Kite Runner Truth Essay

June 2nd, 2020

In The Kite Runner, author Khaled Hosseini explores multiple themes, including one about truth. Throughout the book, we see characters use lies to manipulate others’ perceptions in order to fulfil their ulterior motives, resulting in painful consequences. However, this is an accurate reflection of reality. As imperfect creations of God, we tend to hide the truth in order to obtain our selfish desires. Truth is important, because without the truth, people will manipulate their version of reality to obtain their goals, and causing people to suffer along the way. 

When I was a child, I loved indulging in candy but my mom disliked it, so she would only allow me two pieces a day. Regardless, I always had more than that and blamed everything on my sister, who then got in trouble.  When my mom found out about the truth, not only was she furious, but she was disappointed that I had hurt two of my family members at the same time by deceiving them. As I grew up, I realised the greater the lie, the more people we bruise with our fabrications. The same concept applied to Baba when he held back the truth about Hassan’s identity. Instead of coming clean about his disloyalty, he was controlled by motives of maintaining his honor. Not only did he hurt Ali and his wife through his betrayal but he furthermore scarred Amir through dishonesty (Hosseini, 225). 

Like father, like son, Amir is guilty of distorting the truth as well when he framed Hassan for stealing his gifts (Hosseini, 71-79 ). Again, his actions were driven by his own interest in pushing Hassan away in order to flee from guilt. Though they all knew Hassan was innocent, nobody was willing to speak the truth because it would have been awkward in their honor-shame based culture. They wanted to maintain honor, so they manipulated the truth to prevent feeling shame. But because nobody decided to face the reality, in the long run they all suffered. Baba lost his trustworthy friend, both Ali and Hassan eventually lost their lives and Amir lost his opportunity to make up with Hassan. 

Drawing a parallel from the book to reality, there are many catastrophes rooted in inconsiderate decisions. The recent outbreak of COVID-19 is a prime example. China was originally untruthful of the severeness of the epidemic in order to maintain social soundness. Many criticized that if China was transparent about the circumstances, this pandemic could have been prevented. Just as we cannot completely determine if Amir would have treated Hassan better as a half-brother, we cannot one hundred percent place the blame on China. But we know one thing for certain: deceit did not benefit either situation. 

The Kite Runner is excellent in giving us an introspective view as to why people lie. Rahim justifies Baba’s actions by saying:“Please think about it, Amir jan. It was a shameful situation. People would talk. All that man had back then, all that he was, was his honor, his name, and if people talked… We couldn’t tell anyone, surely you can see that.” (Hosseini, 223) As short sighted creatures, we lie for temporary benefits, only to be faced with the agonising consequences afterwards. We are unable to see into the future, which is exactly why truth is so important. From mending relationships to possibly preventing a detrimental pandemic from occurring, we can only stop our mistakes from hurting others by facing the truth, instead of letting our lies live and torment our present. 

Process: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LfbrC57I2AP2NXQ8nZCtK4qvwhU-ZZemxMOKOxRC2uU/edit?usp=sharing

Brainstorm: When I was writing this paper, I had so much trouble starting. This is partly because I didn’t really know how I defined was true. I thought (and still think) that truth is so easily manipulated by sources like government and media so that they can mind control us to think a certain way. And I thought that in this world truth is so relative and it felt like anyone can say anything and other people can’t say otherwise because none of us a sure what truth is. I know truth comes from the Bible but how can we know for sure the Bible is reliable. That’s the reason why I had so much trouble I guess, is because I didn’t know where I found my truth was reliable.