English Essay

Year 11 Essay: The Kite Runner/Sliding Doors

Change is a constant and dynamic occurrence in life. It is unavoidable and has the tendency to cause self-evaluation. The motif of change is explored both in Khaled Hosseini’s powerful novel The Kite Runner and the British 1998 movie Sliding Doors written and directed by Peter Howitt. Although both of these texts are composed in different times and contexts, The Kite Runner and Sliding Doors are strikingly similar in content and values. Both texts frequently examine the concept of change and have the ability to account self-evaluation on different characters within the texts.

The enduring formation of change ultimately affects individual perspectives. In The Kite Runner, the protagonist Amir changes his perspective after standing as an idle witness to his best friend Hassan’s rape. Amir’s observation of Hassan’s “look of a lamb” reflects the biblical allusion to the sacrifice of Isaac. However, unlike Abraham, the Lord, and Amir’s conscience offer no reprieve for his inability to redeem what he had allowed to be sacrificed, his loyal friend Hassan. Amir begins to view things in the novel negatively as he has this conscious guilt feeling in the back of his head, which in turn, causes self-doubt. “I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me. I was afraid of getting hurt. That’s what I told myself as I turned my back to the alley, to Hassan. That’s what I made myself believe.” This quote extracted from the novel shows that Amir has an internal guilt feeling which makes him think negatively. Similarly, in the film Sliding Doors, the protagonist Helen also changes her perspective, essentially on men. After getting fired from her job she comes home and finds Gerry cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend, Lydia. Helen now no longer has trust in relationships since catching Gerry. It has altered the way she looks at things and what she does. In the film after she catches Gerry cheating on...