White Teeth Analysis

"Oh fuck me, another leaflet? You can't fucking move-pardon my French-but you can't move for leaflets in Norf London these days" (373). Leaflets, brochures, letters, and other forms of publication and circulation are recurrent motifs in White Teeth (much to the annoyance of people like Abdul-Mickey) and Zadie Smith explores the humorous and poignant results of her characters' struggles to communicate. Smith characters have causes, and throughout her narrative they fruitlessly and comically attempt to press their own beliefs on others, refute others' beliefs, and convert others to the correct way of thinking. Leaflets and other forms of publication are the tools they use to proliferate their ideologies and-as Ryan Topps declares to Marcus Chalfen,
"Myself and yourself are at war. There can only be one winner"-there is only room for one correct interpretation (421). Not surprisingly, these attempts to proselytize backfire and are ultimately unsuccessful. In Smith's world, ideology is the culprit responsible for the most divisive differences between her characters and their most unyielding Manichean prejudices. Smith is not implying that ideology is a negative thing, but rather, that the attempt to exhort one's individual beliefs on others is a waste of energy, because everyone has a different interpretation of truth that varies according to their own experiences, histories, and ideals.
In White Teeth, ideological circulation is literally circular, because the vast majority of people are too obdurate to even listen to others' views, much less alter their own belief systems. The inflexible and almost fanatic nature of belief, as well as the relentless need of different factions to publicize their opinions regardless of the result, reveals that something about ideology resists reality, that common sense does not carry over to the world of credo. Even letters sound like they are composed more for the addressor than to the addressee. Horst Ibelgaufts frequently sends letters to Archie Jones detailing mundane and random occurrences in his life (which Archie doubtlessly does not care to hear), from "I am building a crude velodrome" (13) to "I am taking up the harp" (14) to "each of my children has a vase of peonies on their windowsill" (163). Ibelgaufts also repeatedly offers Archie unasked-for advice and anecdotes from his own life that only he understands, and consequently, his letters sound as if written to a brick wall. Moreover, when Marcus and Magid write, it sounds as if they are addressing mirror images of themselves, vainly reflecting their shared ideas. Marcus: "You think like me. You're precise. I like that." Magid: "You put it so well and speak my thoughts better than I ever could." Clearly, if Marcus and Magid did not think so much alike, there could never be "such a successful merging of two people from ink and paper despite the distance between them" (304). Smith's characters have insatiable drives to communicate, but more often than not, communication fails because there is no mutual or reciprocal response. Communication is most successful, as in the case of Marcus and Magid, when it challenges nothing, when it merely confirms previously held believes.
Why, then, do people feel the need to publicize even when no one will listen? Smith writes, "[Samad] had instead the urge, the need, to speak to every man, and like the Ancient Mariner, explain constantly, constantly wanting to reassert something, anything. Wasn't that important" (49)? Perhaps, as Smith seems to suggest, people have a heightened sense of their own importance. Because Hortense believes her daughter Clara is "the Lord's child, Hortense's miracle baby" (28) she forces Clara to "help her with doorstepping, administration, writing speeches, and all the varied business of the church of Jehovah's Witnesses...This child's work was just beginning" (29). For Hortense, "those neighbors, those who failed to listen to your warnings...shall die that day that their bodies, if lined up side by side, will stretch three hundred times round the earth and on their charred remains shall the true Witnesses of the Lord walk to his side. -The Clarion Bell, issue 245" (28). None of Smith's characters have the slightest suspicion that they could possibly be wrong, and even in the face of contrary evidence, they still persist in their dogma. When the world does not end on January 1, 1914, 1925, or 1975, Hortense still has faith that the Lambeth branch of Jehovah's Witnesses will correctly identify the exact date of the Apocalypse. Even when Samad breaks Islamic tenet after tenet, he still holds on to the belief that, one day, he will be a good Muslim. The self-importance of Smith's characters is the fuel for the ideological fire, the impetus behind their circulation of belief.
While Smith's characters do not realize is that they preach like broken records, Smith is fully cognizant of the circuitous, ineffectual nature of gospel. "The other problem with Brother Ibrahim ad-Din Shukrallah, the biggest problem perhaps, was his great affection for tautology. Though he promised explanation, elucidation, and exposition, linguistically he put one in mind of a dog chasing its own tail" (388). Dogma adheres most strongly to those, like Ryan Topps, who "didn't move, not an inch. But then, that had always been his talent; he had mono-intelligence, an ability to hold on to a single idea with phenomenal tenacity, and he never found anything that suited it as well as the church of Jehovah's Witnesses" (421). In White Teeth, it appears that preaching and believing are inextricably related-as if the more one preaches, the stronger their beliefs become and the more they come to believe that their views are true. Bombarded by leaflets from all sides, Smith's characters need to publicize their own ideas so that their voices are not immersed, consumed, or erased. Publication-the act of putting an idea on paper-is an attempt at permanence, the small insurance that the idea will exist as long as publication is in circulation. History is not the truth, but rather the story that survives. "History was a different business...taught with one eye on narrative, the other on drama, no matter how unlikely or chronologically inaccurate" (211). By publicizing their beliefs, Smith's characters attempt to put their individual marks on the history of ideas.
Like Samad, who writes "IQBAL" in blood on a bench because, as he says, "I wanted to write my name in the world.
It mean I presumed" (418), Smith's characters all suffer anxiety over their own historical inconsequence. Upon finding his father's name, Millat sneers at his father's small contribution, thinking: "It just meant you're nothing...a man who had spent eighteen years in a strange land and made no more mark than this" (419). Samad believes wholeheartedly that his ancestor Mangal Pande is a hero, but Archie disagrees, arguing, "All right, then: Pande. What did he achieve? Nothing" (213)! Though every book save one describes Pande as a military traitor, Samad chooses to believe the one "bound in a tan leather and covered in light dust that denotes something incredibly precious" which claims the little known Mangal Pande "succeeded in laying the foundations of the Independence to be won in 1947"-in 1857 (215). People are arbitrary and believe the ideas they will, and when an idea somehow relates to their self-concept, like Magal Pande's heroism to Samad's personal history, it becomes even more entrenched. Joshua Chalfen becomes a militant animal rights activist out of resentment toward his father, not because he actually cares deeply about animals. Even as he rants to Irie about the injustice of the battery chicken's life, he admits that he is not yet a vegetarian ("I'm becoming a fucking vegetarian") and that he has not given up animal products ("I'm giving up
leather-wearing it-and all other animal by-products"). Smith's characters seem to form opinions more from of a sense of ownership or self-centeredness than out of any great allegiance to the world of ideas. Ideology can be interpreted as a form of egotism, because it is necessarily self-reflexive; it links and anchors the subjective and the personal to the greater universe, and the act of defining oneself according to a presumption of absolute universal truth seems, like Samad's supposition that Mangal Pande was Gandhi's mentor, incredibly audacious.
