Marc's Experience With The Different Perspectives In Home Fire

    While reading Home Fire, written by Kamila Shamsie, I was intrigued by the structure of the text. The story followed a typical third person perspective while at times following a main character, what was intriguing however is which main character it'd focus on. The text has five primary Characters, Isma, Eamonn, Parvaiz, Aneeka, and Karamat, who's journey is written about in the text in a certain order. I believe Shamsie formed an order between the character's to showcase the multiple perspectives people hold when addressing the matter of faith and loyalty.

    The text started with Isma's perspective. Isma, a practitioner of the muslim faith and British citizen, is put an a terrible dilemma. She is forced to pledge her allegiance to her family or to her nation, when her brother, Parvaiz, had decided to join the radical group. In Isma's perspective she chose to follow her nation, and distanced herself from her brother who was following the radical ideology at the time. 

    In Eamonn's perspective, Eamonn wasn't a big practitioner of the muslim faith but slowly grew into it as the text continued. At the start of the book, Eamonn was devoted to his father and would do anything to please him; including distancing himself from the faith like he did. However, once Eamonn views how his loyalty towards his country impacted his love in the story, Aneeka, he shifted loyalty towards the muslim faith and began to understand it.    

    For Parvaiz, the brother of Aneeka and Isma, he blinded followed his faith in the text as a means to connect to his father. His loyalty towards his faith however pitied him against his home country, and resulted with his banishment from his nation.

    Aneeka, who was a British citizen, gladly gave up her British passport when it acted as a barrier to her family. She believed that her family was her number one priority, and would even give it up if it meant following him through his mistakes in the radical ideology.

    Lastly Karamat, a child of immigrants, had abandoned his public connection towards the faith for the majority of the story. He viewed it as a means to alienate him from the other British citizens, which resulted in him pushing against his faith towards the loyalty of Britain so that he could be viewed as a good man.

Marc's interest in the research excursion

 What has sparked your research interest so far in your reading of Shamsie's novel? What has been mentioned or referred to that you would like to know more about? Include ideas for your classmates who may be looking for research excursion topics. Be creative!

   While reading Home Fire, a prominent question has plagued my head. What was the history of the Pakistani immigration to London? Living in California, I've been introduced to many diverse cultures and find it fascinating to see the interactions held between cultures. While reading Home Fire however, I found it disheartening to read about the negative cultural interaction between that of the Pakistani people and the people of London. I believe that if I learn more about the history between the cultures, then I could piece together this poor relationship the citizens of these two countries hold for one another.

    As of now, my understanding between the two is very shallow. My ethnic background is from Lebanon, a small country located in the outskirts of the Middle East bordering the medeterrian sea, so my knowledge about Pakistan and London is little to nothing. From what I understand however, Pakistan used to be part of India when under the imperialization of London. However, once the European citizens left India, due to the Indian revolution, a large chunk of Indian citizens also left India. These Indians would leave to form Pakistan due to conflicts of religion and beliefs between the people. I believe that the split of this nation has resulted in a war between the two countries that would eventually lead to the flocks of immigration towards London. I hypothesize they’d chosen London of all places since the people were already well aware of London's customs and it was free from war.

Marc's Detective Skills with Annotations

    As I've been reading and annotating Home Fire, I've started to notice subtle hints throughout the text that I feel like represents something deeper than it looks. One instance I noticed where something looked unusual was in Eamonn's portion of the story located in chapter three. To give context to this scene, Eamonn and Aneeka have been romantic partners for quite sometime and Aneeka had been visiting Eamonn's place. This night however, she was crying and ran to Eamonn's bathroom. While in the bathroom, Eamonn eavesdropped and heard the phrase “I’m making sure of things here" (Shamsie 124) uttered by Aneeka. 

    Now when I hear the phrase, “I’m making sure of things here" (Shamsie 124) I can't help but feel something mischievous is going on with Aneeka. Earlier in the text it is mentioned that “Aneeka had always been someone boys looked at—and someone who looked back.” (Shamsie 39), so Aneeka has had a history of being flirtatious with the boys. However I’m afraid that her relationship with Eamonn is more than flirtatious, I feel like she is using him.

