Within the book Home Fire, we see that Isma puts more emphasis on her duty to her country by informing on her brother to the Police, and this raises the question of whether or not this was the ‘right’ thing to do.
In order to discuss this idea, we can connect it back to ancient Greece in which the notion of morality and ethics started, as well as the play Antigone, which Home Fire is based on. When it comes to ethics, the basic most important question is ‘what is considered as right or wrong’, and there are many different approaches that one could take to this idea. From a deontological perspective, one would look at taking action based on authority and without much regard for what the consequences would be. This seems to be similar to the system of ethics that Isma was following when she informed on her brother. When she did this she was thinking more about the law of the country and what would be right based her duty to her country. Furthermore we are able to see a similar kind of behaviour from Ismene in the play. In this case, Ismene decided to follow the decree of the king Creon, and not help her sister bury their brother. Looking at ethics in this way both Ismene and Isma’s actions are completely justifiable as they were doing what they thought was right based on a certain law or rule. However, if we are to look at ethics based more on the consequences of an action, it can be argued that Isma’s actions were not morally correct.
Teleology is a system of ethics in which actions are guided based on the consequences they result in. People who would follow this system have an end goal that they are trying to achieve (eg. happiness) and act based on what would lead them to this outcome. Using this system of ethics focused more on the outcome, it can be thought that Isma acted wrongly as she betrayed her family and resulted in her relationship with her siblings being ruined as Aneeka blames Isma for Parvaiz not being able to return back to the UK. Furthermore, ultimately as an end result, Parvaiz and Aneeka both die. From this perspective Isma should have put more importance on her personal life and family, and thought about what the consequences would be of informing the police about Parvaiz. However, there are many other different types of morals and systems of ethics which all might justify Isma’s behaviour or condemn it.
Overall, claims can be made either way for Isma choosing to be loyal to her country or her family, and ultimately there is no real way to choose which is the ‘right’ thing to do. Using one system of ethics her actions can be seen as morally right, however the same action can be seen as wrong from another perspective. This results in there never being an absolute ‘right’ or ‘correct’ decision for Isma to make in this situation and therefore, the fact that she decided to inform the police cannot definitively be categorised into just right or wrong.
