The text ‘The Kite Runner’, written by Khaled Hosseini is about a boy named Amir, who betrays his friend, and then must spend the rest of his life dealing with his guilt. The inner conflict that Amir experiences during the novel about how he should deal with his guilt from betraying Hassan helps the reader understand that people will try and run away from guilt to escape it, but the only way to stop it is to face it. The author uses three ways to do this: He shows that Amir tries to escape and fails, he shows that Amir faces his guilt and is released, and lastly he shows that other characters disapprove of what Amir did so he had to face his guilt or he would be in pain forever.
The conflict Amir faces during the novel about what to do about his guilt from his betrayal helps the reader understand that people will try and run away from guilt to escape it, but have to face it in order to get rid of it is shown by Amir trying to escape his guilt, but failing. When Amir goes to America, he hopes that he will not feel as guilty because he is not in the same country as he was when he betrayed Hassan, but he still continuously feels guilty, for example when he felt that he was being strangled by a steel fist when Baba (Amir’s father) mentioned Hassan’s name. When he says “the past always claws its way out”. This quote shows that when Amir was conflicted about how to get rid of guilt, he was trying to escape it, but it would always seemingly claw it’s way out. This means that he was trying to get over the conflict by escaping, but it wasn’t working. “There is a way to be good again”. This quote is said by a character in the novel named Rahim Khan. He says this to Amir in a letter explaining that he knows what Amir did and that he feels a huge amount of guilt, and then going on to explain that he knows how to help Amir get rid of the guilt. What he means when he says this quote is that he wants Amir to go back to Afghanistan to rescue and take care of Hassan’s child since Hassan has died. He believes that if Amir rescues Hasan’s son, then he will redeem himself and his amount of guilt will decrease or maybe even go away completely. Overall, I believe that Rahim Khan is telling Amir that he must face his guilt in order to get rid of it because trying to escape from it was not working.
Overall, Amir has had to live his whole life engulfed with guilt, and experiences a massive conflict during this time of what he should do about it. He tries to run away from it many times, but can never escape it. In the end, he finally faces his guilt and it is finally gone The three main ways that the author (Khaled Hosseini) showed the theme that guilt can only be defeated if you face it, by and and lastly that other character in the book disapproved of what he was doing, which meant that it was very hard to escape his guilt.
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