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Ben Franklin wrote “Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.” This philosophy refers to more than work assignments, but to emotions as well. Pushing away complications is a frequent side-effect of being human. This is evident even in the steps to acceptance, in which the first is denial. This tendency to ignore pain is seen in more than just society, but in its creations as well. In literature, characters often deny the existence of certain feelings and problems, which later results in a confrontation when their issues can no longer be ignored. In The Kite Runner, Amir tries to deny his crushing guilt, but this leads to severe depression and loneliness. After a kite competition, some neighborhood bullies rape Hassan in an alley. …show more content…
About a week later, Amir, Baba, and some others go on a trip to town. On the way, everyone talks about the recent kite competition. They congratulate Amir on his win, but he gets horribly nauseas because all he could see was Hassan, “Little shapes formed behind my eyelids, like hands playing shadows on the wall. They twisted, merged, formed a single image: Hassan’s old brown pair of corduroy pants discarded on a pile of old bricks in the alley” (Hosseini 84). Time passes on, and he even finds love, but silence is a stalker Amir can’t seem to shake. He wants so desperately to reveal his secret, especially when his fiancée shares hers, but he can’t. It even seems to be a bit of a wedge between the two, “I envied her. Her secret was out. Spoken. Dealt with. I opened my mouth and almost told her…But I didn’t. I suspected there were many ways in which Soraya Taheri was a better person than me. Courage was just one of them” (Hosseini 165). Soraya revealing her trauma is the perfect excuse for Amir to open up about his past, but he can’t. He has become used to the pain, and is even convinced he deserves it. When he and Soraya later marry and are unable to have a child, Amir sees this as his karma. If he couldn’t …show more content…
Rich, beautiful, and married to a successful man, Anna should be the height of happiness. And she is, until meeting the handsome Vronsky who steals her heart, though she won’t admit it. Even when he professes his love to her, she can only respond with, “’If you love me as you say,’ she said, ‘then let me be at peace’” (Tolstoy 166). Whispers have been going around about the two of them, and this request from Anna shows that she’s truly making an effort to hide her feelings and have the perfect life. With the risk of unpleasantness from both society and her husband, becoming a man’s mistress is out of the question. However, for a single night, Anna pushes aside her hesitations to be with Vronsky, which later results in Ana becoming pregnant. Now facing the realization that she is going to have a child not of her husband, Anna decides to come clean with Karenin, “I love him, I’m his mistress, I can’t bear it, I’m afraid-I hate you…You can do whatever you like with me” (Tolstoy 254). With the truth finally out, and the lovers listening to their hearts, perhaps everyone could have a happy ending. Except that Anna soon becomes afraid that she is losing Vronsky’s love, and becomes frantic. The crushing blow for Anna was knowing it wouldn’t get better. She risked it all, her husband, her child, her status, and her way of life for a man she thought cherished her above all else. To believe
Betrayal, redemption, and forgiveness are all major themes in The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini. The novel also focuses around the theme of a broken relationship between father and son as well as facing difficult situations from ones past. Amir and Hassan are best friends with two completely different personalities. Each character in the novel faces their own hardships and eventually learns to overcome those difficulties. Beginning with betrayal then the characters have to make their way to gaining redemption and forgiveness from others, as well as their self, is carried on throughout the novel. It is a continuous story of the relationships between Amir and his father Baba and facing their challenges from the past every day of their present.
Clearly, Amir hears how his father compares the two, and unlike Hassan who manages to meet Baba’s expectations, Amir grows bitter towards Hassan. He is unable to fight off his envy which later causes him to sacrifice his best friend’s innocence: “Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba” (82), and this is all because he realizes “his shame is complicated by his own realization that in part he doesn’t help his friend precisely because he is jealous of him” (Corbett, 2006). From here, Amir develops strong feelings of guilt that induces him to perform even more destructive acts, such as having Hassan and his father evicted from the house. Amir not only loses a close friend, but now he has to continue to live with remorse as he dwells on these memories.
