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  • Essay / Guilt and redemption in "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini

    The notions of sins and their corresponding atonement have permeated all of Khaled Hosseini's incisive fiction The Kite runner as a major theme, where in the novel, the sin of protagonist Amir towards his father Baba and his best friend Hassan, as well as Baba's sin towards his best friend Ali are respectively revealed, and their attempts to achieve redemption cost them a considerably high price. Sins, and their subsequent retribution and atonement, intertwine with each other to form an eternal karmic cycle of morality. Within this cycle, certainly, most of the sacrifices of Amir and Baba for their remedies are worthwhile because they have alleviated their inner torment and regained their moral conscience, while a certain proportion of the sacrifices are unworthy because they violate the original intentions of atonement. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The moral cycle begins within the elder generation, between Baba and Ali, who are Amir's father and Hassan's nominal father, respectively. Due to Baba's selfish desire, he had an affair with Ali's wife and gave birth to Hassan. In order to maintain his nangs and namoos as a renowned figure, his hypocrisy had made him a thief whom he hates the most, and deprived Hassan of his identity, of the honor of Ali. In order to atone for his sin against Ali and Hassan, he goes to great lengths to keep them in his family. He treats Ali as a close friend of equal identity, regardless of their disparity in the social hierarchy, and tries by all means to restore with Hassan the affinity that a father and son are supposed to possess. When Ali decided to leave with Hassan due to Hassan's mental problem, Amir saw Baba do something I had never seen him do before: he cried. The truncated sentence of two words, he shouted, emphasizes not only the rarity of Baba's crying, but also his attachment and gratitude for the existence of Ali and Hassan in his family, for it is only s They stay with him so that he can atone for his delinquency. He tells them please in pain, in supplication, in fear, the repetitive phrase with the anaphora of again emphasizes Baba's desperation for their dismissal and his mental struggle for his atonement. The fact that Baba is unwilling to let Ali and Hassan go to some extent proves that he considers his compensation for them to be more than worthy, as it assuages ​​his sense of sinfulness and helps him achieve a state of peace mental. Additionally, after Hassan learned of Baba's death, he wore black for the next forty days, where the numerical diction of forty days highlights Hassan's respect and desire for Baba. He signs that Agha Sahib was like my second father, without knowing the truth, he still considers Baba as his father, this indicates that Baba's efforts eventually won his son's affection and affinity, which further proves once his atonement is worth it. However, the tale is dedicated to describing Amir's painful atonement for not defending Hassan when he was in danger, but for expelling him from his family instead. Although the process of his self-atonement is full of both physical and psychological anguish and agony, he still does not regret the price he paid. Long before Amir realizes that he should no longer become a man incapable of resisting anything like in Baba's comment, and that he should atone for his guilt towards Hassan through actual actions, he has already subtly accomplished his psychological atonement in the manner of inner dilemma. When Amir discovers that his wife Soraya isunable to conceive a child, he felt that perhaps something, someone, somewhere, had decided to deny me paternity for the things I had done., hence the repetitive alliteration beginning with some in his inner monologue emphatically demonstrates that he infinitely believes that the deprivation of his fatherhood is a punishment for what he did to Hassan. He considers himself deserved and guilty of the punishment, because only to atone for Hassan to the detriment of his mental peace or even his right to be a father can he relieve himself of the implacable guilt he feels for his best friend. Furthermore, when Amir decides to return to Kabul and save Sohrab, Hassan's only child, from the child molester Assef, in order to fulfill his maximum atonement, he has a bloody fight with Assef which makes him scared with a ruptured spleen. Broken teeth. Perforated lung. A broken eye socket. Although helping Sohrab get rid of Assef caused destructive damage to his physical health, he consciously neglects his sacrifice because during Assef's assault, for the first time since the winter of 1975, I felt in peace. The peace of taking revenge, the peace of repairing his sin, the peace of putting an end to the inner torment he has suffered for thirty years. For Amir, as long as he can regain his moral peace, whatever he paid for atonement is worth it. This explains why, when Amir sees Sohrab's first subtle smile after his suicide attempt, he running with a swarm of screaming children, the high modality movement suggests his inner joy and ultimate liberation from the haunting past, which reveals through against the value of its costly atonement. However, to some extent the sacrifice for atonement may be excessive in relation to sin. Amir's mother died of hemorrhage during childbirth, making Amir an indirect murderer and a sinner towards his father for killing his beloved wife. In order to atone in front of Baba, he decides to win the kite fighting tournament and asks Hassan to operate the last kite to satisfy Baba and fulfill his self-esteem. Because his desire to redeem himself is so intense that he ends up sacrificing Hassan through his inaction in seeing him being sexually abused by Assef. Returning home victorious, he thinks that perhaps Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to kill. The rhyming phrases emphasize his desperation to win Baba's affection and atone at all costs. This colossal sacrifice ultimately leads to long-term psychological torment for Amir. Over the years, his guilt haunts those around him, flooding his dreams or even his random thoughts. Once, Amir dreamed of the scene where Hassan was massacred while he himself was the man in the herringbone vest as the killer, after experiencing the poor situation of Farid's family which made him imagine the similar adversity that Hassan's family had gone through solely because of his selfishness. for not wanting to take them to America, to thus cover up his crime. His internal struggle and turmoil were not diluted but intensified time and again chronologically, which is represented by the flashbacks of his memory that disrupted the linear structure of the novel. In these flashbacks, the disastrous post-sacrifice consequences are revealed, which strongly rejected the value of the great price of his atonement for Baba. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized paper now from our expert writers. Get a custom paper essayIn Baba's friend Rahim Khan's letter to Amir, he emphasizes the importance of atonement by defining the boundary between good and evil: a man who has neither conscience nor goodness, do not suffer. And apparently Amir and Baba are naturally..