A way to be good again Naz Korkmaz

“A way to be good again...”

Title: The Kite Runner
Author: Khaled Hosseini
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Date of publishing: 2003
Number of pages: 544
Paperback

You know these lists; hundred things you have to do before you die. According to my opinion, reading The Kite Runner is part of that list. The novel has been the New York Times Bestseller. The word devastating may have little help for describing the plot but since it develops as a life lecture, you must experience it by yourself. The lecture starts in the very beginning of the novel, at first page;

“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they said about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been pecking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years” (1).

It is incredible how a passage can be written in its most possible simplest form but has the acutest impact on whoever reads it.

The quote I have introduced is like a brief summary of the novel. Amir, an Afghan boy watches his childhood friend, Hassan’s assault. He fears so much that he cannot do anything to defend Hassan who has proved his loyalty and protection to Amir since they were born. Amir accepts his behaviour as a betrayal to their friendship and he can never write off his penalty even after all these years he had spent in America. After occupany of Kabul, Amir and his father moves to America and starts new life. One day, his past calls for redemption, an oppurtunity for forgiveness appears and Amir goes to Afghanistan, the center of chaos, guns and war, to save Hassan’s son. He pays for what he had not done, for his betrayal and gets rid of redemption. He has found the “way to be good again”.

Internal struggle of Amir gives the central message of the story. Amir cannot forgive himself for not taking action while Hassan is assaulted at the age of twelve. Witnessing assault changes all his life, he cannot do away with that day for twenty six years. But “there is a way to be good again”. Despite his scared character, when he enters the center of cruelty, weapons and Taliban to take Hassan’s child safe place, he becomes old good Amir again.The message Hossini gives his reader is the fact that we cannot be forgiven before we pay for our betrayals and vital errors although there is always a way to make things right, always a way to fix what we had done. “There is a way to be good again”.

Regret, fear, honor, redemption, self-blame, relation of a son and father, loyalty, betrayal in friendship, forgiveness and the way our pasts motions our lives... The story is not like a picture but a photo of real life. Hossini’s attitude toward his reader is significantly honest and sincere. He voices his thoughts in the most naked manner with unimposing word chocies but meanings behind the surface gets deeper every minute of thinking.

Hossini proves to world even in complete darkness, in the places where only weapons and powerfuls has right to talk, human beings can survive with hope. A hope of future, hope coming from bright sky that is full of colorful kites...



Naz Korkmaz L2A 300