Guilt in The Kite Runner (Free Essay Example)

Throughout the novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini demonstrates the extent to which guilt has on Amir and how it leads to his journey for redemption. Guilt had an impact earlier on in Amir’s life, which started to shape the person he’d become. Amir’s pranks often make fun of Hassan, but later cause Amir himself to feel guilty and make amends “by giving him one of my old shirts or a broken toy” (29). Even earlier in his childhood, Amir always has some sense of guilt for his actions toward Hassan. He then feels the need to make up for it in order to rid himself of guilt, coming in the way of giving some of the old things he owns. Because of that, he believes that whatever he has done to Hassan would be forgiven. Instead, this allows his own subconscious to quell down and make him feel better for what he did, consequently appeasing his mind and forgetting about that minor incident. However, his mind goes back to the memory of his largest betrayal to Hassan, creating an image of “[his] pants discarded on a pile of old bricks in the alley” while staring into the sun immediately after he threw up (84). This memory keeps coming back to him to therefore enforce his guilt. His mind places that same image as if it’s a punishment, a reminder of what had happened and what he did. However, the impact of his guilt comes through physical ways as well, such as throwing up. This is a physical outcome of how massive his guilt impacts him, leading him to throw up. Later in his adult life, Amir contemplates taking Rahim Khan’s advice, “a way to be good again” and going to Kabul to find Hassan’s son, now an orphan (226-227). Amir has suffered heavy guilt throughout a good part of his life due to him running away from that one moment. Rahim Khan, however, offers him a way to resolve what has been torturing him. It was a way to achieve redemption and make up for what he did to Hassan. Guilt has been shown throughout as a driving force and an anchor for Amir, though his life keeps going on, the guilt still haunts him. His journey through this however shows that guilt can still push people to become better. This would result in wanting to make up for past mistakes, and in this case, it would be in a way of Amir finding Hassan’s son, Sohrab. Guilt has a hold on Amir for a long part of his life but evidently pushes him to take a chance for redemption, and become a better person than who he was before.