Blindness Cave

[gibsondodds]

These are the thesis attempts made for the Kite Runner, using prior questions. Some are more like topics than a thesis. Careful! Also, most of them clump the two ideas of honour and certainty, for example, together. DON"T. Are they really the same thing? Also, watch that plot does NOT drive your thesis. This is a very "plotty" story, so beware! Remember, who's guilty and what's the verdict here? Who's NOT guilty where and when? Why? Read these and improve them by resubmitting them on this forum below.

[gibsondodds]

Refer to these by number

The two questions:

A. Discuss the ideas developed about the ways in which individuals struggle to restore honour and certainty.
B. Discuss the ideas developed by the text creator about how acts of courage develop and nurture personal integrity.


1. Redemption is a recurring theme in the Kite Runner that is mirrored through both Amir and his father, Baba. Amir is blinded with guilt after witnessing the rape of his best friend, whereas Baba struggles to find peace after sleeping with his best friend’s wife. Only after realizing how their secrets intertwine does Amir finally begin to leave his past behind him.

2. Khaled Hosseini proves that the restoration of honour and certainty cannot be achieved by simply being a good person, but rather, it is a lifelong struggle that may very well destroy the person we were before, leaving in its wake, someone entirely different.

3. In the novel Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Baba and Amir struggle for redemption. At first, Baba has Hassan living with him, but when he loses him he seems to be looking for a way to restore his certainty. Amir, ever since the alley incident, has been looking to find honour. He achieves this during the fight with Assef and saving Sohrab. Amir’s certainty when he sets out to find Sohrab and brings him home. “There’s a way to be good again.” This quote is the beginning of Amir’s quest for certainty and that’s why it’s an important quote: it establishes the start of a new Amir.

4. To restore his honour, Amir goes back to Afghanistan to save Sohrab to right past wrongs.

5. Through guilt, reason, and courage, individuals are able to make decisions and perform acts which will help them restores as sense of personal honour, which they may have previously lost. At the same time, the individual will develop a certainty of whom they really are.

6. By choosing not to take action in dangerous situations, individuals will feel guilt and lose their self respect. To restore their self assurance and respect, individuals must confront their fears and act in a courageous manner.

7. In the novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini develops the idea that the struggle to restore honour and certainty in one’s life after it has been lost due to past mistakes in one evident in each and every individual’s life. Through the characters, Baba and Amir, and Soraya, the author shows that it is not the individual’s mistakes that determine the honour they maintain in their life; however, it is how they face their mistakes and correct their wrongs.

8. An individual will struggle to restore honour by trying to hide their mistakes and must eventually regain the honour that they have lost by feeling the same pain they have caused. Through pain, one’s certainty of who they are and what is right is found.

9. In the novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini implies how certain acts of courage can nurture one’s personal integrity through building one’s character in order for others to benefit rather than achieve personal gain.

10. To restore honour in The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, Amir, the main character, goes back to his homeland of Afghanistan to rescue his old best friend’s orphan son.

11. Khaled Hosseini’s ideas on personal integrity in The Kite Runner are strongly founded on the acts of courage by Hassan and later, Amir. Integrity is based on your decisions to follow what you believe to be the more important. In the novel, Hassan shows great courage and thus develops his integrity while Amir must redeem himself and his integrity by saving Hassan’s son Sohrab. These courageous events shape Amir into a small hero, but he still has a long way to go.

12. Everyone struggles to restore honour to their lives once they’ve lost it; they search for redemption, be it from others or their own eyes. Only once they have restored this critical aspect of their lives can they continue to live without second-guessing themselves.

13. Honour is the string of Hassan’s kite-like lifestyle.

14. Throughout the The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, the protagonists such as Baba and Amir are in a constant struggle to redeem themselves for the actions made by them in the past. The central metaphor is about making something, which is ethically wrong, into something the individual knows is ethically right. It is not for the image of them in other people’s eyes, but the way Amir and Baba see themselves.

15. As humans we all make mistakes. It’s not the mistakes that label us as good or bad people, but it is the number of mistakes tone person makes followed by their actions. Sadly a person is often judged by their choices and the decisions that they make good or bad. It was once said, “There’s a way to be good again.” Take what you want from that saying, but what it tires to enforce is that good or bad, we as humans, all make mistakes and there are proper ways to go about fixing a mistake. Trying to fix a mistake is what one does in the event of trying to restore their honour and certainty. In the novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini, Hosseini tried to demonstrate through different characters that in life you are allowed to make mistakes, and eventually you will be given the time to correct the mistakes you have made, but whether or not you choose to is entirely up to you. That is where the saying, “There is a way to be good again” plays a very important role. In the novel, there is a character named Baba. Through the entire book his life is based off of his social status and was a man of honour and pride. Further on in the novel you come to find out that Baba himself had made terrible decisions throughout his life, and the entire novel focuses on Baba’s attempt to restore his honour. Whether or not you believe that the decisions the characters in the book made were of certitude, Hosseini, really tries to help you understand that people make decisions for what they see is the best possible solution in their given circumstance. And good or bad a person will be to great lengths to restore their honour and defend their certainty.

