Kite Runner Past

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The Persistence of the Past

In life, no matter how hard one may try, it is impossible to escape from the past. The persistence of the past is a theme strongly expressed in the books The Kite Runner and Les Miserables. Multiple characters in both stories are haunted by both their past selves and actions. The past is what ends up driving crucial events in these stories to unfold how they do. There are characters who feel that they need to redeem their selves from their past such as Jean Valean from Les Miserables, and Amir from The Kite Runner. These characters strive towards creating a new life for themselves while having the weight of the past being pushed down onto them. Their past seems to ripple throughout their journey to redemption. …show more content…

In this essay these characters and their pasts will be explored and compared.
“The past can never be buried” (Hosseini 1). This is spoken by Amir at the very beginning of The Kite Runner and perfectly explains the theme of both this story and also Les Miserables. The protagonists of each story feel the need to redeem themselves from their past, despite their different classes that they start the story in. These needs later drive critical events in each novel to occur. In the Beginning of Les Miserables, Jean Valjean starts out as a thief in the chain gang who later decides to break his parole in order to become an honest man. “Through him, Hugo shows the dark side of virtue.” (Reeves). This statement is referring to a character in the story name inspector Javert, who tries to hunt down Valjean after he breaks his parole. Javert is a character in this story who acts as Valjean’s personified past. When Valjean changes his identity and becomes the mayor of Montreuil Sur Mer, Javert recognizes him and tried to get him back to jail, but Valjean manages to escape again. Multiple times we see Valjean running from Javert, but in reality he is running from his past life. Amir starts his story in a

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