Antigone
This story told in this novel is an modern updating and refashioning of the story of Antigone as told in the tragic drama by ancient Greek dramatist Sophocles. While the broader overview of the plot ties the story to it classical inspiration, the most immediately obvious imagery for readers only somewhat familiar with Antigone is probably the names of the characters which have definitely identifiable connections: Eamonn Lone/Haemon, Isma/Ismene, Parvaiz/Polynices and Terry Lone/Tiresias. Of course, Aneeka/Antigone and Karamat Lone/King Creon are a little less obvious than the others.
Grief
One of the most intense and memorable illustrations of the use of imagery in the novel is in a paragraph that conceives of grief as a series of various metaphorical images. It is a remarkable achievement, inserting the word “grief” as 23 out of the 179 words the paragraph comprises. The profound emotional toll that grief takes on a person is another element tying the novel back to Antigone’s original story:
“Grief manifested itself in ways that felt like anything but grief; grief obliterated all feelings but grief; grief made a twin wear the same shirt for days on end to preserve the morning on which the dead were still living; grief made a twin peel stars off the ceiling and lie in bed with glowing points adhered to fingertips; grief was bad-tempered, grief was kind; grief saw nothing but itself, grief saw every speck of pain in the world; grief spread its wings large like an eagle, grief huddled small like a porcupine; grief needed company, grief craved solitude; grief wanted to remember, wanted to forget; grief raged, grief whimpered; grief made time compress and contract"
Karamat Lone
Karamat Lone is the novel’s counterpart to the antagonist of the play by Sophocles, King Creon. In this version, he has received a slight demotion: he is merely the Home Secretary of the U.K. Well, not exactly merely: in the U.S. he would be the Secretary of State, fourth in line of succession to the Presidency. And in this particular case, this particular Home Secretary seems to be as powerful and charismatic as the Prime Minister himself:
“Contempt, disdain, scorn: these emotions were stops along a closed loop that originated and terminated in a sense of superiority. In their preservation of the status quo they were of no use to Karamat Lone. A man needed fire in his veins to burn through the world, not ice to freeze everything in place.”
The Centerpiece
The centerpiece of the novel is viewed by Karamat on a television screen. Despite this modern disconnection from reality, it is the sequence that is most tangibly connected to the story of Antigone. Sophocles wrote a story about a headstrong women driven by grief who butts heads with a powerful king and that face-off is replicated here on a more democratic level that is no less intense for being so:
“For a few moments there was only a howling noise, the wind raging, and then a hand plucked away the white cloth and the howl was the girl, a dust mask on her face, her dark hair a cascade of mud, her fingers interlaced over the face of her brother. A howl deeper than a girl, a howl that came out of the earth and through her and into the office of the home secretary, who took a step back. As if that were the only thing the entire spectacle had been designed to achieve, the wind dropped...and the girl stopped her noise, unlaced her fingers. The cameras panned, then zoomed. In the whole apocalyptic mess of the park the only thing that remained unburied was the face of the dead boy.”
