Good books leave you satisfied, great books change the very fabric of who you are. The last page of The Kite Runner
was dog eared this morning. I was struck at how much I cared for the main character, then hated him, only to absolutely hate him, finally to like him again, and after repeating this cycle a few times I ultimately cared for him because I could see myself through him and in the other character as well. I'd like to believe that I mostly resemble this other character, Hassan, but very few people in the world can ever attest to having a stature like that. For this I will recall a great phrase from the book
"there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft."
I'd feel like I was stealing from Hassan by comparing myself to him even if he is a fictional character.
3 comments:
I was discussing the book "The Kite Runner" with my wife and describing that very quote that Baba tells his son, the only real sin is the sin of theft. Be it a theft of honor, life, freedom, security, friendship etc. It seemed so true at the time, and the more I consider it the truer it seems... After some time, we agreed that in truth there is really only one form of sin. So why do you think we classify our "sins" into different forms?
Wow, I don't know but since you asked. Society classifies sins into different forms because the more you classify something the better you can describe what it is even if you can convince yourself that theft is a variation of all the other sins. Taking a life can be seen as stealing someones life and therefore theft but murder is stronger. If you were to classify theft as the only sin so to could you say that about a lot of thigns. You could say that there is a turtle but you could get a much better picture if you were to say that there lays a Leatherback Sea Turtle. Words can be very limiting take for instance this sentence. That boy and girl love each other. How does that tell you anything more than the married couple love each other? Enhanced adjectives better our language and while it might be nice to tell children that the only sin is theft, for a society it is seriously limiting and not good. In fact it is double-plus ungood. But now I'm getting into a whole new subject entirely.
I read "the curious incident" and liked it a great deal. Haddon did a good job of getting us inside the boy's mind.
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