Home Fire

Reading and Writing Workshop: Home Fire is a novel that reimagines Sophocles' play "Antigone" and is set among British Muslims. The story follows the Pasha family, including twin siblings Aneeka and Parvaiz, and their older sister Isma, who raised them after their mother's death.
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Reading:  Students may read independently or as a group while completing a Literary Thinking Guide. If a rapid reading is necessary, the book can be divided among the groups, and each group summarizes their section and then the groups present their sections sequentially.

Workshop Overview
This workshop uses small group reading, rotating roles, and sustained analytical and reflective writing to examine relationships among family and community.

Focus: Tragedy, loyalty, identity, power, voice, and the modern reinvention of classical texts
Core Skills: Close reading • Character analysis • Motif tracing • Comparative analysis • Literary argument writing

Workshop Structure (Applies to All Sessions)
Group Roles (rotate weekly):

• Close Reader – tracks diction, imagery, symbolism
• Character Analyst – traces motivation, conflict, and change
• Theme Connector – links themes across texts
• Comparative Scholar – connects Home Fire to the public-domain reading
• Discussion Leader – prepares interpretive questions
• Writer/Recorder – synthesizes group insights into writing

Core Deliverables Each Session:

• Annotated excerpts (novel + PD text)
• One collaborative analytical paragraph
• One comparative claim supported by evidence

SESSION 1 — Tragedy Reimagined: Classical Foundations
Home Fire Focus

• Opening chapters: family structure, voice, divided perspectives
• Introduction of moral conflict and inevitability

Public-Domain Anchor Text
Antigone (trans. E.B. Browning or R. Whitelaw)
Public-Domain Link:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31
Literary Focus

• Elements of tragedy
• Individual conscience vs. state law
• Foreshadowing and dramatic irony

Group Task

• Map Antigone ↔ Ismaene ↔ Aneeka roles
• Identify tragic flaws and competing moral claims

Writing Task
Write a paragraph explaining how Home Fire establishes itself as a modern tragedy, citing Antigone as a structural model.


SESSION 2 — Voice, Perspective, and Narrative Authority
Home Fire Focus

• Shifting narrators
• Emotional distance vs. intimacy

Public-Domain Anchor Text
Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction” (1919)
Public-Domain Link:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59921
Literary Focus

• Narrative voice
• Interior consciousness
• Reliability and bias

Group Task

• Track how perspective shapes sympathy
• Compare Woolf’s ideas of inner life to Shamsie’s narration

Writing Task
Analyze how narrative voice influences the reader’s moral alignment in Home Fire.


SESSION 3 — Identity, Belonging, and Cultural Inheritance
Home Fire Focus

• Muslim identity, British citizenship, displacement
• Hybridity and inherited stigma

Public-Domain Anchor Text
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (selections)
Public-Domain Link:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10615
Literary Focus

• Identity formation
• Nature vs. experience
• Social labeling

Group Task

• Contrast Locke’s theory of identity with lived identity in the novel
• Identify moments where characters are defined by others

Writing Task
Explain how Home Fire challenges philosophical notions of identity using character conflict.


SESSION 4 — Power, Law, and the State
Home Fire Focus

• Karamat Lone and state authority
• Security vs. justice

Public-Domain Anchor Text
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Chapter I)
Public-Domain Link:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34901
Literary Focus

• Individual liberty vs. collective safety
• Abuse of power
• Moral authority of the state

Group Task

• Debate Mill’s harm principle in relation to Karamat’s decisions
• Identify moments where law conflicts with ethics

Writing Task
Argue whether Home Fire ultimately critiques or defends the authority of the modern state.


SESSION 5 — Love, Loyalty, and Moral Choice
Home Fire Focus

• Aneeka and Eamonn
• Conflicting loyalties: family, love, nation

Public-Domain Anchor Text
Plato, Crito (Socrates on obedience and conscience)
Public-Domain Link:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1658
Literary Focus

• Moral duty
• Personal loyalty vs. civic obedience
• Ethical sacrifice

Group Task

• Compare Socrates’ moral reasoning to Aneeka’s
• Identify sacrifices characters are willing to make

Writing Task
Analyze how love functions as both a redemptive and destructive force in Home Fire.


SESSION 6 — Gender, Resistance, and Voice
Home Fire Focus

• Women as moral centers and agents of resistance
• Aneeka vs. Isma

Public-Domain Anchor Text
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (selections)
Public-Domain Link:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3420
Literary Focus

• Gendered power
• Agency and resistance
• Public vs. private voice

Group Task

• Examine how female characters challenge patriarchal and political authority
• Compare Wollstonecraft’s arguments to Aneeka’s actions

Writing Task
Evaluate how Home Fire reclaims the tragic heroine for a modern context.


SESSION 7 — Media, Spectacle, and Public Judgment
Home Fire Focus

• Media portrayal
• Public opinion and moral spectacle

Public-Domain Anchor Text
Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1922, selections)
Public-Domain Link:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6456
Literary Focus

• Construction of narrative
• Image vs. truth
• Public morality

Group Task

• Track how characters are reduced to symbols
• Analyze the role of media in shaping justice

Writing Task
Discuss how Home Fire critiques the transformation of tragedy into spectacle.


SESSION 8 — Resolution, Catharsis, and Meaning
Home Fire Focus

• Final chapters
• Consequences and unresolved justice

Public-Domain Anchor Text
Aristotle, Poetics (sections on tragedy & catharsis)
Public-Domain Link:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6763
Literary Focus

• Catharsis
• Moral reckoning
• Tragic resolution

Group Task

• Determine whether the ending provides catharsis or condemnation
• Revisit tragic elements identified in Session 1

Final Writing Task (Summative)
Write a comparative literary analysis essay arguing how Home Fire adapts classical tragedy to confront modern political and cultural realities.


Optional Extensions

• Socratic Seminar: Is loyalty to family ever incompatible with justice?
• Comparative Essay: Antigone vs. Home Fire
• Creative Rewrite: A final scene retold from a silenced voice