White Teeth does not comment on the truthfulness of ideology, on which beliefs are better than others, on who is right and who is wrong. Instead, Smith focuses on the ways that beliefs can become divisive and destructive when they are coercively applied to others. When Marcus publishes his article on FutureMouse, he receives hateful from "factions as disparate as the Conservative Ladies Association, the Anti-Vivisection lobby, the Nation of Islam, the rector of St-Agne's Church, Berkshire, and the editorial board of the far-left Schnews," (347) and he is thoroughly bewildered at the response his experiment has provoked when, according to him, mapping the life of a mouse will help scientists understand how people live and why they die. People accuse Marcus of playing God, and Marcus argues that scientific knowledge exists for its own sake, that FutureMouse could not lead to a form of eugenics unless employed that way. "Of course, he understood that the work he did involved some element of moral luck; so it is for all men of science. You work partly in the dark, uncertain of future ramifications, unsure what blackness your name might yet carry, what bodies will be laid at your door" (347). Marcus' publication is innocuous on its own, but applied to others or manipulated to apply to others (which Smith ostensibly hints is an inevitability), it can have devastating results.
It is ironic that one of the most insightful quotes in White Teeth comes straight from Joyce Chalfen, a character who is habitually oblivious to reality. In an article about flowers and gardening, she says, "If we wish to provide happy playgrounds for our children, and corners of contemplation for our husbands, we need to create gardens of diversity and interest. Mother Earth is great and plentiful, but even she requires the occasional helping hand" (258). Self-consciously and cheekily sentimental, Smith and Chalfen both acknowledge that the world is a garden comprised of many different types of plants, and in order to have a happy and peaceful world, we must learn to accept the diversity that surrounds us, which includes the different beliefs of others. We have no other choice. Zadie Smith quotes a famous song called "As Time Goes By," citing "You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss,/ A sigh is just a sigh;/ The fundamental things apply,/ As time goes by" (341). Smith suggests that some things, like ideology, never really change, that the "fundamental" beliefs of people are sometimes so deeply rooted that they cannot be altered. We can litter the world of leaflets and change nothing. At such a monumental impasse, our only solution is acceptance.

Essay 2
By comparing White Teeth with at least one other appropriate text, explore the presentation of family and family relationships in postcolonial literature.
The ‘metanarrative’ of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth differs from the direct linear narrative of other postcolonial texts such as Things Fall Apart and Disgrace. The metanarrative of White Teeth presents the strains and fragmentation of families in the postcolonial setting with a gently humorous, unserious and possibly optimistic approach whereas these other texts are more ambiguous yet emotive. The serendipitous events of White Teeth can at times become unrealistic, and Smith has been accused of neglecting characterisation for plot; however, in her three central families (the Joneses, the Iqbals and the Chalfens) she develops a powerful expression of the postcolonial struggles for her characters.
Family and history are two central relationships in the postcolonial genre. Things Fall Apart begins with an explanation of Okwonkwo’s history as the greatest wrestler in Umuofia and his attempts to move away from the reputation of his father as an unserious and unsuccessful Ibo man. Achebe develops the importance of family history and relationships throughout the novel and uses this to lament the destruction of the Ibo tradition with the arrival of the colonisers. The positive portrayal of Uchendu, a relatively distant relation for the extent of support he provides to Okwonkwo during his seven-year exile, is a central example of the family values celebrated in the traditional postcolonial novel from the perspective of the ‘colonised’. While the history of Okwonkwo’s father is not central to the narrative (beyond explaining some of the qualities possessed by Okwonkwo), Achebe uses the device to develop the understanding of the values of the Ibo and advance the more conventional postcolonial theme of the destruction of the livelihood of the ‘colonised’ by the arrival of the ‘colonisers’.
White Teeth presents a less serious approach to family history as it is an inconvenience more than the burden it became for Okwonkwo. The meeting of Magid and Millat in a neutral room (a concept that in itself allows the author to develop several ideas of the hybridity of multicultural Britain in trying to find a place with no ‘history’), is presented with an unserious humour – “they take what was blank and smear it with the stinking shit of the past like excitable children”. The profanity and images of “smear” and “excitable children” creates an unserious undertone to the issue of history and the conflicts of the past. The innocence of “excitable children” prevents family histories being considered malicious burdens but merely an element of the dislocated existence of the immigrant in the postcolonial society.
The presentation of the family has a different effect in White Teeth to Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as the novel moves into the ‘post-post-colonial’ genre. The ‘post-post-colonial’ perspective and the conflicts of the “second generation” as recognised by Neena, “niece of Shame.” In her words “What are you afraid of, Alsi? He is second-generation,” she emphasises a different conflict in the family than the traditional postcolonial texts. Where Achebe uses the family as a central feature of the rich culture of the ‘colonised’ after a number of generations, Smith shows the conflicts of identity created by the family. Because of the different situations of the two novels in terms of the ‘coloniser-colonised’ dynamic, the presentations of the issues are inevitably different. However, the focus on the postcolonial theme is not specifically on the values of the family but on the consequences of the conflicting values between the family and the individual. This is shown as Achebe presents sometimes uncomfortable details of the Ibo family traditions, such as having more than one wife and Okwonkwo’s violence towards them, despite his generally positive perspective of the Ibo values. Similarly, Smith does not present a judgement of the families in her novel but shows the personal conflicts, particularly of her younger characters and Samad, as dislocated in the postcolonial society.
