Shamsie's Literary Puzzle
Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire incorporates different chapters from different character's viewpoints to paint a thorough and balanced story of our complex world. Every time a new character begins to tell the story from their perspective, we can to better understand the character's personality, see the story from a new viewpoint, and get a sense of the complete story that cannot be told through a single person's point of view. Interestingly enough, the slow buildup shows the reader that there are many more pieces to the puzzle, and this draws the reader in more as the book goes on.
I believe Shamsie chose to start Home Fire from Isma's point of view for a number of reasons, the most prominent being that she has the most unbiased and reliable viewpoint for the greater part of the story. Starting from Isma's point of view also accurately establishes the Pasha family's background (as she is the oldest sibling, & the most mature) and the basic relationships between most of the characters in the book, allowing the reader to gain trust in Isma's perspective. Shamsie continues with Eamonn, (I believe) because he is the main character with whom Isma spends her time in her chapter. This allows the reader to slowly connect more dots, as Shamsie shows how Eamonn sees Isma, what he believes of his own background (layering upon Isma's description of him), and who he aspires to be. Eamonn interacts heavily with Aneeka, introducing the complication of Parvaiz's dilemma and her own feelings into the story. This leads Shamsie to Parvaiz's chapter, where the story really begins to grip the reader as they begin to understand Parvaiz's unfortunate situation. Parvaiz and Aneeka's bond really begins to stand out to the reader as very powerful, so Shamsie moves to Aneeka's section of the story. This is all I have read so far, but overall, Shamsie's order of perspectives for her chapters serves extremely well to build up the suspense in her story while giving us a clear view of its development.
I agree with you that putting Isma's viewpoint first allows the background of the characters of Parvaiz and Aneeka to be established since she was a motherly figure for them. Also, your reasons for the order of the chapters made sense to me. It seemed like the characters that were mentioned a lot in one section had their sections next, so this provided for good transitions between sections. For example, Eamonn was interacted with the most in Isma's section, so his section came after Isma's, and trying to get Parvaiz back was mentioned a lot in Eamonn's section, so Parvaiz's section came next. I think it flowed really well.
ReplyDeleteI agree with how you laid out the reasoning for the section ordering. I think you'll be very satisfied with the ending, although, as I'm sure you're starting to find out, it is a sad ending.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't even thought about character relationships dictating the order of the story. I really liked the connection you drew between Isma and Eammon. The switch in their perspectives emphasize the contrast in their beliefs and viewpoints where Isma is really religious and Eammon is far from it.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I disagree that Isma is a reliable narrator. I believe that rather than reliable, she is a convicted and strongly-opinioned narrator. We often confuse strong opinions for truth and I think that Shamsie is attempting to show us this through Isma's narration. We often find that she is wrong in her descriptions of others, often leaving out important details, and a great example of this is her opinion of Parvaiz. I may be wrong, but this is just my interpretation of the book, so it's interesting to see how different yours is!
ReplyDeleteIn a way, we have to rethink our assumptions about every character with each new section. Every character is more complicated than they seem at first, although we really wouldn't know that if we didn't have multiple perspectives. How does this fact relate to the book's presentation of the politics of British Muslims, so you think?
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