Emir betrays his friendship with Hosannas by watching Safes rape him, and rather than intervene, he ran away. “l actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Safes was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hosannas was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baby. ” (peg. 77). Emir says he aspired to cowardice because he feels the reasons he ran away were much worse. Emir suggests if fear of being hurt by Safes were the main reason he ran, that at least it would have been more justified.
Instead, he allowed the rape to happen because he wanted the blue kite, which he thought would prove to Baby that he was a winner like him, earning him Abs’s love and approval. Hosannas was the sacrifice Emir had to make to get the kite and ultimately to gain Abs’s affection. Amid search for redemption stems from his guilt regarding Hosannas. That guilt drives Emir’s journey to Kabul to find Sahara. “My suspicions had been right all those years. He knew about Safes, the kite, the money, the watch with the lightning bolt hands.
He had always known…. Come. There is a way to be DOD again, Ihram Khan had said on the phone just before hanging up. Said it in passing, almost as an afterthought. ” (peg. 192). Ihram Khan implies Emir can try to undo the damage he caused upon Hosannas by going back to Afghanistan. Rescuing Sahara from Safes is not enough either. Only when Emir decides to take Sahara to the United States and provide his nephew a chance at happiness and prosperity that was denied to his half-brother does Emir take the necessary steps toward atonement and redemption.
The moral standard Emir must meet to earn his redemption is set early in the book, hen Baby says that a boy who doesn’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything. As a boy, Emir fails to stand up for himself. As an adult, he can only redeem himself by proving he has the courage to stand up for what is right. In the end, Emir finds out that punishment is not what will redeem him from his sin. It is not even saving Sahara. In order to atone for his sin and Abs’s before him, Emir must erase the lines of discrimination he has lived with all his life by giving Sahara an equal chance at success and happiness.