In Disgrace, Coetzee presents abrasive attitudes by contrasting Lucy’s acquiescence to rape (accepting that “maybe this is the price you have to pay”) and David’s refusal to accept the situation (with his belief that their life in the Eastern Cape is “like a dog”). Issues of politics and morality underpin the conflict between David and Lucy, who are “so far, so bitterly apart,” whereas Smith does not address these themes. Instead, she focuses on the issues of identity and overcoming the dislocation and ‘double-consciousness’ of the second-generation immigrant.
White Teeth presents the strains and fragmentation of families in the postcolonial setting through the contradiction of expectations and actions between generations. The Jones family has the least conflict; the connotations of the name itself as the stereotypical ‘average’ British family emphasises this expectation. The discord between Clara and Hortense is a major conflict in the family and as Clara successfully overcomes the burden of expectation of her mother, she may be interpreted as a successful embodiment of the transition from overbearing family expectations (due to her strict Jehovah’s Witness upbringing) to a sense of independence in her marriage to Archie. However, some critics have regarded Clara as a major flaw in the novel, saying Smith “privileges plot over characterisation”. Although Clara is not developed in detail and questions remain about the circumstances and satisfaction in her marriage, the conclusion – in which Irie marries Marcus because “you can only avoid you fate for so long” – may reflect a sense of optimism in the novel and not underdevelopment. Smith may be suggesting that the quarrels of family in the postcolonial confusion are not as significant as they may appear and that it may be more effective to accept the challenges with regret as shown by Clara because “they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.”
The nature of the Chalfen family could reflect an important postcolonial theme. The detailed family tree, “an elaborate illustrated oak that stretched back to the 1600s” develops the contrasts of different families and histories in the postcolonial with the uncertain history of the Jones family. Although the Chalfens become figures of amusement in the novel, the way in which they “referred to themselves as nouns, verbs and occasionally adjectives” has a similar quality to the insular family and tribal values of the Ibo. The attention to family relationships from both examples emphasises the overbearing elements of cultural and social expectation of families.
The Chalfens become ironic as their seeming purity is undermined by the explanation that they are “third generation [immigrants], by way of Germany and Poland, née Chalfenovsky”. Smith emphasises the eclecticism of most families in the postcolonial society through Alsana’s criticism that “you go back and back and it’s still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person […] Do you think anybody is English? Really English? It’s a fairytale.” The attempt of the Chalfens to claim “purity” and be aware of their history is ironic because their family seems most strange despite being the most ‘typical’ in terms of lineage. Therefore, the postcolonial view to the family in White Teeth is one that values variation and sees it as inescapable. The diversity of the family and the emphasis that there is no “purity” may be a more positive conclusion on the family than the distance that emerges between David and Lucy in Disgrace or the complete rejection of Nwoye by Okwonkwo in Things Fall Apart.
The aspiration of Irie to be like the Chalfens (“she wanted their Englishness. Their Chalfishness. The purity of it”) is not only ironic but the essence of the struggle in the postcolonial theme to be “normal”. In Things Fall Apart, Nwoye’s conversion for the elements of Christianity that question the doubts of his native culture about the murdering of new-born twins and Ikemefuna’s death shows a similar conflict in determining a personal identity. The nature of the conflict is contextually different in the two novels because of the change in the postcolonial to the ‘post-post-colonial’ setting. Nwoye has a different challenge with his family in moving away from being ‘normal’ to values he finds more attractive. However, Irie struggles to resolve her family history as she moves from a temporary desire to travel to Jamaica with Hortense to wanting the ‘normal’ life of “how some families are all the time”. In both situations, the relationship strains are similar, the conflict of generations in families as social values change become more complicated with the addition of differences in cultural values.
Things Fall Apart begins by addressing the fundamental aspect of the conflict of generations in the family as Okwonkwo endeavours to move away from the reputation of his father. This struggle in itself is significant but occurs in a more complicated form as Nwoye decides to convert to Christianity which not only is a denunciation of a family history but of the basis of past values. However, Achebe’s primary intention is unlikely to be an examination of the consequences of the family from the arrival of the colonisers. Things Fall Apart considers the postcolonial from the consequences of an entire society and the Ibo people (as represented by Okwonkwo and his personal struggle throughout the novel) which is in contrast to the family concerns that are so central to White Teeth.
The central family conflict in White Teeth is based on the Iqbals and the difficulties of Samad in adjusting to British society as he laments, “You begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems like some long, dirty lie”. The decision to separate Magid and Millat emphasises the strains of the postcolonial setting on Samad and the ironies of the hybrid society as Magid returns as “more English than the English”. It is the affair with Poppy Burt-Jones and his recognition that he must make “a choice of morality” that leads him to his decision to send Magid to Bangladesh. The contrasts between Samad’s expectations of his children and his own actions are fundamental to the presentation of the family as dysfunctional and contradictory in postcolonial literature. The dislocation of Samad and his double-consciousness as he knowingly (such as his self-assurance “to the pure all things are pure”) and unknowingly (such as his uses of phrases such as “sometimes I don’t know why I bother” which has distinctly ‘English’ connotations) contradicts himself is the device that creates much of the drama and humour in the novel.
The return of Magid as “more English than the English”, despite the attempts to give him traditional values with a Bangladeshi education, and the “trouble with Millat” throughout the novel extends the tension between family desire and the hybridity of the postcolonial context. Millat embodies the same flaws as his father as he struggles to define a sense of identity and is unable to relinquish his sexual desires while seeking the inclusive reassurance of KEVIN. However, the tension in the novel is largely created as Samad attempts to mould Magid and Millat in to “good Muslim boys”.
The family is shown to be dysfunctional in White Teeth and the poignant criticism of Millat that Samad is a “hypocrite” is more moving than the generally humorous approach throughout the novel. Although the novel contains poignant reflections from Samad of his isolation and the situation of his children, there is little dialogue from either Magid or Millat. The lack of voice to these characters and the generally humorous tone which is often created by the absurdity of chance events such as the breaking of both twins’ noses may reflect the unserious and optimistic attitude of Smith to the strains of the postcolonial family.
