Reflective Essay On The Kite Runner

Improved Essays
The novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a story that follows a young troubled Amir into his adulthood. It first takes place in Kabul, Afghanistan where Amir grew up with his father Baba and his servant Hassan. Amir had a constant jealousy of the relationship Hassan and Baba had, which led Amir to betray Hassan ruining their brotherhood. As Amir grows into a young man his past mistakes seem to always haunt him no matter how hard he tries to bury them. Finally, as a man a chance of redemption was offered by Rahim Khan, an old family friend to go back to Kabul and save Sohrab, Hassan’s young son. Though this task seemed so simple, it brought on more pain for both Amir and Sohrab. Taking into consideration Amir’s childhood, the acts he …show more content…
Soraya had a reputation because her past, she told Amir everything that happened. After her story, Amir reflects saying, “I envied her. Her secret was out. Spoken. Dealt with. I opened my mouth and almost told her how I betrayed Hassan, lied, driven him out, and destroyed a forty-year relationship between Baba and Ali. But I didn’t. I suspected there were many ways in which Soraya Taheri was a better person than me. Courage was one of them.” (Hosseini,165). This was a perfect time for Amir to tell Soraya everything he did as a child, watching Hassan get raped to receive the victory kite, accusing Hassan of stealing money to drive him out and treating Hassan poorly out of his jealousy. Amir thought his sins were so bad that Soraya wouldn’t love him anymore.This is why Amir says Soraya has courage since she was in the same position. Yet, Soraya told her story anyway, so Amir can love/accept all of her where Amir was a coward. These pieces show Amir was content on keeping his past …show more content…
Sohrab is begging for Amir to do something, but Amir’s response is it will just be for a little bit I promise. Sohrab would never trust Amir or believe his promise so really Amir’s comforting was meaningless. Even in this moment Amir could have said we’ll figure something out, but instead he went along with hurting the child, then took a nap afterwards. Sohrab is left alone and attempts suicide after the traumatizing news. Amir had tried to better his ways, defending Sohrab at dinner. His relationship with Sohrab grows after numerous months of Sohrab remaining quiet. But Amir’s cowardly acts of betrayal committed cannot be redeemed. Instead of owning up for his mistakes Amir continues to hide his past wrongdoings, and seems not to care about getting redemption for them. Amir’s selfish ways are unchanged in his adult life with him denying Rahim Khan his dying wish. Amir committed the ultimate betrayal to Sohrab by going back on the promise of not letting him go into an orphanage again. Throughout The Kite Runner Amir just repeats his past mistakes, and will probably make the same mistakes again. Everyone has past regrets and mistakes, most people take those issues and evolve from them. However, it can easily be said Amir has not progressed nor made permanent changes from his troubled past; therefore Amir is unworthy of

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    1. Describe Amir’s injuries Amir’s spleen had ruptured. He had a delayed rupture because he has signs of hemorrhage in his abdominal cavity. Amir also has several broken ribs. One of his broken ribs caused a pneumothorax.…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Her secret was outspoken. Dealt with. I opened my mouth and almost told her how I'd betrayed Hassan, lied, driven him out, and destroyed the forty-year relationship between Baba and Ali. But I didn't. I suspected there were many ways in which Soraya Taheri was a better person than me.…

    • 1995 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As he reached adulthood, he carried the guilt and shame and needed to clear his conscious. Redemption was what he seeked but what he really needed was to forgive himself. With this comes honor, not only to his name but to his family. All along though, what he really seemed was Babas approval. Amir sacrificed his relationship with true friend, Hassan and Hassan's well-being in order to gain social status but the ends never justified the means.…

    • 645 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Friends Close, Enemies Closer: The Story of Betrayal, Guilt, and Redemption. Friends are supposed to be there for you in times of need, be a shoulder to cry on and share your best experiences with. This was not the case for Hassan and Phineas. In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Amir (a wealthy Pashtun boy) surrenders the dignity of his best friend Hassan (a poor Hazara boy), only to be haunted by the guilt of his choice, sending him to make done what is right many years later. In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene allows his jealousy to dictate his actions, creating a tormenting guilt inside him while destroying the bond with his best friend Phineas.…

