Guilt is anger directed at ourselves, at what we did and at what we did not do – Peter McWilliams. In the story the Kite Runner, there’s lots of guilt that gets greatly shown throughout the entire novel. (fix previous sentence) Khalid Hosseni incorporates the use of guilt in many different ways, one of them being the use of the characters and how their life’s get changed. That is used to carry on the plot of the story. Guilt has a lot of various impacts (mostly negative) on the characters in the kite runner that have produced changes to their life. The main points apparent in the kite runner shows the following: Guilt haunting Amir’s life, Guilt affecting Sanaubar’s life and Guilt of Baba.
Those are the main points of guilt, but the guilt of the characters gets shown differently throughout the book. Guilt haunts Amir and has negative impacts on his life. After the kite tournament, that was when his guilt first started. He could barely look at Hassan anymore and even when he got older, the memory and that guilt still haunt him. One example that shows this is when Amir was saying: “Hit me back!! I wished he would so he’d give me the punishment I craved, so maybe I’d sleep at night” (pg.98). The reason he was saying that was because he wanted Hassan to get back at him. Amir wanted the guilt to go away so he was trying to provoke Hassan to hit him.
He thought that if Hassan were to hit him back, then some of the guilt that Amir has, will go away since he is getting “punished” from Hassan. The other example is: “I didn’t care about Soraya’s past because I had one of my own” (pg.190). That shows Amir guilt is still evident when he is older because he didn’t want to judge Soraya (his wife) since his past was just as bad or worse. Also, his guilt haunts him so bad to the point where Amir couldn’t tell his future wife about it. And if his guilt still continues to build up, then that could affect more future endeavors that he will most likely pursue. Amir’s guilt is something that does haunt most of his life, but Sanaubar’s guilt has positive aspects despite the guilt haunting her life.
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Sanaubuar’s guilt haunted her life but that guilt produced positive impacts in her life. Because of that guilt, she returned to Hassan (whom she left). Now, she has her son’s love and even got the privilege to be a grandmother which makes her happy. An example is when she says to Hassan: “I have walked long and far to see if you are as beautiful in the flesh as you are in my dreams” (pg.221). That shows her guilt because she regrets not seeing Hassan and she dreams about him. Furthermore she traveled long and far to find him so that shows how long the guilt has affected her and how badly she wanted to find him so she could get rid of the guilt. Another example is: “He became the center of her existence” (pg.223).
What that shows is that Sanaubar really loved Sohrab since he is Hassan’s son. Also because she feels that if she couldn’t give her love to Hassan, then she can give it to Sohrab. The effect of that made her really happy and that guilt is gone, and replaced with love for Sohrab. Sanaubar’s guilt had positive impacts in her life, but Baba’s guilt unlike Sanaubar’s. doesn’t have any good results. Baba’s Guilt has negative impacts on his life that has changed him. Because he slept with Ali’s wife, he disrespected his brother and “broke” his in. As a result, that changed how he looked at life and how he treats Amir. One proof from the text is: “Sometimes, everything he did, feeding the poor.
Building the orphanage, was all his what of redeeming himself” (pg.316). because, he how looks at life as his “redemption” path. Since he commited sin, all the things he has been doing, is his way to make things right. And that, has changed his life drastically as opposed to if he didn’t commit that sin. Here is another example that shows how the guilt has affected Amir: “I know how hard your father was on you when you were growing up” (pg.316). That shows how he treated Amir because he was hard only on him when he was a kid opposed to Hassan. Normally, he would have treated them both equally. But since Baba committed his “sin”, he is a lot harder on Amir due to his sin. And that also has a great impact(view) on his life. Guilt is something that always strikes everyone at some point and for these characters, that guilt comes with consequences and/or good things. Guilt is something that has both positive and negative impacts in the character’s life. But each character had different guilt that affected their life differently and how they viewed life from that guilt. How does guilt affect you? Can you relate to some of these characters and what things have you done that has made a big impact of guilt?
