Why does baba need redemption

Since Amir feels his father does not love him, he thinks of ways to make things right with him. Amir sees Baba as a perfect higher presence that he could never amount to.

Amir sees Baba as a perfect father figure because everyone looks up to him. Although Amir impresses his father by winning the kite running competition, he ends the day by hurting his best friend in a terrible way and one day he will have to find a way to make up for it. Amir is never very nice to Hassan, but Hassan would never turn his back on Amir. Amir makes a huge mistake one day by hurting Hassan and it takes a very long time for him to find a way to redeem himself.

Although Amir did win the competition, something went very wrong. When Amir cut the last Kite down from the sky, Hassan decided to run it.

Amir is a very evil young boy and since Hassan would do anything for Amir, he refuses to hand the kite over to Assef. Amir watches Assef and his friends rape Hassan, but he does nothing to help his friend. Amir goes many years knowing this information but never tells anyone, but what goes around comes around. When everything finally catches up with Amir, he is a grown man.

Amir has a very complex relationship with Baba, and as much as Amir loves Baba, he rarely feels Baba fully loves him back. Baba has his own difficulty connecting with Amir. In contrast with this, the most loving relationship between father and son we see is that of Hassan and Sohrab. Hassan, however, is killed, and toward the end of the novel we watch Amir trying to become a substitute father to Sohrab. Their relationship experiences its own strains as Sohrab, who is recovering from the loss of his parents and the abuse he suffered, has trouble opening up to Amir.

When the Taliban take over after that, they murder Hassan and even give Assef a position that lets him indulge his sadism and sexual urges without repercussions. All the characters in the novel feel the influence of the past, but none so much as Amir and Sohrab. The prolonged physical and sexual abuse he endured makes him flinch anytime Amir touches him. He also fears the abandonment he experienced when his parents died so much that he attempts suicide when Amir says he may have to go back to an orphanage.

His feelings of guilt for his past actions continue to motivate him. The Kite Runner focuses nearly exclusively on male relationships. While the relationship between father and son is important to the novel, male friendship is central as well.

Amir realizes that the favor Baba showed Hassan was that of a father to a son, and he reflects on the way he let his jealousy corrupt his friendship with Hassan. Despite this problematic dynamic, Hassan is clearly a wonderful friend, as demonstrated by his willingness to support Amir even when it is difficult or dangerous to do so.

Rahim Khan is another important character for understanding male friendship in the novel. Her secret was out. Dealt with. My suspicions had been right all those years. He knew about Assef, the kite, the money, the watch with the lightning bolt hands.

He had always known. There is a way to be good again , Rahim Khan had said on the phone just before hanging up. We had both betrayed the people who would have given their lives for us. Another rib snapped, this time lower. What was so funny was that, for the first time since the winter of , I felt at peace. I loved him because he was my friend, but also because he was a good man, maybe even a great man. Sometimes, I think everything he did, feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of redeeming himself.

And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good. Your father, like you, was a tortured soul , Rahim Khan had written. Maybe so. We had both sinned and betrayed.

But Baba had found a way to create good out of his remorse. What had I done, other than take my guilt out on the very same people I had betrayed, and then try to forget it all? But I can take you with me. That was what I was coming in the bathroom to tell you. You have a visa to go to America, to live with me and my wife. I promise. I looked at Hassan, showing those two missing teeth, sunlight slanting on his face. The unentitled, unprivileged half.

The half who had inherited what had been pure and noble in Baba. The half that, maybe, in the most secret recesses of his heart, Baba had thought of as his true son… Then I realized something: That last thought had brought no sting with it… I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night. Then I turned and ran.

With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.

The Kite Runner. Plot Summary. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does.