Confronting Memory: Guilt and the Quest for Redemption in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Mountains Echoed

Abstract

This paper reads Khaled Hosseini‘s portrayal of the characters‘ guilt as a product of the social and economic hardships that affects them in the Afghani society. It provides an analysis of characters who exhibit behaviours that are products of situations they encounter in Khaled Hosseini‘s The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns and And the Mountains Echoed. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the impact of authorial power and background on the characters and setting. It argues that Hosseini uses the pen to portray the life in the war-torn Afghanistan hence providing a communal experience of the suffering of the Afghans.

Keywords: Guilt; Redemption; Memory; Trauma; Ideology