The conflicts endured by Samad and his conflicting values such as his willingness to drink alcohol but refusal to eat pork reflect the confusion of values that emanate from the immigrant family in the postcolonial setting. The description of Millat as “schizophrenic, one foot in Bengal and one in Willesden” emphasise the confusion and division created by the family. Although “in his mind he was as much there as he was here” the transformations and connotations of his “schizophrenic” character suggest an instability and uncertainty of his identity.
A significant feature of the role of the family in the conflicts endured by the main protagonists is that Smith does not explicitly ‘blame’ the families for the contradictory characters of their children. Millat does not appear to be the victim of the ‘foreign’ values of his parents. Even actions such the burning of all his possessions because of his involvement in a protest in Bradford where, presumably, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses were publicly burned do not suggest a cultural dislocation in the family. (Some critics may use an example of where he claims to Joyce Chalfen that Samad had “kicked [him] out” to show the consequences of cultural differences on the family, although this statement appears to be part of the humour of his manipulation of Joyce for sympathy and). However, this presentation of discipline and the general treatment of Millat is not based on the cultural expectations of the family as might be suggested by the postcolonial genre but a disciplinary consequence of his actions, such as alcohol abuse, drug abuse and sexual promiscuity, which would be regarded as fair by most Eurocentric or other readings.
The pragmatism of Lucy in Disgrace to accept the injustice of the Eastern Cape for her survival and the devastation of Okwonkwo at his perceived dishonour caused by Nwoye’s conversion have distinct links to the general presentation of the family in the postcolonial.
These three texts embody the conflict of new generations with older generations as social and cultural values shift. Disgrace and Things Fall Apart are more austere presentations of the postcolonial genre and the conflicts they explore are not definitively concluded but are left ambiguous. Things Fall Apart summarises the conclusion of the postcolonial struggle in general and the cause of conflict within the postcolonial family, “what is good among one people is an abomination among others”. The difficulty of younger generations in overcoming these conflicting influences on their identity and character is a serious concern in both. The suicide of Okwonkwo is relatively unexpected and extremely ambiguous; Achebe leaves the reader to assess the impact of the colonisers on the Ibo. Similarly, David’s character disintegrates and his actions are often difficult to
interpretation.
In White Teeth, the family is a cause of frustration and confusion for the younger generations and they endure the difficulties of double-consciousness and dislocation in their attempt to determine their characters. In addition to the postcolonial conflicts of cultural identity, Smith includes adolescence and a series of unexpected, sometimes absurd, coincidences which gives the novel a humorous perspective. The optimism of Smith is epitomised in her development of the theme of chance and the attitudes of Archie, the least complicated character who allows his future to be determined by tossing a coin. Irie’s outburst before the denouement of the novel is the most coherent presentation of the family. Her plea for “quiet” and for “space” and wish for a family in which “every single fucking day is not this huge battle between who they are and who they should be, what they are and what they will be” reflects the strains of the family in the postcolonial.
The innocent detail of the nine-year-old Magid telling his friends that his name was “Mark Smith” concludes the position of the family in postcolonial literature. It can be an awkward burden, a cause of difference and a lifestyle that is different to those of friends and peers but it is not detested and is not usually a malicious force. Despite the struggles with family, Millat still refuses to hear the criticism of his mother by Joyce and Irie answers the seemingly ridiculous musings of Archie about the reasons that new bus-tickets have so much “information” on them which shows the underlying affection in their relationships. The haphazard, almost ridiculous, connections between the narrative strands of the lives of the three central families, their eclectic qualities and the juxtaposition of their mutual absurdity is the essence of the novel. While it creates the conflicts for the individuals of the story, they also combine to show the universality of dislocation and confusion in the modern multicultural society which is often the conclusion of the post-post-colonial genre as poets such as Imtiaz Dharker invites in ‘Minority’ to see the confused and alien identities of others and “recognise it as your own.”

Essay 3 Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth are texts primarily concerned with the process and results of colonization. Both follow the progression of the post-colonized generations, and both depict the struggle of the marginalized culture to define itself under the weight and scrutiny of the dominant culture, yet White Teeth follows the colonization to its historical conclusion: immigration. We see a cultural backlash of destabilized colonized nations following the colonist home. So what is the effect of these processes on the colonized and the immigrant? Are they one and the same? And what is the natural conclusion of these forms of cultural tension? The outcome is the same in both texts, though the processes are approached at different points in their development: a cultural identity cannot survive whole in a constant state of duality. Something must be resolved in order for a generation to emerge which can exist contained, unambiguous, and self defined. White Teeth shows us the long, winding list of events that result in the resolution of this generation, which it treats as a hopeful development, while The Autobiography of My Mother takes on a far more pessimistic view, where the only peace to be had is through cultural loss. The immigrant, as described by Smith, has a future, while Kincaid’s colonized do not.
Popular discourses of immigration are infused with ideas of hope: the land of opportunity, hope for our children, a tolerant safe haven, and so on, while discourses of colonization generally consist of mourning for an ineffable loss and domination by a relentless ruling culture. Both authors seem to adhere to these influences, and so the creation of the “uprooted” generation, portrayed in both texts, are each imbued with the respective attitudes. The uprooted colonized subject, as embodied by Xuela herself in Autobiography, is without future as well as past, while the, while the uprooted immigrant, symbolized by Irie’s nameless daughter in White Teeth, has emerged from the shackles of the past, which is what provides her with her future. Xuela’s disenfranchisement is obvious; it is the very basis of her character. Her mother died at the moment of her birth, as she so often invokes, and in that act she is defined of a child of death, a product of a defeated and overwhelmed culture with no roots. She is at first overwhelmed by this loss; her reoccurring dreams of a faceless mother and frequent letters to her father show Xuela’s desire to find her roots.