Why do I think she is using him? I believe that Eamonn is being used for his father’s personal connection. Eamonn’s father, Karamat Lone, is the Home Secretary in Britain: a very prestigious position in the government with power to influence the nation. This connection is useful when I look at what Aneeka is in need of.

Throughout the story it’s been heavily hinted that Parvaiz has been involved in a criminal offense. This is apparent in the second chapter of Isma’s portion, when Isma tell’s Aneeka that they’re “in no position to let the state question” our loyalties” (67) in regards to Parvaiz. Because of this elusive statement, I’m guessing Parvaiz must’ve committed a big crime to have the government security questioning them. I expect that Aneeka has been trying to get closer to Eamonn with the intention of using his connection to free him from whatever crime he has committed.

Marc's Experience with Fictional Text

    For today's blog I'll be discussing my opinion on fictional texts and what I think about this reading category. To be quite frank, I love fictional stories. My love for them stems from my respect towards the author and the connection I hold towards the genre.

 A fictional story is a fabricated story, it may stem from a real story, but the author has to construct their own universe, characters, and plot. This is no easy feat, it's one that requires much determination to create. This requirement thrusted to authors is what weed off many writers from becoming authors. For those however who accept the challenge, they accept the fact that this journey is going to be arduous but continues onwards because of their belief that their story is going to be worth the hard work. It's this determination that makes me respect authors so deeply.

    In writing the story, the author has to find a way to tell their story through the tools of writing. This means constructing the world of the story to be reflective of the themes, establishing characters that both the audience can care for and one the author can use to describe the story's central purpose, and fine craft the world it takes place in to make sure the story can logically flow. This construction a text has to go through pays off when the reader feels entranced in their world,  and could imagine it in their own head. It's a product I fall in love with for when I read a book and feel involved in the world

   Looking back at the fictional books I've read, I'd say my favorite genre would have to be historical fiction. I'm not the biggest history person, I never truly felt grasped when looking at the past because I never felt that I could relate and understand the people back then. Through historical fiction however, I'm able to look at the past with a new perspective and find new interest in what happened in the past. My favorite two books: The Book Thief and The Kite Runner, made me interested in the history which the story took place in; something many other mediums can't do.

Marc's Experience With Annotation

    Dear fellow bloggers, welcome to my first ever blog! Please forgive me for if this blog seems all over the place, I'm learning to become a better blogger so you won't have to deal with those shortcomings.

    The agenda of this blog is to discuss my experiences with annotations in text. To be completely honest here, I haven't had the best experiences with annotations. This negative regard towards annotating stems from my poor experiences with it in high school. 

    In high school I was taught to highlight anything that may have been of interest on a paper. As my previous english teacher would say, "the author deliberately put every word there, find out why", this mentality implanted on me would become the basis of annotating as I viewed it in high school. Rather than enjoying texts, I would look over every minute detail in the hopes of finding something new to highlight. By the end of most texts, my paper would end up looking like a rainbow, formed by an assortment of different highlighter colors. More often than not, I wouldn't even end up using all the phrases I highlighted, and I'd feel my efforts went to vein. I disliked annotating because I felt like in order to be a good annotator I couldn't enjoy reading the text, instead I'd have to be a slave to the words and phrases.

    I guess I'd say up until this point my relationship with annotation has been a negative one, however I'm looking to change that in college. I plan now to highlight things I feel is of worth, rather than highlighting every minute detail. By doing this, I will have developed a deeper understanding of the text and will know what I highlighted and what it meant to me. 

    My methods of annotation, which I hope you dear bloggers get some use of, includes a variety of highlighters and sticky notes. I plan to use my highlighters by colored coding each color to the category I look for: blue - tone, yellow - evidence, green - rhetorical device, and pink would vary depending on the form of text. Next, I'd use the sticky notes previously mentioned to take notes of things that I didn't completely understand. If there was a word or terminology I didn't know I would write it down and revisit it in the future.

    I hope to use this new method of annotation to help get a better grasp of the text all the while enjoying what I'm reading.