WEEK 2

For Tuesday

1. Finish reading Antigone

2. McKee-1, pages 7-11 of the PDF

3. Discussion Post ~500 words due before Tuesday's class.

Reflections for this week:

Acts into STORY: As you finish reading the play, think about McKee’s concept of absolute, irreversible change. Look for this in Antigone. See if you can sketch out an idea of your own, like the story he builds about the JOB interview!

Character: Can you find McKee's marks of the Protagonist in one or more of the characters in the play?

**

For Thursday

1. Read Home Fire, p.p. 1-55 (The Isma section)

Here is the reading material for Wed:

Home Fire.pdf

2. McKee-2, PDF pages 1-6

McKee-2.pdf

Parvais

Give concrete examples of the way in which Shamsie reassembles chronological events in this section in order to manufacture the drama of the episode. Include remarks on why she reorders time the way she does. Include how she uses Parvais’s personal memory factors into the episode. Why doesn’t Shamsie tell the story straight? Include comments on the pacing, the speeding up or delaying of events, through memories or descriptions, leading up to the finale that give us a sense of the action of a “thriller.”

==

Aneeka

This section is structured almost like a book of poems. The language avoids conversational normality, for a kind of internal lyricism, woven with news, public comments, and social media posts. 

Make clear the drama here. What is the character striving for, or fighting against? How does the ordering of the sections build the drama for us? How are these small subsections structured to give readers the sense that we are rushing to an end we need to find out about? How is the pacing working to drive to the finale of the book?

201. Antigone plot begins. Compare this opening with the opening of Antigone.

==

Karamat

Karamat talks to himself in his thoughts a lot, and this inner narrative is broken by scenes with different interlocutors. In these scenes, what does each side want? How does the sequencing of them with K’s internal thinking and planning further the drama? What does this rhythm of the section reveal about K’s character?

Finally: Who is Terry Lone and does she have a correlative character from Antigone? Can you remember when she was introduced to us?

**

Here is an electronic version of the text

Home Fire.pdf