Kite_Runner_Critcal_Lens

Talya Rohde ‘Whoever does wrong, wrongs himself’ – Marcus Aurelius. I agree with this quote whole-heartedly. Even though by doing wrong you are wronging others, you are in turn, hurting yourself to an even greater degree. By hurting others, you are hurting yourself on two levels: internally, and personally. This quote relates to the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini because the protagonist, Amir, whose actions consistently wrong others, come back and haunt him for the rest of his life. This quote can also be associated with the book, The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. Peter Solomon, head of the Smithsonian Museum, wrongs his son. This too, comes back to haunt him, both mentally, and physically. The Kite Runner’s protagonist, Amir, exemplifies the reality of this quote. Amir ‘wrongs’ his servant, Hassan, the person closest to him in his life, the person that always protected and stood up for him. While Hassan is defending Amir one day, the situation goes too far and Amir witnesses Hassan being assaulted and battered. Amir however, with the option perhaps saving Hassan much physical abuse and pain, neglects to intervene. This decision comes back to haunt Amir for the rest of his life. From here we can clearly see, that by Amir ‘wronging’ Hassan, Amir was damaged on multiple levels. Not only would he loose respect from people that would come to know this story, but also on a personal level he was scathed; the later haunting of this situation was more mental than physical anguish. He, day in, day out, regrets this choice of action that he had committed years ago. To prove this quote, I have used the literary device/element known as context. The definition for this literary device is: ‘conditions, including facts, surrounding a given situation’. I used context from the story to prove the authenticity of this quote. This literary device (context) is the story, so to explain the context, I will refer to the use of conflict, specifically that of internal conflict, used in the story. The conflict in The Kite Runner is an internal conflict in Amir, one that troubles him for the rest of his life; it is the knowledge that he had wronged someone that had always been there for him and helped him in all situations. Not only was he his servant, but he was also his friend. The Lost Symbol’s antagonist, Zachary, is the epitome of this quote. He acted on someone else’s wronging him, not solely for vengeance, but also for personal gain. He showed the consequences of someone, namely his father, wronging someone else, and that action coming back to hurt them one way or another. In this specific case, it came back not only to hurt his father, Peter, but had worldly and fundamental consequences. Peter opts to leave Zachary in jail after another outburst of childishness from him and Zachary elects to take offense to this. By the end of the story, Zachary has not only tarnished Peter’s flawless reputation, but has also caused Peter great mental angst. His views on both people and family are corrupted and Peter looses his extraordinary ability he once had to function on a peak intellectual level. Again using context from the story, we can see that wronging others can most definitely harm oneself. We can interrelate these two stories to note that both contain the use of internal conflict of a main character in the story, resulting from an action of wronging another. It is interesting to note, that the use of this idea (the quote) in a story, can commonly affect the character psychologically to a degree of actual anguish in many stories in which the idea is employed. Wronging another indeed has its personal consequences as seen from these two novels. Amir was mentally tortured because of his cowardly choice of not helping Hassan. Peter was later as well mentally anguished for choosing to leave his own son in jail. These examples typify the quote as both Peter and Amir wronged others and later paid the price themselves. Hurting someone else interestingly seems to hurt yourself more so than the degree you hurt the other person. The feeling of regret lingers and can torment one forever because sometimes, the situation may not ever be rectifiable. It is of utmost importance therefore, to remember, that while you may be wronging another a the moment, you will be paying for it tenfold.