Betrayal In Shakespeare's The Kite Runner And Oedipus The King

Amir and Oedipus are alike in many ways, so much so that their lives could have ended up differently if someone told the truth. The common theme in both The Kite Runner and Oedipus Rex is betrayal and how being betrayed took away the truth, being betrayed left them with guilt, and by being betrayed they were left to accept their mistakes.

Amir and Oedipus were both betrayed leaving them with nothing, not even the truth. In The Kite Runner, Amir always relied on his father, Baba, who showed him how to be a man and taught him the values of life. There was only one important value that Amir lived by and Baba explains on page seventeen, “Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.” Baba begins to further explain what this really means on page eighteen, “When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a

He was humiliated and terrified and he panicked. He grabbed a knife and began to gash out his eyes, making him a blind man, but also blind to the truth. To make up for all the mistakes he made, he banished himself from the city of Thebes. He left his two sons to rule the city and he took his two daughters with him. Eventually, both of his sons were killed and so were his two daughters. But one day, when Oedipus was old and lonely, he was struck by a lightening bolt killing him for good.

At the end of these two tales there is both a happy and sad ending. Amir and Oedipus faced many challenges on their journey through life, and it seemed like they were never given a break. Throughout these two stories there was a common theme which was betrayal. The betrayal took away their right to the truth, betrayal left them feeling with guilt, and betrayal had made them accept their mistakes. Amir and Oedipus were both looking at the truth their entire life, they were just never actually seeing