Throughout The Kite Runner this theme is shown many times without this aspect and understanding of this part of the book it would be incomprehensible. Amir eventually learns how to cope with his own guilt and his
At the beginning of The Kite Runner, young Amir wins a kite fighting tournament. He feels like he has finally redeemed himself for his father. However, Amir’s happy day turns dark, when an hour later, he witnesses Hassan, his best friend, raped in an alley. He had “one final opportunity to decide who [he] was going to be. (77) Instead of standing up for his friend and...
It is difficult to face anything in the world when you cannot even face your own reality. In his book The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini uses kites to bring out the major themes of the novel in order to create a truly captivating story of a young boy’s quest to redeem his past mistakes. Amir is the narrator and protagonist of the story and throughout the entire novel, he faces enormous guilt following the horrible incident that happened to his closest friend, Hassan. This incident grows on Amir and fuels his quest for redemption, struggling to do whatever it takes to make up for his mistakes. In Hosseini’s novel, kites highlight aspects of Afghanistan’s ethnic caste system and emphasizes the story’s major themes of guilt, redemption and freedom.
Amir also committed a sin that affected him negatively throughout his life. This sin occurred when Hassan, Amir’s best friend during his childhood, was getting raped by Assef. This situation occurred when the children were chasing kites. Hassan got the kite first, but Assef insisted that he wanted the kite. Assef also had a racial and religious prejudice against Hassan. Because Hassan did not give the kite, Assef decides to rape Hassan as a “punishment”. Instead of helping his friend out, Amir just walked away from the scene and let Hassan get violated in one of the most vulgar ways. After this incident, Hassan quietly walked back home and gave Amir the kite for which he was confronted by Assef for. The kite in this situation proves to be an important symbol. Whereas earlier in the novel the kite represented happiness and fun to Amir, in this situation it represented sin and guilt to Amir. The only reason that Hassan got raped was that he was trying to get a kite for Amir. Now the kite acts a reminder to Hassan of his wrong-doing and it will now begin to haunt him for a long time. Although when in America, Amir does not get reminded about Hassan, deep inside he still feels guilty. Amir immediately begins to feel the most guilt when he goes to Iran when Rahim Khan, Amir’s childhood friend, asks him to come. He feels that Rahim Khan has reminded him of his “past of unatoned sins”(Hosseini 2).
Repay evil with good, this the lesson Hassan teaches his son(Housseini 276), but is this always the right way, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Throughout The Kite Runner Hassan is seen as a moral compass smiling even in the worst of times. On the other hand, Amir the protagonist, struggles with who he is as a person and his past actions. Hassan is the person that Amir wants to be as Hassan is Amir’s idea of a good person. The example Hassan sets for Amir changes him from a bad person to a good person.
Amir is, to be put bluntly, a coward. He is led by his unstable emotions towards what he thinks will plug his emotional holes and steps over his friends and family in the process. When he sought after Baba’s invisible love, Amir allowed Hassan to be raped in an alleyway just so that the blue kite, his trophy that would win his father’s heart, could be left untouched. In the end, he felt empty and unfulfilled with the weight of his conscience on his shoulders comparable to Atlas’ burden. Unable to get over his fruitless betrayal, he lashes out and throws pomegranates at Hassan before stuffing money and a watch under his loyal friend’s pathetic excuse for a bed, framing Hassan for theft and directly causing the departure of both servants from his household. Even after moving to America, finding a loving wife, and creating a career for himself in writing, he still feels hollow when thinking of his childhood in Afghanistan. Many years later, he is alerted of Hassan’s death and sets out on a frenzied chase to find his friend’s orphaned son. He feels that he can somehow ease his regrets from all of those years ago if he takes in Hassan’s son, Sohrab. He finds Sohrab as a child sex slave for Assef, who coincidentally was the one to rape Hassan all of those years ago. After nearly dying in his attempt to take back Sohrab, he learns that he can take the damaged child back to the states with him. Sadly, Hassan’s son is so
As a foreword, the story of The Kite Runner focuses on a man named Amir. In his childhood, he enjoyed a high-class life in Kabul, Afghanistan, living with his father Baba. They have two servants, Ali and his son Hassan. They are Hazaras, a lower class ethnic minority in Afghanistan. In one Winter of their childhood, Amir and Hassan participate in a kite-fighting tournament; the goal is to be the last kite flying. When a kite is cut, boys chase after it as a trophy. Amir wins the tournament, and Hassan flies to catch the losing kite. Later, following Hassan's path, Amir comes upon a neighbourhood bully named Assef about to rape Hassan who has the trophy, the blue kite. Amir does not interject, believing this will secure him the kite. Thus, Amir sets forth a chain of events he must redeem in his adulthood.
