Feel The Cruelty Of the World In The Movie "The Kite Runner"

In the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, tells a story of a young man Amir who experience the force of violence and change in Afghanistan and the journey to redeem himself from his past sins. Amir is a tragic hero that will experience the cruelty of the world and find out what matters in life and suffer to find the path to be free of guilts. Amir is born as a Pashtun, someone who has power in society and born into a wealthy family.

The setting of the story is at the center of Afghanistan where there is are two groups of people the Pashtun and the Hazaras. One day Amir was exploring Baba study room and found his mother old history book. Amir looks inside the book, and it tells him the history of between the Pashtun and Hazaras ‘[T]he Pashtun, had persecuted and oppressed the Hazaras. It said the Hazaras had tried to rise against the Pashtun in the nineteenth century but, the Pashtuns had quelled them with unspeakable violence.

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Amir is born into a family with high social status. To have power in the society of Kabul, depend on the race. Amir is born as a Pashtun who has the privilege of education, conduct business, and more opportunities. At the end of the kite running competition, Amir was looking around for Hassan. Amir stops by a dried fruit stand and describes Hassan to the merchant and the merchant admire Amir’s clothes he ‘ [g]lance lingered admiringly on my leather coat and my jeans-cowboy pants, we used to call them.

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In Afghanistan, owning anything American, especially if it wasn’t secondhand, was a sign of wealth. Amir was born into a wealthy and well-respected family. It can seem through Amir lifestyle and the clothes he wears daily.

Baba is a well-respected businessman, and he provides Amir a luxury life that many admire and could not achieve in their whole life. The difference between an ordinary person is selfishness. Amir tragic flaw is jealousy. Amir is jealous of Hassan relationship with Baba and all the care and attention he receives. Amir desire for Baba attention led to extreme jealousy, and he took it out on Hassan in a deceiving way. An instance that shows Amir strong jealousy is when he was eating alone and was asking for Baba whereabouts ‘ ask Ali where Baba was, when he was at the construction site, over-looking this supervising that. Didn’t that take patience? I already hated all the kid he was building the orphanage for; sometimes I wished they’d all died along with their parents.’ This statement shows that Amir cannot stand Baba leaving him alone and goes to work and Baba building an orphanage for the orphan that had suffered from the loss of the parent.

However, Amir was not proud nor happy for Baba kindness to the orphan; instead, he was cover in intense jealousy that they can spend time with Baba. This show that Amir is thirsty for Baba attention and his jealousy would be at max when anyone or anything has Baba attention. Amir was also jealous of Hassan as well. Hassan was Amir best friend and son of his servant. One night, Amir was eavesdropping Baba conversation with Rahim Kham, and he heard that he was weak, different from all the boy in the neighborhood because he was indoors all the time and when he was bully, he needs Hassan to stand up for him. Amir hears that ‘[H]assan steps in and fend them off I’ve seen it with my own eyes… I’m telling you, Rahim, something is missing in that boy.’ On the next day when Hassan was preparing for breakfast, he snapped at Hassan ‘ I snapped at him, told him to mind his own business.

This proven Amir jealousy of Hassan when Baba compares them and especially when he fails Baba expectation and when Hassan has the quality of courage that he has long for. Amir was also jealous of Hassan and Ali father and son relationship when he saw how close they were together. An instance that shows that is when he saw Ali comforting and protecting Hassan at the night of where a gun was fire ‘[A]li pulled him close, clutched him with tenderness. Later, I would tell myself I hadn’t felt envious of Hassan. Not at all.’ This is proven that Amir wants a protective and caring father like Ali. However, his relationship with Baba was not close. Amir has a love and hate relationship with Hassan. Amir hates Hassan out jealousy, but he also was an important person in his life. His jealousy has covered him and made him miserable and resentful when Baba notices anyone that succeed or met his expectation and when they have something that he has desires for.

What is a tragic hero? A tragic hero is a person who fell from noble status and has a fatal, tragic flaw that led him to punishment or loss of noble status. However, for Amir, his tragic flaw does not directly impact him losing noble status, but certainly, he has lost his favor from the God. For Amir, his situation is a little different compared to other tragic heroes. Jealousy led Amir to make a bunch of wrong decision in his life that he lost favor with the god, and he lost his noble status because God ordained it. Amir has lost his noble status and emigrate to America and was hunted guilt. Amir jealously led him into a path of sin that he needs to make up later on due to insufferable guilt in his everyday life. The turning point for Amir life was the moment when Assef rape Hassan and out of jealousy Amir did not stand up for Hassan. After the incident, many months have passed by Amir invited Hassan to climbed the hill where the pomegranate tree was located at.