16. Personal integrity is something we all strive to have; it’s one’s possession of firm principles, and it is a very important quality to have in a person’s life. People lacking personal integrity are often widely thought of as cowards and hypocrites –but if personal integrity is a part of an individual’s life, they are seen as brave and courageous. It’s not the easiest aspect to obtain, however, and it takes years of development and nurturing to perfect. The reason for this is because very few things help a person to develop their personal integrity, and the things that do help to develop and nurture integrity are often the hardest to carry out. One thing that can help our integrity though, are acts of courage –to act upon courage alone, however, can be a terrifying thought. This is the difficult position that Amir finds himself in The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. As a young boy, Amir had no personal integrity at all; he’d rather watch his closest friend be bullied and raped than to have to stand up for him. However, after years of being plagued by his decisions, Amir finally realizes that in order to develop his own personal integrity, he must first display his courage.

[ROME SDS]

My personal favourite is thesis 16 because it clearly shows which topic the writer plans to discuss but also it does not clump both courage and integrity into the same idea. The author clearly shows that both are two very different concepts that rely on each other. My only criticism is that neither or the two concepts, honour and especially intergrity are defined and it leaves the reader a little bit confused as to what exactly they mean.

Well done all in all

[gibsondodds]

Are you criticising the examiner for not being specific about what honour and/or integrity is? That's your job to determine and define what they mean.

Scott

[Garry]

[gibsondodds]

Yeah, it's not clear what they're getting at here; they don't necessarily contradict each other because it depends on how they define redemption and really they don't say that it can't be the other way around? The last one says that it could be both in terms of how they see themselves and how others see them. In the end, the most important is how one sees oneself. Who cares what others think? Really. You're the only one who really knows who you are.

I really liked what you said about thesis 8. Very true. It's a great idea/thesis to work with. Pain really is an important part of what we are to become and that's why Generation Y is prone to priveledge and entitlement: they've never felt loss or pain, at least not in the same what as the Baby Boomers did. We spend our lives trying to avoid pain, when really we should embrace it for what pain can teach us when it comes our way. No one wants to find pain, but it does afford us honour if we handle it well?

Now what we need to do is take the same thesis and apply it to a different question!

[Kalevra]

I think it's hard for people to embrace "negative" emotions like sadness and pain. But these feelings are just as valuable if not more so than feelings of happiness and joy. William Blake (God I love that mans work) said "Excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps." There's that balance I like to talk about. You need pain and sorrow if not simply to value happiness that much more.

[mountain]

"Throughout the The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, the protagonists such as Baba and Amir are in a constant struggle to redeem themselves for the actions made by them in the past. The central metaphor is about making something, which is ethically wrong, into something the individual knows is ethically right. It is not for the image of them in other people’s eyes, but the way Amir and Baba see themselves. "

AKA Number 14

I thought this one was interesting because I really liked the concept of taking an action which is ethically wrong and turning it into something the individual knows is ethically right. I believe that it is inevitable that we will all make mistakes, however how we fix these mistakes and make them right in our mind defines our character. I also think it is a very important concept to consider that when dealing with a guilty conscience, it ultimately doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, it is only important what one thinks of themselves. In the Kite Runner, Amir could've gone his whole life without redeeming himself for his past sins and nobody would've thought anything less of him. However, it was his own conscience that was telling him he had to go right his wrongs. I think the idea in this thesis could lead to a pretty good essay.

[Lo2009]

I personally did not like thesis #13, because it was too vague and not answering the question in a more detailed approach, instead I liked thesis statement #1 and #2 because I prefer statements that aren't long paragraphs and are direct with what the author is choosing to say about developing ideas based on honor and certainty or how courage nurtures personal integrity. Also in thesis statement #1 it directly states the reoccurring theme which presents itself through out the novel, which is redemption, though I think that it does not answer the question being asked, instead they just described key moments in the novel. In the thesis statement #2, I like how the individual tries to relate the restoration of honor as a universal struggle, and explain the consequences of trying to achieve this goal through out our entire lives.


#13: “Honour is the string of Hassan’s kite-like lifestyle”.

#1: “Redemption is a recurring theme in the Kite Runner that is mirrored through both Amir and his father, Baba. Amir is blinded with guilt after witnessing the rape of his best friend, whereas Baba struggles to find peace after sleeping with his best friend’s wife. Only after realizing how their secrets intertwine does Amir finally begin to leave his past behind him.”

#2: “Khaled Hosseini proves that the restoration of honour and certainty cannot be achieved by simply being a good person, but rather, it is a lifelong struggle that may very well destroy the person we were before, leaving in its wake, someone entirely different.”