She does not shake herself of this belief until her abortion, when her decision not to procreate becomes her decision to withdraw from her last claim on her culture – her heredity. “I had never had a mother, I had just recently refused to become one, and I knew that this refusal would be complete.” (97) Her refusal to give birth and thereby recreate herself in successive generations is a refusal to take part in the progression of a dead culture. She has separated herself from any place in the past or future of the land; in essence, she has resigned herself to her own death as an agent of a missing culture. She becomes her own culture, rooting her sense of self and love in what is inalienable from her: her body, her smells, and her corporeality. Her love affair with Roland also informs this. Xuela loves Roland because he represents herself – the only person she truly loves because she’s the only person that cannot be taken from her or redefined. Like herself, he is a creature without a root – not through the loss of a mother but through the lack of a homeland. “He was not a hero, he did not even have a country; he was from an island that was between a sea and an ocean, and a small island is not a country. And he did not have a history; he was a small event in somebody else’s history, but he was a man… He was unpolished, but he carried himself as if he were precious.”(167) Like Xuela, Roland is without roots, but his reaction to this homelessness is to become a colonist himself, as we see through his many extramarital conquests. Xuela refuses to be colonized and has no interest in doing the colonization, because her only love and satisfaction comes from the possession of herself; she is an allegorical island in and of herself. Her love affair with Roland can therefore not sustain itself, for one cannot love without colonizing, while the other cannot be colonized.
The plot of White Teeth, in contrast, begins far earlier in the process of this creation of this isolated generation; it tracks the roots of cultural identity back several generations, as far back as World War Two and earlier, with the birth of Irie’s daughter, the cultural free agent, not occurring until the very end. Her mother a mix of Caucasian and black, her father an unknown twin out of a family torn apart by differing cultural impulses, Irie’s daughter is the product of much cultural tension and strife, and yet she has emerged, freed from it. Her father is equally likely to be Magid as it is to be Millat, the two Bengali twins, and no test of blood or behavior could ever prove which it is. She is, in essence, both the child of anglicized Magid and of militant muslim Millat, and yet the daughter of neither. “At first this fact seemed ineffably sad to Irie: instinctively she sentimentalized the biological facts, adding her own invalid syllogism: if it was not somebody’s child, did it not follow that it was nobody’s child?… A perfectly plotted thing with no real coordinates. A map to an imaginary fatherland. But then, after weeping and pacing and rolling it over and over in her mind, she thought, whatever, you know? Whatever. It was always going to turn out like this.” (426) Irie’s release of responsibility (Whatever) mirrors Xuela’s release in her refusal to bear children. It is the decision to relinquish claims on the bloodline of her culture, to become a free agent, the way Xuela is, and the way Irie’s daughter will be. She has no father, no ties of duty to either Bengal or England. Yet Irie’s syllogism, as the narrative states, is invalid. She is alive, as are Magid and Millat, and their daughter is the child of both and neither fathers. She is free to forge her own identity, taking what elements she likes from the diverse mix that is her background, released from the parental expectations of either.
In White Teeth, it is not the cultural influence of the dominant culture, nor the stubborn persistence of the subjugated culture that causes conflict in the chraracters, it is the inflexibility of both, and the pressure of the previous generation on the current generation to remain the same. This pressure in the novel results in dysfunction, as represented in Irie’s angry rant on the bus. “What a peaceful existence. What a joy their lives must be. They open a door and all they’ve got behind it is a bathroom or a living room. Just neutral spaces. And not this endless maze of present rooms and past rooms and the things said in them years ago and everybody’s old historical shit all over the place.” (426) Irie’s daughter is progress, because in her divorce from the cultural expectations of her parents’ generation, she is free to forge her own identity, not in lovelessness and isolation as Xuela does, but in relation to a society she may influence and help to create.
To speak of Xuela’s people’s disenfranchisment is not to dismiss them as entirely passive – like Samad in White Teeth, the colonized nation is conflicted between two cultural influences, and this conflict manifests itself in disfunction. Like Irie, like Magid, like Millat, these people are caught at the halfway point, bowing to foreign laws, and speaking French Patois, an “illegitimate” mix of European and African languages. Colonization being a process of domination, the cultural conflict of the colonized is tightly connected to discourses of power. Xuela’s father is one half African, one half Scottish, and is the most colonizing presence in the novel. It is his European descent that takes precedence over his African, because to be African is to be “other”, to be a lack, wheras to be English is to be a conqueror, an agent of a powerful, ruling class. Yet for all his power, Xuela’s father is as damaged as she is, as incapable of love. He prizes himself highest of all things, as she does, and this is the source of both of their incapability to truly love anything besides themselves, but his self love is deeply different from hers. He is dependent on the power structures of the colonizing nation to give him dominion over himself, whereas Xuela has divorced herself from all those structures in order to love herself on her most basic, corporeal level. No matter how Xuela’s father may try to distinguish himself from the lowly Africans of his dominion, he is never fully European, and never fully in control of himself because his entire sense of self comes from a power structure that was not made for him. When Xuela’s father dies, and all the power of his origin is released from Xuela, she has a reaction not unlike that of Irie’s daughter, with her ‘severed puppet strings’. “…And when finally I was a true orphan, my father died not knowing me… my entire life so far, all seventy years of it, I had dreaded the moment when I would be alone; the two people I had come from, the two people who had made me, dead; but then at last a great peace came over me, a quietness that was not silence and not acceptance, just a feeling of peace, of resolve.” (223) As great a loss of the past as both of her parents’ deaths may be, they result in a freedom not unlike that of the paternally unbound child of White Teeth; however, the calm of Autobiography of my Mother is not a positive calm, the calm of the resolution of tensions and strife, it is the calm of the dying who has given up and gone gentle into that good night. It is a generation who has lost its roots and accepted their loss. Such a generation, being metaphorically dead, cannot give life, cannot pass their dead legacy on to the next generation, and Xuela, as an agent of that culture, cannot bear children.
The immigrant in White Teeth, however, is a colonizer as well as a colonized subject, the power he wields being not personal but collective. No one culture, upon entering England, actively attempts to crush Western culture; instead, a general cultural bleed occurs, until the original definition of “Englishness” has shifted. The immigrant is surrounded at all times by his potential colonizer and may hold far tighter to his cultural traditions in the face of a threatening, dominant culture, in the end he is still, to some degree, tempted and changed to fit the land he lives in. Samad is the embodiment of this conflict; his faith in Islam and in his culture as “pure” is idealized to the point of impracticableness, and his yielding to English temptations (alcohol, gambling, and his affair with English woman Poppy Burt Jones) shows that he is divided at his core (justified to himself by his motto, Can’t say fairer than that!). A man so divided can only bear divided sons, one western at heart and the other eastern. Yet in their own ways, Magid and Millat are colonizers – Millat’s conquests after women, and Magid’s work on genetic modification each show an effort to control their world. The book goes on to mention dozens upon dozens of creeds and nationalities – from Sudanese to Greek to Irish – tucked neatly into the narrative to remind the reader of the prevalence of multiculturalism in England, and support this idea that there is no true “English” anymore – England has been colonized by those who were once the colonial subjects.
