My thoughts on the ending of Home Fire
Global issue that I had thought of: culture, identity, community
By removing the names of the characters involved in the ending scenes, Shamsie explores how our identities are changed based on who is perceiving them.
The final scene is very significant, as it ends as you would expect from a dramatic tragedy – with the heroine dying, but also leaves questions unanswered. In the end, we wonder who really won. Aneeka managed to bury Parvaiz’s body, which was her ultimate goal, but she ended up dying. Eamonn was reunited with Aneeka, who he was in love with, and died in her arms. Karamat Lone got what he wanted – the Aneeka problem was out of the way, but in the worst way possible, and accompanied by the death of his own son. When Aneeka runs toward Eamonn, it kind of wraps up their tragic love story. When Aneeka runs towards Eamonn, she chooses not to escape and survives, but stays and chooses to die with him. We could interpret this as her just wanting to die due to her grief, and continuing to manipulate Eamonn to continue to maintain her story. However, the final scene of the story is described in such a romantic way, with her resting “her cheek against his”, and him dropping “his head to kiss her shoulder”. The final sentence of the book makes it sound like the peaceful ending, describing them as “lovers”, making you forget the previous context of the book, and even the fact that they are dying. It can be considered both the “Romeo and Juliet” ending to a love story, and a tragic unresolved ending – Aneeka dies with a grief-driven longing for suicide, with no way to go back to her life before she decided to bury Parvaiz.
An important part of the ending is that Shamsie detaches the identities of all the characters in the final moments, which has the effect of detaching the rest of the book, and the individual stories and contexts of each character. The fact that the reader is not actually seeing the actions take place firsthand and from the location that it is at is an important part of detaching the final narrative. The scene is being viewed from a cameraman, and we know that it is Karamat Lone watching from London. The characters’ names are also not used, and Aneeka and Eamonn are described as the “boy” and the “girl” other identifiers are used, like Eamonn’s “blue shirt”. Without the names of the characters attached to them, the reader can see what it is like for the general public, who does not know the individual stories of the characters. They do not see Aneeka’s motives, or Eamonn’s love, or Lone’s conflicted feelings. Instead, they simply see a girl and a boy, reunited at their death. This brings up the idea of how our identities are changed by who is perceiving them. Throughout the last few chapters of the books, the characters are perceived in different ways, that we as the readers know aren’t right. Aneeka being portrayed as this “manipulative slut” and Eamonn being perceived by Lone as hopeless and useless, Parvaiz as an evil terrorist. Through this, Shamsie explores the forced interpretations placed on the characters by the way the media shows them. This relates to the final ending – even when the story is wrapped up, there are still multiple ways to interpret Aneeka’s intentions, and Eamonn’s feelings. It also reminds us that throughout the book, Aneeka as a character has been changed by the way Shamsie portrayed her. In Isma’s descriptions of her she sounds very different to the way she does in Eamonn’s chapters, and then her own, the media’s interpretations and Karamat’s. Even when being described throughout the different filters of people who know or know of her, her character changes based on who describes her, which brings up the idea of how identity can be changed based on who is perceiving them.
