Zadie Smith's White Teeth - Book Report/Review Example

167110 Zadie Smith's White Teeth depicts 25 years of assimilation of two families and the third, already assimilated Jewish family in North London. The book mainly belongs to the Joneses and the Iqbals and how their intertwined destinies coinciding with that of the British Empire. The writer presents a multiethnic fabric with brilliancy and understanding, and all the characters are fully and vibrantly sketched. The dialogues were humorous, sensitive, sensible and without pretension. The writer received rave reviews for her first book. It is the story of two friends a Bangladeshi called Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones. It is also the story of human destinies, difficulties, choices of life and more than that of human emotions. The two cultures and religions and different outlook do not confuse the issue, but make it more vibrant and sometimes, extremely hilarious. It is the story of life and people's tryst with that life. Story begins on New Year's Day 1974 and Archie Jones' Italian wife has just walked out on him and Archie unsuccessfully tries to commit suicide by gassing himself in the car. With fresh enthusiasm, he goes to a party and meets Jamaican Clara, whose mother is overwhelmingly religious as Jehovah's Witness. They are married soon and have a rather hesitating daughter in Irie. Samad, in the meantime, had migrated to Britain after WWI and his arranged marriage to Alsana and the arrival of twin boys Magid and Millat has not made the marriage easier. Maintaining their faith in Islam in an alien way of life was becoming extremely difficult and Samad resented the immigrant status1. To Samad's disappointment, Magid becomes a scientist and an atheist while Millat after a spate of womanising and binge drinking, becomes a militant fundamentalist. The Jewish Catholic family of Oxford educated intellectuals, Chalfens there is a connectivity. Marcus Chalfen is a geneticist and his wife Joyce is a housewife. Majid becomes Marcus' research assistant and Millat too become friendly with Chalfens and both claimed a lot of attention till Chelfen son, Josh rebelled for being ignored. Futuremouse, the project of Marcus somehow got entangled with all these and all youngsters and Millat's organisation KEVIN, encouraged by Clara's religious mother rebelled against the project. Irie who loved Millat was rejected by him. Ending comes showing the warring groups and in the middle of it all, is the long kept secret from the past of Samad and Archie. Story has pathos and humour, dilemmas of immigrants, difficulties of second generation immigrants, pitted against the working and middle class of British society. But the main theme remains the human relationship with other humans and with the surroundings and their reactions to compulsions. In spite of continuing difficulties and cultural differences and diverse reactions to situations, the two main characters continue to remain on even keel. While all the three cultures were satirised through different characters. While the main characters remain friendly the twins never understand one another. Considered to be a vivacious, anarchic story, the book was set in the neighbourhood where the writer grew up and where she still lives, Willesden and Kilburn in North London where a sizeable part of population are Indian and Pakistani. The writer seems to be very observant of different voices and cultures and book shows multiculturalism of London and her half Jamaican background might have helped to write about immigrants with insight. Samad thinks that he is separated, cut in two, leading two lives. There is other Samad who still lives in Bangladesh where he is religious and proper and problem arises when he has to deal with the real Samad, which could be a common experience of many immigrants from culturally rigid societies. "Both the self and the world are split into good and bad objects, and the bad self, the self associated with fear and anxiety over the loss of control, is projected onto bad objects. Fear precedes the construction of the bad object, the negative stereotype, but the stereotype - simplified, distorted and at a distance - perpetuates that fear," says Sibley (1995, p.15). Conversation is not didactic2 and has its humorous side as well and that is what makes the book readable and enjoyable. Writer alludes to the Salman Rushdie's fatwa and says some people still support the fatwa strongly whereas the writer did not feel worried about lampooning Islamic separatists in the nineties. Book is funny, generous and big-hearted in a way about friendship, love, three cultures, three families, war, colonisation, imperialism and spans across three generations. It also shows how the past keep returning and worrying the present and future. The book has a life-affirming quality in it that is inescapable. It presents life from many angles and multiple cultural standpoints. Samad tries to console a distraught Archie: "You have picked up the wrong life in the cloakroom and you must return it . . . there are second chances; oh yes, there are second chances in life" [p. 11]. By flipping the coin Archie