It is perhaps notable, therefore, that in White Teeth, Archie, the most English of the English in the novel, is the only character without a strong sense of his history and past generations. “We’re the chaff, boy, we’re the chaff,” Archie’s father once told him. “I’m a Jones, you see. ‘Slike a ‘Smith.’ We’re nobody.”(84) Later in the novel, when Irie attempts to study her family’s history, she finds next to nothing on her father’s side. Archie’s brand of “Englishness”, the fish and chips, bangers and mash, colonial homestead that he represents in his earthy way, is in fact, a myth. A fairy tale. White teeth without roots. Archie marries a Jamaican, has a genetically mixed daughter, and is comrades with a Bengali, identifying more with colonized cultures than with that of the empire itself. The colonized have followed him home, and the proverbial “melting pot” has diluted the Anglo-Saxon history of the country, leaving behind only the myth of the English. This state is not unique to the United Kingdom, as on page 196 when Alsana discovers in the reader’s digest that Bengal is made up of “Indo-Aryans”. “Oi, Mister! Indo-Aryans… it looks like I am a bit Western after all! It just goes to show… you go back and back and back and it’s still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than it is to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe. You think anyone is English? Really English? It’s a fairy tale!”
Xuela exists in a world where she is defined by what she is not: part European, but not the conqueror, part African but not colonized. She is not cultured, not important, not correct in the context of any social system besides that of herself and her body, because the social system to which she might have belonged has been destroyed. To Kincaid, to be without root is to be lost from the natural progression of your culture, to be both without mother or offspring, to be marooned from one’s place in history.
Something irreplaceable is lost in the lives of the colonized. The loss of history, to Smith, is the loss of baggage, of weight, of chains. History and culture changes so constantly as to be impossible to pin down or determine, and to attempt to do so is to try to hold a handful of sand, creating only resentment in one’s children and discontent in one’s self. Irie’s daughter’s loss of the expectations of either of her cultures has made her free of these pressures. “Irie’s fatherless little girl writes letters to Bad Uncle Millat and Good Uncle Magid, and feels free as Pinnochio, a puppet clipped of paternal strings.” (448) To Kincaid, the robbing of the heritage of the colonized robs them of their future as well, while the cultural assimilation of the immigrant (also a form of loss of heritage) results in the formation of a new culture, neither eastern nor western but instead free from the expectations of the ruling generations of both. Such is the dichotomy implicit in the outcomes of both texts: Xuela’s death weighed against Irie’s child’s birth.

Essay 4
White Teeth, by Zadie Smith, provides complex characters whose psychology provides insight into the meaning of the novel. Samad Miah Iqbal is one character whose psychosis corresponds with the main theme. He chose to immigrate to England in order to provide a better foundation for his family, but is constantly faced with problems of integration. Samad is trying to stay rooted in Islamic religion while the country is swarming with different cultures. However, the Iqbals are unable to maintain their values in a country founded by colonialism and fused together with biracial families and friendships. This imbalance of ethnic identity leads Samad and his family to ultimately end up alienated and worse off than they started.
Samad is a character that is intent on maintaining his Islamic identity. His reasons for immigration are based on personal and historical ties to England. Samad came to Britain after fighting in World War II, and he feels a sense of moral responsibility due to his great grandfather’s role in the Indian Rebellion. Samad feels obligated to build a reputation of his own. On his way to earning the respect he deserves, he is accidentally shot in the hand by a comrade. This accident causes him to be deemed unworthy as a pilot, and he is then stationed in the “Buggered Battalion.” This is the root of Samad’s weakened identity. Samad runs off in front of the Russian Army high on morphine, waving his gun around, and threatens to commit suicide. Archie catches up to a distraught and angry Samad who says, “I’m a cripple, Jones. And my faith is crippled…I’m fit for nothing now, not even Allah, who is all powerful in his mercy. What am I going to do, after this war is over”(95). It is evident that Samad needs the model of his great grandfather to establish an identity for himself. A sense of accomplishment is important for Samad to become a man, and to ultimately obtain a core identity. Samad never got this chance. It was stolen from him by an accident. Though the Islamic faith is one based on fate, Samad doesn’t see the connection.
Samad doesn’t know who he is from inception. Now in England after the war, working from six in the evening until three in the morning, he feels less self worth. He gets lousy tips and is stuck in an unchallenging environment. Samad wishes he could wear a sign on his neck stating, “I AM NOT A WAITER. I HAVE BEEN A SCIENTIST, A SOLDIER, A STUDENT…I AM A MUSLIM BUT ALLAH HAS FOR-SAKEN ME OR I HAVE FORSAKEN ALLAH, I’M NOT SURE”(49). Samad, unsure about his relationship with Allah, is unable to feel a pure connection to his religion. Therefore, he is unable to provide his family with an authentic example of how to live an “Islamic life.” Samad only knows what is constant in his life. That he has a wife, two kids, and his best friend is Archibald Jones. Though he admits he is acquainted with Archie’s wife Clara, he claims that his Jamaican wife “is not that kind of black”(50). Samad cannot let down his walls, that his religion has instituted, and accept that he is a friend to someone who is black.