Though some may rise from the shame they acquire in their lives, many become trapped in its vicious cycle. Written by Khlaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner describes the struggles of Amir, his father Baba, and his nephew Sohrab as they each fall victim to this shameful desolation. One repercussion of Baba hiding his sinful adultery from Amir is that Amir betrays Hassan for his father’s stringent approval. Sohrab’s dirty childhood also traumatizes him through his transition to America. Consequently, shame is a destructive force in The Kite Runner. Throughout the course of the novel, Baba’s shameful affair, Amir’s selfish betrayal, and Sohrab’s graphic childhood destroy their lives.
The story The Kite Runner is centered around learning “to be good again.” Both the movie and the book share the idea that the sins of the past must be paid for or atoned for in the present. In the book, Amir can be seen as a troubled young boy who is struggling with a tremendous amount of guilt. It is easy to blame Amir’s actions on his guilt and his father’s lack of love for him.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy is a novel about love and marriage among the Russian aristocracy in the 1870s. Anna is young, beautiful woman married to a powerful government minister, Karenin. She falls in love with the elegant Count Vronsky and after becoming pregnant by him, leaves her husband Karenin and her son Seryozha to live with her lover. Despite the intervention of friends such as her brother Oblonsky, an adulterer himself, she is unable to obtain a divorce, and lives isolated from the society that once glorified her. As a man, Vronsky enjoys relative social freedom, which causes Anna to have increasingly intense fits of jealousy. Because of her constant suspicion, she thinks that Vronsky’s love for her is dwindling. Their story is ended by an exciting finale that moves the reader.
Tolstoy shows Anna as an equally loving mother and wife. Yet soon she meets Vronsky, and another element is added to her character. Anna’s romantic love and the love towards her child are the two great feelings that start out and remain forever separate for her. With Vronsky she presents herself as a lover, and with Karenin ...
During The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini reinforces the theme of the loss of innocence and redemption. Many characters lose innocence or are the cause of another character losing theirs. Amir both loses his innocence and that of others. His innocence is stolen by his father. In the novel Amir overhears Baba saying, “‘If I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own eyes, I’d never believe he’s my son’” (Hosseini 24-25). This affects Amir for his entire life as he tries to compete with Hassan for his father's attention. He does not realize that in doing so, this crumbles his world as he knows it. It makes Amir resentful, calloused, and even cruel, all of which are characteristics of someone who has lost their innocence. In turn, Amir’s loss of innocence causes other to lose their innocence because of his lack of courage and disregard for others feelings.
The motif of infidelity is predominantly evident in the love affair between Vronsky and Anna. From their very first encounter at the train station, it was clear that this relationship was destined for destruction. Their relationship takes on a very deceptive and superficial quality. Vronsky knew from the very beginning about Anna’s marital status, yet this did not dissuade his attraction to her, or his adulterous relationship with her later on. It is important to note that it is Vronsky’s frivolous nature that is responsible for his inability to fully love Anna with the passion that she so desperately needs from him. Vronsky initially believes that he loves Anna, but Tolstoy shows the reader that Vronsky’s love for her is not absolute. His love is not based upon firm emotional commitment, and it is easily questioned and redefined. Eventually, Anna’s love becomes burdensome to him because he remains steeped in the pursuit of his own freedom and pleasures, without placing importance on Anna’s tormented existence. Vronsky is dishonest with himself. He begins a relationship that he is not ready for. He believes that he can love Anna in “the right way,” yet he cannot. Their relationship will be destroyed not by an outside party but by their own hands.