The Kite Runner Dialectical Journal

1560 Words7 Pages
“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime, Amir” (Hosseini 142). The course of one’s life can unquestionably change in just one moment. A moment with such impact that you are shackled and tormented. You must eventually come to terms with it. This especially proves true for Amir. “I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me. I was afraid of getting hurt. That's what I told myself as I turned my back to the alley, to Hassan. That's what I made myself believe” (Hosseini 77). Amir believes the substructure for what happens to Hassan lays within his first word “His was Amir. My name. Looking back on it now, I think the foundation…show more content…
“Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words.”(Hosseini 12) Hassan always demonstrates sincere loyalty to Amir; he stands up for Amir when Assef tries to intimidate them. “But perhaps you didn't notice that I'm the one holding the slingshot. If you make a move, they'll have to change your nickname from Assef `the Ear Eater' to `One-Eyed Assef,' because I have this rock pointed at your left eye." (Hosseini 42) Hassan willingly went out of his way to catch Amir’s kite. “He was already turning the street corner, his rubber boots kicking up snow. He stopped, turned. He cupped his hands over his mouth.`For you thousand times over!` he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared around a corner” (Hosseini 67) Amir confesses Hassan’s rape one late night to his sleeping family. They do not wake up and he realizes the nature of his lie. “I understood the nature of my curse; I was going to get away with it” (Hosseini 86) The past stays with Amir even when he graduates from high school; he still seems blemished with guilt. “Then Baba rolled his head toward me. ‘I wish Hassan had been with us today,’ he said. A pair of steel hands closed around my windpipe at the sound of Hassan's name” (Hosseini 133) Hassan bestows unrequited loyalty and unconditional love to Amir in contempt of…show more content…
“What Rahim Khan revealed to me changed things. Made me see how my entire life, long before the winter of 1975, dating back to when that singing Hazara woman was still nursing me, had been a cycle of lies, betrayals, and secrets. There is a way to be good again, he'd said (Hosseini 226) Amir grasps the fact that both he and his father betray people they deeply care about. “Rahim Khan has summoned me here to atone not just for my sins but for Baba’s” (Hosseini 226) It is certainly not too late for Amir to atone for his misdeed, for he atones by rescuing Sohrab from the horrid orphanage. “I looked at the round face in the Polaroid again, the way the sun fell on it. My brother's face. Hassan had loved me once, loved me in a way that no one ever had or ever would again. He was gone now, but a little part of him lived on. It was in Kabul.” (Hosseini 227) He builds the notion that he and Sohrab are irrevocably bonded. “A kinship exists between people who've fed from the same breast. Now, as the boy's pain soaked through my shirt, I saw that a kinship had taken root between us too. What had happened in that room with Assef had irrevocably bound us” (Hosseini 320) Amir knows it is too late to save Hassan however not too late to save Sohrab, the last piece of
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