Alsana and Samad are constantly arguing over the move to Britain and the upbringing of their children. She is upset that her children will grow up around Archie and Clara’s daughter Irie, “half blacky-white” (51). Samad thinks that Alsana has been corrupted by British ideals and vice versa. Alsana argues with Samad over the point of moving and complains she has no food for her family. Samad, on the other hand, argues that there is meat in the freezer and if it were his mother in the kitchen she would, “ work through the night preparing meat for her family…His mother did not spend the household money, as Alsana did, on prepared meals, yogurts and canned spaghetti”(190). It is impossible for them to balance their traditional Islamic ways and adapt to some British conventions. Samad believes that there is a right way to live life, and they should remain true to “who they were” when living in Bangladesh. Alsana says, “I am not like Samad Iqbal. I restrain myself. I live. I let live” (195). Apparently Samad and Alsana aren’t on the same page as far as keeping traditions and home economics. It is hopeless for them to raise their children without the influence of Britain on their core identities. Though Samad fought in a British war, cheats on his wife, and makes a habit of drinking in an Irish bar, he blames his family for breaking the mold of living a pure Islamic lifestyle.
A storm hits the Iqbal house and Alsana sits on the sofa determined to wait it out. She is adamant about listening to Mr. Fish and says, “If that Mr. Fish says it’s OK, it’s damn well OK. He’s BBC, for God’s sake!” (183). This attitude towards the storm is more closely connected to Muslim belief than Samad recognizes. In the Islamic religion fate is in the hands of Allah, and it cannot be controlled or contained by man. As they pack up the car for the Jones’, Samad is in disbelief when he sees the items they choose to bring with them as “essential, life or death things” (184). Milliat chooses albums and posters of western culture; Alsana brings food, her sewing machine, and cigarettes. Samad’s relationship with God and his background as a soldier are the focus of his decisions. Angry with his family he says, “No penknife, no edibles, no light sources. Bloody great… Nobody even thinks to pick up the Qur’an. Key item in emergency situation: spiritual support” (185). Samad is obsessed with his religion and the purity it calls for. Samad wanting to adhere to his religion is in no way a bad thing, but in the context of the novel, his attitude is a problem. He expects that his wife and two sons live an Islamic lifestyle but he does not commit or deliver any of his time to make this happen.
Samad’s one attempt to enforce cultural purity is when he sends his favorite son, Magid, back to Bangladesh. Ironically, he comes back several years later classically British and training to become a lawyer. His other son, Milliat, is alienated by his peers and turns to violence, drugs, and pop culture to find belonging. He joins a crew of fellow ethnic boys who also feel left out: “People had fucked with Dipesh and Hifan when they wore traditional dress in the playground. People had even fucked with Milliat, with his tight jeans and his white rock. But no one fucked with any of them anymore because they looked like trouble” (192-3). Milliat becomes the so-called leader of his crew and finally feels a sense of pride and belonging. However, Alsana’s cousin doesn’t believe this to be true. She says, “He doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. Just like his father. He doesn’t know who he is” (237).
Though the focus of the novel is on the isolation and indifference of Samad’s family, they aren’t the only ones who are affected by the multiculturalism of Britain. Many native British, immigrants on the “Empire Windrush,” and other surges of immigrants feel discriminated. Archie, Clara, and their daughter Irie feel isolated as well. Archie is not British enough, Clara is too black, Irie, too thick. As Alsana argues with Samad on what it means to be Bengali, she sums up the theme of the novel. Neither can verbalize a definition of Bengali, so Alsana looks it up in the encyclopedia. The definition explains that Bengali is simply a group of mixed ethnic minorities. She tells Samad, “It just goes to show, you go back and back and back and it’s still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith on the globe. Do you think anybody is English? Really English? It’s a fairy tale!” (196).
Whether Bengali, British, or American, people are constantly struggling with their own identities. What we believe “to be” one day can be flipped upside down after a single decision or mistake. Hopefully there is a core within us that we can hold onto, but other elements of us can change readily. The more rigid a person, the more difficult it is for him to adapt – something Samad would have done well to understand.

Essay six
The search for identity in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is one of the threads that Smith continually weaves throughout her novel. At one point or another, each character deals with the inevitable question of “Who am I?” From Irie’s search for an identity through her family history to Samad’s futile resistance to all things British, it becomes clear that the multiculturalism of modern London is making it increasingly difficult to align one’s self with a singular culture or background. Through the designation of names, nicknames, and other various epithets, Smith allows her characters to explore, choose, or deny their cultural identities in earnest. For somebody like Samad, these “nicknames” are considered slurs because they essentially insult the importance of his cultural background. But for his son, Magid, his attempts at Anglicizing his given birth name are simply attempts to adapt and blend into the multicultural British scene. Such differences, due to the “intergenerational adaptation” that Kris Knauer examined in his essay, are examples of why several characters respond in various ways to their names and nicknames. From “Mark Smith” to KEVIN, names in White Teeth serve to illustrate the difficulty of defining the multicultural British identity.
In White Teeth, the characters’ names are constantly altered. The significance of these name changes reflects the fluidity of cultural identities, and how different generations consider the idea of multiculturalism. For the older generation, nicknames and various monikers are perceived as a threat to take away the culture they had brought with them from their homelands. According to Knauer, Smith demonstrates how difficult it was for older generations to accept anything other than their fundamental views of how race and culture are to be socially constructed (177-178). No more is this apparent than in Samad Miah Iqbal. Samad comes from an era in which Bangladesh is still colonially subjected to the British crown; hence, he becomes subjected to the racial and cultural ignorance of his fellow British comrades. In the waning days of World War II, the other men in Samad and Archibald Jones’s tank give Samad the crude nickname of “Sultan.” This nickname is meant to put Samad in his place among the crew, and serves as a constant reminder that he is still essentially an “other” in the British army. “He’ll shut it if he knows what’s good for him, the Indian Sultan bastard,” Roy Mackintosh says to Captain Dickinson-Smith, speaking about Samad as if he were an inherently different species and dumping him into a general ethnic category (Smith 73). Samad takes this incorrect use of culture and throws it back at them, giving them a derogatory nickname of their own. He responds, “To call me Sultan is about as accurate, in terms of the mileage, you understand, as if I referred to you as a Jerry-Hun fat bastard” (73). In such context, Samad’s interactions with these white British men are setting the stage for how he will handle the concepts of multiculturalism and assimilation when he later immigrates to London.
