Progression Of Themes In The Kite Runner

The Progression of Themes in The Kite Runner
Two wrongs don’t make a right. One can assume that this is universal knowledge, but in The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, we learn of the consequences from ignoring this moral law.The novel tells the story of a boy named Amir throughout his journey of life. Amir commits the ultimate betrayal when he witnesses his best friend, Hassan, getting raped and does nothing. Amir makes it even worse when he frames Hassan for stealing, forcing Hassan and Hassan’s father, Ali, to leave their home. These actions create a very traumatic past for Amir, that haunts him in a life of guilt and redemption. Amir’s choices and thoughts throughout each stage of his life reveals a pattern of themes.These themes are betrayal,

An example of this is when Amir gets physically affected by Baba mentioning Hassan in conversation, “Then Baba rolled his head toward me. ‘I wish Hassan had been with us today,’ he said. A pair of steel hands closed around my windpipe at the sound of Hassan’s name. I rolled down the window. Waited for the steel hands to loosen their grip” (Hosseini 134). This quote shows just how intense Amir’s guilt is, presumably to the extent of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD is a condition of persistent mental and emotional stress occurring as a result of injury or severe psychological shock, typically involving disturbance of sleep and constant vivid recall of the experience, with dulled responses to others and to the outside world. This connection can be made based on Amir’s reactions to mentions of that time, and his obvious troubles with sleep, as seen in this quote,”” (Hosseini). We can also infer that Amir suppresses thoughts of his past and believes that suppressing the negative emotions connected to his childhood will help him move on from his mistakes. One can see how deeply Amir’s past haunts him from Amir being unable to confess what he did to his wife, Soraya, “I opened my mouth and almost told her how I’d betrayed Hassan, lied, driven him out, and destroyed a forty year relationship between Baba and Ali. But I didn’t” (Hosseini 165). From this we see that Amir does not