Redemption, sin, and forgiveness in The Kite Runner

Redemption Runner

Journey, Memory, and Kinship: Paths to Sin and Redemption in Hosseini's the Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini's the Kite Runner is a beautiful book at once for the simplicity of its storytelling and for the complexities of human life and perspective that it lays clear to the careful reader. The various characters and plot complexities weave in and out of each other in an elegant yet heart-rending and nakedly human manner that makes the desperations and desires of the protagonist Amir and those around him almost palpable. Yet for all of the complexity and detail of the story in its following of Amir as his life progresses form luxury in Afghanistan to near destitution in America to achieving success as a novelist, there is always the sense that only half of the story is being told. There is a second piece to Amir, a piece that resides in his past life in Afghanistan, and more specifically a piece of himself -- of his memory and of his guilt -- that lies with his friend Hassan.

The novel's title is, at least initially and explicitly, a reference to Hassan, and the duty he performed for Amir in his kite flying endeavors. It is during a kite flying tournament that Amir is able to finally win his father's approval, which can itself be seen as a sign of redemption for the "sin" of having killed his mother in childbirth, but this is also the scene of the major sin of the novel, at least insofar as the story's trajectory is concerned. For refusing to relinquish the kite he has found for his beloved friend, Hassan is brutally raped by an older boy -- an act which Amir secretly witnesses and does nothing to prevent.

This event triggers a diffidence between the boys that culminates in Amir's framing of Hassan in a successful attempt to have him removed from the house, and during the Soviet invasion Amir and his father flee, losing connections to Hassan. Throughout the rest of the novel, however, Amir's life is largely consumed with a search for redemption for his treatment of his friend, a fact which is seen both explicitly and implicitly throughout Hosseini's text. Other characters in the novel, too, appear to be on a path seeking some form of redemption for sins real or imagined. The very natures of sin, guilt, redemption, and forgiveness are all explored quite extensively in the novel, and ultimately the Hosseini asserts -- through the overall frame of the novel regarding Amir's journey and through the journeys of many of the more minor characters he encounters along the way -- that redemption, like sin itself, can only be measured in personal and individual terms.

Amir's Redemption

The facts of Amir's redemption are fairly evident in the basic plot of the novel, which concludes as Amir runs off to find the kite just sent off by Sohrab, Hassan's orphan son whom Amir has adopted. This clear role reversal is both an act of atonement and the act of a soul unburdened, with the kite flying itself representative of the innocence Amir retained in his youth. The fact that Sohrab met the same sexual fate as his father, and at the hands of the same individual, perhaps suggest another failure n Amir's part to act quickly enough, but the new life that he can build for his friend's son is clearly a form of redemption.

At the point when Amir is witnessing the beginnings of Hassan' rape, he recalls the ritual sacrifice of a sheep that he witnessed many times in Afghanistan and the similar look of resignation and acceptance in its eyes to that in Hassan's: "Absurdly, I imagine the animal understands. I imagine the animal sees that its imminent demise is for a higher purpose" (Hosseini, 82). This passage can be interpreted in many ways, but it undoubtedly places Hassan in the same sacrificial position as the sheep, which suggests that his rape occurs for a higher purpose, possibly even to allow for Amir's redemption. Though this may initially appear a highly selfish view of the incident from Amir's perspective, when it is acknowledged that his narrating voice is witnessing the event from a great distance of time, it can be see as a simple reflection of the way Amir defines his life and his redemption.

Amir's memory of the sheep's sacrifice is only one of many instances in which the Afghani culture and experience is explored in the Kite Runner, and it is a highly telling one. Much of Amir's sense of guilt, as well as the process of achieving redemption, centers on his feelings of abandoning not only his friend but also his homeland. This abandonment began, in some ways, before he even left the country, when American movie stars and entertainments were worshipped by the Afghani boys (Caillouet, 31.) Amir -- and his father -- fled why their country was effectively raped by a series of invaders; this class of Afghanis was the imagined "monster in the lake" that "had grabbed Hassan [and Afghanistan] by the ankles, dragged him to the murky bottom. I was that monster" (Hosseini 86).

When Amir and Hassan were young, they carved their names into a flourishing pomegranate tree and imagined their lives as more powerful adults. In later years, the tree stopped bearing fruit. This is again indicative of Amir and his father's abandonment of the land, symbolized and epitomized in Amir's abandonment of Hassan. When it is revealed that Hass is actually Baba's son, as well, it becomes clear that this sin of abandonment runs even deeper than imagined, and in fact the Kite Runner can be read as a book of redemption by the son for the sins of the father (Noor, 148). Through this understanding of the novel, Amir's eventual adoption of Sohrab can be seen as more than a simple figurative redemption of Amir caring for his now-dead and gravely wronged friend's child, but in addition as the reuniting of a family and the correction of a generation-old grievous sin committed by Baba to his own unacknowledged son, the son he abandoned.

Conclusion

The sins that are committed by the various individuals in the book are largely defined and described by the characters themselves. Their various paths to redemption are equally personal. As the central character and narrator of the novel, this is most visible in Amir; his understanding of his own and of his father's sins is what drives many of his decisions and attitudes in life, and what causes him to seek redemption in the first place. Without this drive and the clarity of his perception, redemption might have proved impossible after all.