Already having been belittled for being from a different culture, Samad also finds it insulting when Archie tries to show solidarity and friendship by calling him the more British moniker, Sam. By trying to use a friendlier nickname for Samad, Archie wants Samad to know that although he is from a different cultural background, it is still possible for them to be friends under the umbrella of British culture. But Samad has already had enough. “Don’t call me Sam… I’m not one of your English matey-boys. My name is Samad Miah Iqbal. Not Sam. Not Sammy. And not – God forbid – Samuel. It is Samad,” he growls (94). Samad feels that he cannot be one of Archie’s “English matey-boys” because he is so culturally and racially different from their “Englishness,” a belief that has been ingrained in him because of his earlier nickname, “Sultan.” Overall, Samad cannot fathom a possibility where Bangladeshi and British identities can come together harmoniously. The nicknames he has had to deal with during his time in the British army give him ample reasons for resisting the idea of multiculturalism. According to Nick Bentley’s essay, “Re-writing Englishness,” new ways of thinking about ethnicity are made more difficult by the fact that “old ideas about race and culture are difficult to shift” (499).
In contrast, the younger generation in White Teeth seems to have a more eager grasp of becoming British. Whereas their parents “know more about constructs such as ‘otherness’ and ‘difference,’” (Knauer 180) Archie and Samad’s children are more familiar with concepts such as hybridity and multiculturalism. Knauer explains that Glenard Oak, the secondary school in Willesden Green, “is a school in which the word ‘difference’ is not a demonized mumbo jumbo that we somehow have to incorporate… to show how liberal and progressive we are, but it is a part of lived experience of the young crowds” (177). For example, such sentiments arise when Samad’s own son, Magid, embarks on a journey to Anglicize himself, starting with his unfamiliar, un-British birth name.
A few months earlier, on Magid’s ninth birthday, a group of very nice-looking white boys with meticulous manners had turned up on the doorstep and asked for Mark Smith.
“Mark? No Mark here,” Alsana had said, bending down to their level with a genial smile. “Only the family Iqbal in here. You have the wrong house.”
But before she had finished the sentence, Magid had dashed to the door, ushering his mother out of view.
“Hi, guys.”
“Hi, Mark.”
“Off to the chess club, Mum.”
“Yes, M-M-Mark,” said Alsana, close to tears at this final snub, the replacement of ‘Mum’ for ‘Amma.’ “Do not be late now.” (Smith 126)
As Magid becomes more involved with his British school and white British friends, he feels that in order to fit in properly, he has to publicly shed his given name. At home, Magid still understands and participates in his Bangladeshi background, since his parents were clearly unaware of the British persona that Magid uses to mask himself while at school. It might be that Magid does not want to completely reject his cultural identity, however; it is just that he is searching for another part of it – the British part. Samad himself fails to understand that Magid comes from two worlds, having been born in London to immigrant parents, and therefore cannot be expected to only bind to the Bengali Muslim world that dominates their household. “I told you, Magid, I told you the condition upon which you would be allowed. You come with me on hajj. If I am to touch that black stone before I die I will do it with my eldest son by my side,” Samad fiercely declares to his son in an attempt to show Magid what particular culture he must adhere to (127). It is Samad’s own unwillingness to let British culture seep into their Willesden home that leads to Magid searching for the British part of his cultural identity outside the private sphere.
In a different vein, nicknames in the novel are also given in disapproval of certain lifestyle choices that disagree with aspects of one’s culture or heritage. Neena, Alsana Begum Iqbal’s niece, is given the unfavorable epithet of “Niece-of-Shame.” This is in response not specifically to Neena’s embrace of British culture, but to her homosexuality. The nickname “used to come in longer sentences, e.g., You have brought nothing but shame... or My niece, the shameful… but now… it had become abridged to Niece-of-Shame, an all-purpose tag that summed up the general feeling” (53). Rather than being directly designated to Neena, this particular epithet grows out of a gradual process, shrinking down from longer sentences to “an all-purpose tag.” The tag of being someone who has let down the strict traditions of her culture has been firmly affixed to Neena, even though she can still speak Bengali and manages to spend time with her ethnic family. But Alsana, by giving such a nickname to Neena, is demonstrating a disapproval of Neena’s liberal views and homosexuality that can only be possible in a country like Britain. Continuing the theory of intergenerational adaptation, as Samad’s wife, she is also part of the older generation, for Alsana “really was very traditional, very religious, lacking nothing except the faith” (53).
Speaking in even broader perspectives, particular names also give significant meaning to various institutions and movements that attempt to define some facet of multicultural Britain. Samad’s other son, Millat, whose British upbringing is due to a complete immersion in pop culture rather than education like his twin brother, finds himself at a crossroads in the middle of the novel. His love for American gangster movies instills in him a desire to construct his own identity as a Western icon, something he cannot develop at home because of Samad’s resistance to British culture. Millat is searching to expand his persona as the leader of the Raggastanis, fellow weed-smoker of the black kids, hero and spokesman for the Asians (224-225). Enter the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation. The initial appeal of this youthful organization to Millat begins with his old mate Hifan as “the don. Look at the suit… gangster stylee!” (245). The members of this group believe they are fighting for fundamentalist Islam against the tyranny of British imperialism, but who can ignore the fact that their acronym, KEVIN, spells out a common Western boy name? Even their uniform, the gangster-style suits that Millat admire, can be considered distinctly Western. In essence, KEVIN serves as an outlet for the conflicted individuals of Millat’s generation. Having largely ignored his Muslim heritage throughout his whole life in favor of Al Pacino and The Godfather, Millat is trying to compensate for his Westernization by taking part in an extremist Muslim brotherhood. KEVIN’s acronym problem, in fact, reminds readers that prominent members such as Millat are still English born and bred.
Undoubtedly like many older generation immigrants like him, Samad is completely unable to grasp the concept of intergenerational adaptation because he fails to see his children as culturally different from him. He cries out, “Don’t speak to me of second generation! One generation! Indivisible! Eternal!” (241). It worries him that his children either will become completely British or not Bangladeshi at all. But times are changing. Smith regards the evolving tales – and indeed, names – of the Iqbal family as an example of how “old categories of race are an inaccurate way of describing the ethnic diversity of contemporary England” (Bentley 496). Even Millat Iqbal’s own middle name is a play on different cultures set on a crash collision course. Millat “lived for the in between, he lived up to his middle name, Zulfikar, the clashing of two swords” (Smith 291).