Guilt In The Kite Runner

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The way one deals with guilt is a process that does not happen overnight. Guilt follows people, consumes them, and lingers throughout one's life. The Kite Runner is filled with characters and relationships that are constantly growing and changing. It shows the struggles of life and the failures that comes with it, each aspect is displayed differently. In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Guilt plays a major role in character progression, along with the importance of its link between characters involving Amir, Baba, and Soraya throughout the book.
All people deal with guilt, and the way we cope with it changes according to each person. Some are consumed by shame, for others it lingers and sits in your thoughts. For Amir, and surrounding figures, …show more content…
Soraya shows her own way of dealing with the burdens in her life, through courage and fearlessness of what would happen next. Unlike many characters, Soraya takes her guilt and opens up about the truth with complete honesty. Her shame in running away from her family and disobeying her father, carries a big piece of what she tries to move on from as she starts her new life with Amir. Her newly formed relationship with Amir helps her through the discontentment of her family, as she tries to help herself moving forward. She opens up about her past to Amir, so they can be honest moving forward. This a major step in her progression dealing the guilt she holds onto. “When we lived in Virginia, I ran away with an Afghan man. I was eighteen at the time...rebellious...stupid” (Hosseini 164). She explains what she did, and how it brought shame and sorrow upon her. Soraya returned home, and her mother had a stroke which onset the guilt relating to her actions ( Hosseini 164). Although unfortunate events bring terror upon her, she helps herself, along with Amir, by adopting Sohrab and building a hospital (Hosseini 363). Through these events, Soraya helps not only herself, but Amir in the process as well. Both of them are there for each other and seek to help each other grow as people and gain satisfaction for themselves. Soraya’s courage compared to Amir and Baba show the difference in the way one progresses with guilt. Soraya uses confrontation to her actions to finally regain and restore her well being to help her move forward with
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