Sin And Atonement In Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner

Guilt is a major theme that intertwines the luxurious novels, as both the protagonists Amir, from The Kite Runner, and Piscine who is known as Pi, from Life of Pi, struggle due to guilt. To begin, in The Kite Runner the main protagonist Amir, a conflicted boy, makes some rash decisions which leads him to feel guilty. The reason why guilt eats Amir’s soul is because he sees his best friend/step-brother,Hassan, get rapped right in front of his eyes, and Amir did nothing about it. The reason why Amir is nothing to stop this horrendous act from taking place is because he was angry at Hassan for stealing Baba’s, Amir’s father, affection from him. Even though, Hassan did not intend to “sweep” Baba’s affection towards his way. The rape takes place

Throughout life, people will find themselves facing guilt or shame, some more significant than others. An individual experiences guilt knowing that they have committed some form of wrongdoing. To relieve themselves from this offense, they will try to be redeemed, or relieved from their sin. In Khaled Hosseini novel, The Kite Runner, Hosseini described Amir’s journey to redemption after he betrayed Hassan during their childhood years. The five steps for redemption are categorized as Conviction, Confession, Repentance, Restitution, and Reconciliation. Although, Amir shows many acts of kindness and selflessness, in the end, he was not able to truly redeem himself.

The final guilt Amir struggles with is his guilt of apathy where he physically commits the action and instead of standing as a bystander becomes the person who committed the act, which gives him a different form of guilt. Amir feels apathy guilt through betraying his friend and kicking Hassan out of the house because he is a witness to the crime Amir has committed. Amir has guilt because he chases Hassan out, “I flinched, like I’d been slapped… Then I understood: This was Hassan’s final sacrifice for me… And that led to another understanding: Hassan knew. He knew I’d seen everything in that alley, that I’d stood there and done nothing. He knew I had betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time” (ch. 12). Amir

In the novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini tells 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, resulting in Amir having to live with the guilt of leaving Hassan behind to be assaulted. Hosseini shows us how Amir constantly deals with the remorse of the incident, but does not attempt to redeem himself until later in his life when Hassan has died.

Everyone makes mistakes, commits sins or does some bad deeds. As time goes by, one is unable to live with all the guilt from these sins and mistakes. One regrets it, repents it and does all sorts of things to make it right. Ultimately one only looks for ways to forgive oneself and this requires the atonement of past sins. Atonement in real life refers to the actions of making amends for a wrong or an injury. It helps one to redeem and forgive oneself for all the sins committed in life. This paper will prove that atonement of past sins is possible by using ‘The Kite Runner’ as the primary source and several secondary sources.

In a lifetime, everyone will face personal battles and guilt. People find peace of mind through redeeming themselves or making up for their past actions. One of the central themes of the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is whether Amir truly redeemed himself for what he did. He has been living with the guilt from a unspeakable past childhood experience his whole life. He had let his best friend, Hassan, be tortured and neither supported or defended him. The experience left a scar on both Hassan and Amir. Amir’s father’s words echo in his mind as he recalls the experience, “A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything” (Hosseini, 2003). By the end of the novel, Amir finally learns stands up and earns the redemption

In The Kite Runner, Khalid Hosseini writes that Amir makes mistakes, and because of that, it takes his entire life to redeem himself. Throughout The Kite Runner, Amir is looking for redemption. One of the reasons why Amir redeems himself was to fix the wrong he did to Hassan in his childhood. On the other hand, many may believe that Amir didn’t earn anything and rather wasted his time in Afghanistan. It might be thought that Amir did not revert his wrong to Hassan and did not redeem himself. Amir was able to do this in various ways throughout the book, especially towards the end. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini shows that Amir is able to redeem himself from the wrong he did to Hassan by putting himself in danger to rescue Sohrab, by receiving a scar from the fight with Assef signifying his redemption, and finally by bringing Sohrab back to United States with him.

The author puts a lot of moral ambitious character in the story the Kite Runner. Amir is an example of a moral ambitious character. He is evil in the beginning of the story, but as he matures and grows up as an adult. The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini, is a novel about a young boy named Amir and how he grows up in the Afghan war and how life was during the war. Amir's Moral Ambiguity is important to this story because he provides readers to like and hate him. The author provides the reader with mixed feeling about Amir.

It is delineated by natural inclination that people sympathize with others who undergo an unfortunate circumstance or event. However, this type of behavior is dependent on how one uses prior knowledge to judge whether someone is worthy of sympathy. The idea that people tend to draw conclusions based on other people’s decisions and character remains as one of the many underlying themes in literature. In Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, Amir’s character is considered worthy of sympathy by his redeeming actions towards the end of the novel, his good intentions toward Baba, and his ability to empathize with others.

Life is all about second chances, there are many mistakes committed by us in the past and the present. The novel the kite runner explores the mistakes committed by Amir and always hoped to atone the sins. Sins committed weigh on one’s conscience and it’s not every day that one gets an opportunity to redeem their misdoings. It’s only a fortunate few who are given the chance to atone for their sins.

Holding a terrible truth that can lead to so much guilt can tear a person apart. Not only from themselves, but from others too. In the novel, The Kite Runner, there are many characters with many secrets that the others don’t know about. Two characters of many others are Amir and Rahim Khan. Amir is the main focus of the novel; it basically starts with his childhood all the way until he’s an adult. He was one of the most wealthy people in Afghanistan, until the Russian’s take over later on. His father, Baba, is very respected by others. Baba never paid much attention to his son, also his honesty with him was very poor. Therefore, Amir would spend most of his childhood with his servant, Hassan. Hassan is the reason Amir’s life changed forever, from

As regular people we know that when we damage someone we love, we try to find redemption in any way possible. Fear, pride and many other factors play in the act of doing what is considered to be morally right. In Khaled Husseini’s The Kite Runner, the protagonist, Amir, deals with a situation where he is confronted by deciding weather to help a dear friend or ignore a harsh situation. All of this leads to the author using symbolism, irony and imagery.

In the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, there are many different important conflicts throughout the story. These conflicts are brought upon by the recurring motifs, such as redemption and loyalty. The different dissensions support the ideas of characterization by how they react to the sudden adversity in their lives. Amir attempts to redeem himself through Hassan’s son, Sohrab, by saving him and giving him a better life. Further developing the meaning of the story, connoting the mental struggle and the way priorities change over time, keeping readers mindful of the motifs and how they impact each character.

“Our English word “atonement” explains well the theology behind such restoration, for it suggests that God and humanity can relationally be “at one” again,” suggests Ed Stetzer in his blog on Christianity & the Old Testament. This concept of sin and atonement can be seen to occur frequently in the novel ‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini through the course of the protagonist, Amir’s life. Hosseini portrays Amir’s quest for redemption beautifully throughout his life as an innocent teenager in the enthralling and serene city of Kabul to his life as a family man in The United States of America. Through Amir’s life, Hosseini clearly portrays the fact that all sins can be atoned however grave or futile they may be and by their atonement one can attain self-satisfaction and can be at peace.

Internal conflict relies on the struggles within a person that are based on interpersonal impulses. In literary works, internal conflict can focus mainly on the psychological struggle of a character, whose solution creates the suspense of the story’s plot itself. This concept is quite vital throughout the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan-born American novelist and medical doctor. In the book, Amir, the protagonist, is constantly battling himself and his own skewed logic as to what it means to redeem oneself. Redemption, defined as a person saving himself from any sin, error or evil, comes out through Amir’s strange notions about how he can forgive himself for wrongdoings, mainly with the alley rape of his father’s young servant.