one is forged between Amir and Hassan’s son by Amir trying to fix his mistakes years down the