shows that he would like to leave the decisions to others, simply to avoid the unpleasantness of making a decision on his own and perhaps this is the weakest point in him. "Archie "was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios: Pebble: Beach. Raindrop: Ocean. Needle: Haystack" [p. 10]. Archie is humble, unambitious without ego and in a way, he is less like a westerner, whereas the frustrated and serious Samad sometimes sound more British than Archie3. It is as though only humans matter and not their nationalities or culture. Same is reflected later in the lives of younger generation. Samad's thinking of wearing a sign that says "I am not a waiter. I have been a student, a scientist, a soldier . . ." [p. 49]. It surprises that he remains a hotelier all those days. Samad's boys were rather confused and unhappy about the Asian and Muslim roots and Majid calls himself Mark Smith and Millat tries to be Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver. Funnily Irie likes the "Englishness of Chalfens. It is surprising to note how a heritage of an unavoidable consequence of life in a culturally mixed environment can create psychological complications. Samad and Alsana were married in the traditional way and the marriage was arranged and in such marriages, love seems to be irrelevant, while love comes naturally to the younger generation because they are British now. Another important character here is Alsana's 'neice-of-shame" Neena, who is a feminist and a lesbian. The book shows her as one of the most contented and trustworthy characters on whom Alsana depends a lot. In a way Abdul Mickey comes across as a more liberated and less constrained character. Irie's not knowing which of the twins is the father of her daughter makes the family picture very smudgy. Novel's strength is dealing with many families, many cultures, many religions and many countries. It also deals with science, animal rights, beliefs, personal destiny, family history, cultural ethos and religious beliefs. It is mainly about the juxtaposition and interaction of people from different ethnic groups, living their daily lives in a city of many cultures. Even though Archie and Samad did not feel any great cultural differences, their children were more worried about their identities or the lack of it4. It is interesting to find the issues of race, religion, culture, nationality and how they affect the families. The most interesting statement comes from Alsana: "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" [p. 196]. The book is a brilliant conveyer of the busy and noisy soundscape of a multicultural metropolis of London5. Iries considering herself an outsider because of Jamaican mother and her own skin colour, Samad and Archie serving together in the army in II WW and becoming lifelong friends, Majid, who grows up in Bangladesh to learn the culture of the land and returning more English than Millat who lives in England, but ends up with KEVIN, wealthy and liberated Chalfens and their assimilation into British culture, because they are the third generation immigrants, are all the wild mixing of human genes and cultures through the book6. When this whole confusion gets connected with genetic engineering and its possibilities, it becomes more exciting. "You eliminate the random, you rule the world." (p. 283). It is a book which tries to mix and match its families and ideas. It also tries to show that nationality is not as important as we think it is. Nurture does not show much promise here. Actually it is the nature that triumphs. It is interesting to note the success and failure of alien people coping with the British community of seventies and how they and their families get troubled in every social issue by being rooted in another culture. It is mainly Samad and Archie who live a balanced life, in spite of Samad being unhappy in the country of his choice, even though he does not have any great grievances against it. Their friendship, despite set backs and secrets, remains untouched till the end and that is the main focus of the story. Wherever a person goes, being a herd animal, it is important for him to be surrounded by other humans in the form of family or friends, or simply the society around him. "Smith brings us into her world - a world shaped by the past, by colonialism and immigration, by mixed marriages, by inner city life at the turn of the century. Admittedly, she errs towards some of today's more popular notions when she decries tampering with genes (Marcus Chalfont and a ubiquitous mouse), but at the same, time she presents with continual intelligent humour and a lively pace". http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2000-08/books/white_teeth.htm BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Smith, Zadie (2000), White Teeth, Hamish Hamilton, London. 2. Sibley, David (1995), Geographies of Exclusion, Routledge, London. ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/07/10/081253.php 2. http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Teeth-Zadie-Smith/dp/0140276335 3. http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2000-08/books/white_teeth.htm 4. Read More