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Lauren Landis
Mrs. Brown
English Cont Lit
9 March 2015
Conscience
There are two types of definitions in the world, the dictionaries scholarly and rigid definition and a person’s abstract and ever­changing definition. A person’s definition is made by gaining a collective inventory of everyone else’s views on the meaning of the word. Books are the most influential things that can alter or strengthen a person’s definition of a word. In the book
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the readers get a deeper insight to the meaning of multiple words. The vast majority of the words being defined in the book by Hosseini directly correlate with the themes of the story. Over the course of the novel, Hosseini reveals the power of our conscience­­that a conscience is something that is driven by guilt. Even though we can sometimes decide against our conscience temporarily because of outside influences, eventually it brings us back in line and leads us to redemption.
A person’s conscience is evoked when the guilt they have for doing something haunts their everyday lives. Amir’s guilt for watching Hassan get raped is powered by Hassan’s unwavering loyalty to him. One part where this idea is expressed is after Hassan was raped.
Hassan became very distant with Amir after this event and Amir hardly ever saw him. Although
Amir never saw Hassan on a daily basis his presence was always felt: “But even when he wasn’t around, he was. He was there in the hand­washed and ironed clothes on the cane­seat chair, in the warm slippers left outside my door, in the wood

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already burning in the stove when I came down for breakfast” (Hosseini 89).
Hassan’s loyalty was found in everything he did for Amir and that served as a constant reminder for Amir and made him feel responsible for the pain he had caused. Those reminders added to the growing weight of guilt Amir felt about the situation. Those subtle and constant reminders that Hassan left, fueled Amir’s conscience and made him think twice about his actions. On any other day Amir would never think deeply about what Hassan had done for him, he would have dismissed it and moved on with his day; but after Hassan was raped those things Amir came into contact with on a daily basis never went unnoticed. Later in the story where the idea is noted again is after Amir finds out that Hassan is his half­brother and he starts to think of how things could have went differently had he not forced Ali and Hassan out of the house: “Was it too far­fetched to imagine that things might have turned out differently if I hadn’t? Maybe Baba would have brought them along to America. Maybe Hassan would have had a home of his own now, a job, a family, a life in a country where no one cared that he was a Hazara…” (Hosseini 226).
The key part in this quote is that Amir talks about all of the good things that could have happened and that Hassan would have been alive. Instead of Amir saying he would have died anyways or he wouldn’t have a normal life he chose to think about the best case scenario for
Hassan. That shows that Amir felt guilt for what he had done instead of just dismissing and saying that he wouldn’t have had a good life anyways. By Amir saying those happy endings it shows that Amir believes that his decisions were what ultimately caused Hassan to die. That thought is what truly fuels his conscience. These moments where he feels guilt strengthen his conscience however, there are multiple things that can thwart or numb our conscience.

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Although our conscience is constantly being reminded by our guilt, there are many ways that a person can go against their conscience. After Hassan and Amir get home after the kite flying tournament and after Hassan had been raped, Baba welcomed Amir home with open arms and a smile. Amir comments, “In his arms, I forgot what I’d done. And that was good” (Hoseini
79).