Year 11 Advanced Module A: Narratives that Shape Our World

Antigone is the subject of a story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices. Oedipus's sons, Eteocles and Polynices, had shared the rule jointly until they quarrelled, and Eteocles expelled his brother. In Sophocles' account, the two brothers agreed to alternate rule each year, but Eteocles decided not to share power with his brother after his tenure expired. Polynices left the kingdom, gathered an army and attacked the city of Thebes in a conflict called the Seven Against Thebes. Both brothers were killed in the battle.

King Creon, who has ascended to the throne of Thebes after the death of the brothers, decrees that Polynices is not to be buried or even mourned, on pain of death by stoning. Antigone, Polynices' sister, defies the king's order and is caught.

Antigone is brought before Creon, and admits that she knew of Creon's law forbidding mourning for Polynices but chose to break it, claiming the superiority of divine over human law, and she defies Creon's cruelty with courage, passion and determination. Creon orders Antigone buried alive in a tomb. Although Creon has a change of heart and tries to release Antigone, he finds she has hanged herself. Creon's son Haemon, who was in love with Antigone commits suicide with a knife, and his mother Queen Eurydice, also kills herself in despair over her son's death. She has been forced to weave throughout the entire story, and her death alludes to The Fates. By her death Antigone ends up destroying the household of her adversary, Creon.

Antigone is a typical Greek tragedy, in which inherent flaws of the acting characters lead to irrevocable disaster. Antigone and Creon are prototypical tragic figures in an Aristotelian sense, as they struggle towards their fore-doomed ends, forsaken by the gods.

Home Fire (2017) is the seventh novel by Kamila Shamsie. It reimagines Sophocles's play Antigone unfolding among British Muslims. The novel follows the Pasha family: twin siblings Aneeka and Parvaiz and their older sister Isma, who has raised them in the seven years since the siblings were orphaned by the death of their mother; their jihadi father, whom the twins never knew, is also dead. Parvaiz attempts to follow in his father's footsteps by joining ISIS in Syria, but when he decides he has made a serious mistake, his twin sister attempts to help him return to Britain, in part through her romantic relationship with Eamonn Lone. Eammon is the son of British Home Secretary Karamat Lone, who has built his political career on his rejection of his own Muslim background. The effort to bring Parvaiz home fails: Parvaiz is shot to death trying to escape, then Eamonn and Aneeka, trying to return Parvaiz's body to the UK over the objections of Karamat Lone, die in a terrorist attack.

Home Fire won the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2018.

The concerns of the novel include the identity and security of Muslims in Britain. It speaks of the troubles of Muslims as they struggle to maintain a unique cultural identity while defending their ''Britishness'' and loyalty to the state against political and social activists who wish to alienate them