    • 1367 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As Amir seeks redemption for his cruelty to Hassan, saving Sohrab is not enough to atone for all his past mistakes. To begin, Amir is a selfish person, especially when it comes to Hassan. The first example of Amir’s selfishness is after cutting the last kite. “For the next few minutes, I scoured the bazaar in vain. Maybe the old merchant’s eyes had betrayed him.…

    • 527 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Foils In The Kite Runner

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages

    After repeatedly scapegoating Hassan, Amir is given a chance to redeem himself in the form of Sohrab, Hassan’s son. This is important because it gives Amir a chance to step into Hassan’s shoe and make up for all the wrong he has done to Hassan. In his quest for redemption, he is provided with a situation where he can act like Hassan would if he were in his place and directly perform an action that Hassan would have wanted. All of this because of his deep connection to Hassan, as proven by their relationship as foils. The proof comes in the final pages of the book when Amir repeats what Hassan said to him before he was raped by Assef, “for you, a thousand times over”, to his son Sohrab.…

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Heroism In The Kite Runner

    • 1019 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Amir is willing to put his life on the line in order to save Sohrab. An example from the text is, “Another rib snapped, this time lower. What was so funny was that, for the first time since the winter of 1975, I felt at peace. I laughed…

    • 1019 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    At first, Amir was reluctant to find Sohrab. He told Rahim he could not go to Kabul because he had “a wife in America, a home, a career, and a family” (Hosseini 226). Although he wished Rahim never called him, he knew he would not feel better if he didn’t redeem himself for being a poor friend to Hassan. He had dreams about being the one who killed Hassan. He wondered if things would have turned out differently if he hadn’t driven Ali and Hassan out of the house.…

    • 639 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The feeling of remorse causes Amir to make really difficult decisions, such as confronting Assef, that makes the journey so much harder. In addition to finding a freedom from the guilt, Amir tries to find forgiveness for his mistake by saving Sohrab, Hassan 's son. Throughout the entire book Amir goes on this journey to try to find a way to be "good again". In real life, people constantly struggle to find forgiveness or redemption for a mistake they made. This journey causes people to go outside their limits to atone their mistakes by confronting those whom they betrayed or somehow finding a way to correct their…

    • 1033 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Perhaps Amir betraying Hassan the first time allowed him to continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. Even later in life, Amir hurt Sohrab by planning to send him back to the orphanage. In a single sentence, Sohrab lost all faith in Amir and hope for a brighter future than his troubled past. Even by the end of the book, Sohrab could only barely muster a…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Courage In The Kite Runner

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages

    A father and son duo sit together in a dark metallic van. The boy shakes with fear while he grasps his father’s arm. Suddenly, the van stops, and the heavy doors swing open. The son watches a soldier make suggestive looks toward a woman nearby that make him feel queasy. The father stands up and defends the woman.…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the eyes of Amir, a character in The Kite Runner, “[...]it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out” (Hosseini 1). Not only do some of the past events in Amir’s adolescent life unfold before him in adulthood, but Amir is in many ways a person of the past. By the end of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Amir has become an unchanged man.…

    • 1136 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Amir redeems himself for his troubled childhood in Kabul for which he betrayed his friend Hassan, essentially becoming the ultimate act of…

    • 1197 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Knowing Amir betrayed him, Hassan still told his son that Amir was the “‘best friend he ever had’” (Hosseini 306). Even though Hassan knew the relationship was imbalanced, the genuine kindness of his character was able to understand Amir’s motivations and forgive him.…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, tells the story of a character named Amir. The story follows Amir from the age of twelve where he commits his ‘sin’ which is standing by while his friend/servant Hassan is sexually assaulted by the book’s antagonist, Assef. Amir’s sin of not saving Hassan gravely affects him from that point on where he searches for a way to be good again.…

    • 918 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays