In one of the sermons, Martin Luther King Jr. proclaims that “love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals” (King para. 24). The ideas of love and redemption are fundamental for The Kite Runner. The central characters of this novel are Amir, Hassan, and Sohrab. Amir is the protagonist who was born in a wealthy family and tells his story of betraying his poor best friend, Hassan, who was raped. Hassan is the opposite of Amir and suffers because of his inferior position in Afghan society. Sohrab is the son of Hassan, who was killed by the Taliban. For Amir, Sohrab is a means to atone for the betrayed friend. The intense feeling of guilt was a part of Amir’s life, and he needs redemption to move on. Amir went through five steps to reach atonement and earned it as a result of a selfless fight for the wellbeing of Hassans child.
Amir did not rescue his friend when he was being raped and accused him of false theft, so he got kicked out of the house. The first step of Amir’s redemption begins when he tries to escape the feeling of guilt and become “able to breathe again” by removing Hassan from his life (Hosseini 53). Amir admits that “there would be some pain, but life would move on” (Hosseini 53). It seems that at this age, Amir is still young and unwise to realize that his selfish actions would hurt him and Hassan even stronger.
The second step of Amir’s redemption lasted for twenty-six years. During this time, the young man tried to forget the past because the pain of the memories was unbearable. Even though Amir has learned “how you can bury” the past and how to live with it, he never stopped to peek “into that deserted alley” (Hosseini 2). In other words, this stage is characterized by Amir’s attempts to act as if nothing had ever happened. Still, this attempt only exacerbated the protagonist’s feeling of guilt.
The third step on the path to redemption is comprehending that he should do something valuable to atone for Hassan instead of self-castigation. The driving reason for this thought was a call from his Rahim Khan from Pakistan, from which Amir learned that “there is a way to be good again” (Hosseini 2). However, without the call from Rahim, Amir would never undertake any decisive action.
The fourth stage of Amir’s redemption is illustrated by the fight with Assef, who raped Hassan for the right to get custody of Sohrab. It was “not impossible, but hardly likely” for Amir to achieve his goal; however, fortunately for himself and Sohrab, he succeeded (Hosseini 174). Notably, Amir did not give up even though it was challenging to become a legal guardian of Sohrab.
The final step of redemption is the most important one. For Amir, it was critical not only to move Hassan’s son to the US but to give him love. On the book’s last page, the narrator asks a boy whether he wants Amir to run a kite for him (Hosseini 192). This episode illustrates that Amir has finally redeemed his guilt and is on the path to becoming a good friend of the boy.
To conclude, the novel reveals the psychological growth of Amir from a selfish boy to an unselfish man. He finally got rid of guilt by taking care of Hassan’s son, who happened to be his nephew. Still, the problem is that before the call of Rahim, Amir had never tried to contact him. The only thing he did was feeling sorry for himself. Thus, the adoption of Sohrab was driven not by a selfless attempt to help his dead friend but to help himself. Nevertheless, the fact that Amir fought for Sohrab shows that he felt a moral obligation to Hassan to take care of his child. More importantly, after the years of pain, Amir feels peaceful. Still, he will never stop thinking of what might have happened if he had saved Hassan from rape on that fateful day.
Works Cited
Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. Penguin, 2003.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Loving Your Enemies,” Sermon Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.” Stanford: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Web.