The pomegranate tree is a symbol for their friendship and love for each other. It contains all the happy memories they have for each other during their childhood. At this new turning point of the story, Amir guilt has started to consume him. This can be shown through Amir reaction to Hassan when he did not react and tell anyone about the incident where he got raped ‘Hit me back! … Get up! Hit me'(Hosseini 92). It explains that Amir is feeling guilty for not interfering and wanted to lessen the feeling of guilt through violence. He needs Hassan to punish him in order to save himself from guilt. This show that Amir and Hassan’s relationship has been destroyed due to guilt. Due to the guilt that has consume him up and he will continue a path of sin that will soon destroy his life. Because of guilt, Amir did not want to see Hassan anymore he wanted to get rid of him because every time he saw Hassan, he would have a flashback of the rape.

Amir ways of solving that problem were framing Hassan by placing money and the watch that he received for his birthday under Hassan Bed. However, it did not stop him from being consumed in guilt, instead it leads him into a more profound path of sin. What does it take to find balance in life? Amir has married Soraya for a couple of years already, but they were not able to conceive a baby. They went to the doctor and had an examination to see what is wrong; however, the doctor says it was ‘ unexplained infertility.’ This situation has led Amir to question and reflect all the sin he has done in the past. Amir realizes that ‘[p]erhaps something, someone, somewhere, had decided to deny my fatherhood for the things I had done. Maybe this was my punishment, and Perhaps justly so. ‘ (Hosseini 188). This clearly shows that Amir realization of past sin led to his miserable and dark life. Amir had realized that he had to drop out of mortality that he did not deserve to have the privilege of a happy family.

One day Amir open his door and saw Rahim Khan. Rahim Khan wants Amir to go back to Afghanistan because there’s things that Amir need to do in order to obtain peace. Amir agrees to go back to Afghanistan hoping to reduce his sin. When Amir arrives at Afghanistan, he heard the news that Hassan has long be gone and he has a son in the orphanage. However, at first, Amir did not want to find Sohrab Hassan son because it was too dangerous. Amir had a change of mind when he knew that Hassan was his half-brother and he has lied to his entire life. So that is when Amir realizes that he has to save Sohrab because he does not want to repeat the same mistake Baba and end up regretting his whole life. Amir went to look for Sohrab and have realized that Assef has taken and sexually abuse him. He confronts Assef and stands up for Sohrab which he had never done for Hassan.

This was the start to make up for his past mistake ‘ [M]y body broken…But, I felt healed. Healed at Last. I laughed’. During the fight with Assef Amir finally felt free from the burden of standing up for Hassan because he is fighting for Hassan when he self-sacrifice himself to save Sohrab. Another incident that shows Amir had changed is when Amir stand up for Sohrab when the General and Khala Jamil came over for dinner. The General was questioning why Amir brought a Hazara home, and Amir tells him Sohrab was his nephew and he responds in a protective way ‘[Y]ou will never again refer to him as ‘Hazara boy’ in my presence he has a name, and it’s Sohrab.’ Amir had changed, he finally dares to stand up for people he loves, which he had never had achieve before. He even has the courage that Baba never had to admit the truth and mistake.

Through Amir long journey to find forgiveness he has finally achieve balance once again. It could be shown when Amir run the kite for Sohrab and whisper ‘[F]or you a thousand time over.'(Hosseini 371). This proven Amir has reached a balance because at the beginning of the novel the statement was what he had expected from Hassan because he thinks that Hassan was an inferior human being because he was a Hazara. Yet, Hassan is willing to anything for Sohrab. Amir has said it out for Sohrab out of love, loyalty, and friendship for Sohrab, as Hassan has done for him. Amir is a tragic hero because he had lost favor from God due to jealousy and lost his noble status. His jealousy led him to make many regretful choices in life that haunted him daily. In order to be free from guilt, Amir went through a journey to find balance, and through his journey, he had learned the valuable lesson of loyalty and the true meaning of selflessness.