English 10 HN
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
After reading The Kite Runner it led me to the question of, why do we strive for redemption? Redemption is the deliverance upon payment of ransom; rescue. It is a very human thing and most of us feel the need to redeem ourselves for something we feel guilt for. Because of this, redemption is a very popular theme in books. This makes the reader feel a more powerful connection to the book and the characters. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is one example of a book including this theme. The author uses the idea of redemption a lot throughout the book to give it importance and especial meaning. Many of the characters have regret about many of the actions that they made in the past, one example is Amir, how he had just turned his cheek from Hassan when he was being raped, “In the end, I ran. I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me… I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba. Was it a fair price?The answer floated to my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?”(Hosseini. 7. 77). This is just one of many choices that had made a great impact in Amir’s life and his family’s. Throughout the book Hosseini is constantly telling us that though redemption can´t change the events in the past, it can bring peace to someone who regrets those events. So there is the answer; we strive for redemption because, through redemption we find closure for our wrongs.
One of the quotes I find very powerful is at the outset of Chapter 1, just as the book begins, Amir writes these words, “That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years”(Hosseini. I.I). With that, he hints at the central drama of the story and the reason he is telling it. It piques the reader’s interest without revealing exactly what Amir is talking about, and from the time period Amir mentions, twenty-six years, the reader gets just how...
