Redemption in the Kite Runner

In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Amir returns to Afghanistan looking to redeem himself from a past filled with socio-political injustices that he chose not to oppose. The Kite Runner paints a picture of a socio-political infrastructure that puts rich against poor and privileged against underprivileged. Amir, a wealthy Pashtun Sunni boy, and Hassan, an impoverished Hazara Shi’i boy, are best of friends, at least until this socio-political infrastructure gets in the way. This power struggle and social hierarchy provide the foundation for the breakdown of Amir’s friendship with Hassan, but it is Amir’s personal choices that primarily account for the manner in which Hassan is abused and marginalized for his socio-ethnic identity. Through this posturing, Hosseini places Amir’s guilt squarely within a personal context, thereby suggesting that while grander social orders can often not be overcome entirely, personal choices of a certain moral character possess the power to transcend these restrictive orders.

Amir’s guilt is manifest from the outset, as he is overcome by what he correctly perceives as his having chosen a path of least resistance, at the expense of his dearest friend, Hassan. Instead of opposing the manner in which Hassan is abused and mistreated on account of his lowly social status, Amir essentially abandons Hassan, his kite runner who has done so much for Amir. To be sure, there is almost a sheepish quality to the pathetic manner in which Amir allows Hassan to be marginalized and an even sadder quality to the nature of Amir’s abandonment of Hassan: Amir not only leaves Hassan to the cruel devices of a socio-political power structure, but then proceeds to leave Afghanistan for the United States, were he breaks with all the same socio-cultural norms that drew he and Hassan together. It is as though Amir’s guilt is as much founded upon his abandonment of Hassan as it is upon the manner in which he has abandoned a sense of his own self.

To this end, Amir’s return to Afghanistan amounts to a quest for self-redemption of the literal variety, in addition to an effort to redeem himself from the shame of having allowed his once dear friend to suffer when he may have been in a position to prevent this suffering. As such, Amir’s decision to return to Afghanistan in order to liberate Hassan’s son from the Taliban’s rule is made as much in his own interest as in the interest of Hassan or his son. The reader begins to consider that Amir does not yet truly comprehend the meaning of the opportunity “to be good again” that has been presented to him. It is only when Amir actually frees Hassan’s son and brings him to San Francisco that Amir appears to consider the full extent of the redemptory experience (also seen in Sonny's Blues) that he has effectuated—in returning to Afghanistan, he has liberated himself from not only personal guilt, but the rightfully deserved guilt of which he has been found in the intangible courts of social justice. In other words, Amir’s journey allows him to feel that he has acted out of cowardice in destroying a life. Once this is recognized, Amir then begins the process of freeing himself.

In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, we witness Amir’s journey from the shame of betrayal to the glory of redemption. However, we do not see this journey completed, as Amir’s genuine path to redemption only begins once the novel ends. In comprehending that his journey to Afghanistan has only given him the means by which to redeem himself in full, Amir recognizes that he must exercise these means through the extension of the one who he betrayed, even if doing so “a thousand times” is necessary in order to achieve wholesale redemption.

Work Cited

Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. New York: Penguin Group, Inc.