The Kite Runner: Amir's Conflict

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The Kite Runner: Amir’s Conflict The Kite Runner was written by Khaled Hosseini and was published in the year 2003 by Riverhead Books. The story takes place in Kabul, Afghanistan, Afghanistan and California, United States.The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir, a young boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, whose closest friend is Hassan, his father's young Hazara servant. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of Afghanistan's monarchy through the Soviet military intervention, the exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the rise of the Taliban regime. This essay will mostly focus on Amir’s conflict between his search for redemption and his guilt. His conflict resonates with the …show more content…

His guilt is like a dark cloud that hangs around him, holding him back and preventing him from being an outgoing person. On page 77 of the book it says, “In the end, I ran. I ran because I was a coward… I was afraid of getting hurt.” He felt like the cowardly lion in that moment because he was not able to stand up for his friend, Hassan, and protect him. He believed he was a coward that he was a monster because he said nothing about his friend getting raped or how at the moment he said nothing and made no motion to take up for Hassan. Another example of Amir’s guilt is on page 105 when he thinks, “This was Hassan’s final sacrifice for me… He knew I’d seen everything in that alley, that’d I’d stood there and done nothing… He knew I had betrayed him.” Hassan had given Amir one last gift besides him leaving he gave him his honour. Amir felt guilty for pushing Hassan away constantly to the point where his father, Ali, said enough and left taking Hassan with him. He knew after Hassan had left Baba’s house that he was the one in the wrong that he should never have toyed with Hassan’s feeling never once asked him to prove his loyalty to him. Also on pages 28 and 29 Amir thinks, “I’d tease him, expose his ignorance… I would feel guilty about it later.” Amir always teased Haasan about his ignorance how illiterate he was. He never told Hassan the true meaning of words he constantly used the antonym of their definitions. He felt guilty because he let Hassan be uneducated because deep down he felt that had Hassan gained any or a certain amount of knowledge that he would change and leave him

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