White Teeth - Major Themes

Major Themes

The story mixes pathos and humour, all the while illustrating the dilemmas of immigrants and their offspring as they are confronted by a new, and very different, society. The reader can determine certain qualities and negativities about certain non-British cultures while they are contrasted in the setting of an altogether different host culture. Middle-and working-class British cultures are also satirised through the characters of the Chalfens and Archie.

As part of the characters' experience as immigrants, they are confronted with conflicts between assimilating and preserving their cultures. The novel depicts the lives of a wide range of backgrounds, including Afro-Caribbean, Muslim, and Jewish. Just as the quote at the beginning of the novel states, “What is past is prologue.” Smith uses the characters and their various cultural backgrounds to show the complexity involved in immigration and replanting one’s roots. For instance, first generation characters are confronted with pressures to assimilate into British society and preserve their native cultures. Consequently, many become conflicted and have difficulty finding a place in their new surroundings. Characters such as Alsana, Samad, and Clara all face complications when assimilating into British culture and as a result experience a continued sense of ‘unrootedness’. They are unable to replant their roots in a new territory.

Smith uses second generation characters Irie, Magid, and Millat, to demonstrate how the impacts of immigration are augmented over time. These characters do not feel any more strongly connected to Britain despite being born there. To the contrary, Irie, Magid, and Millat are greatly affected by their parents’s ‘unrootedness’, and they also have difficulty finding a place. Their assimilation process is even more complicated, because they are farther removed from their native cultures. All of the characters in White Teeth exhibit that knowing one’s roots is not always a liberating experience and can be very challenging for immigrants and those with mixed racial backgrounds. Lineage and culture cannot be traced easily; it veers into many different directions due to migration and ‘unrootedness’.

As a second generation immigrant, Clara, introduces her parents to new facets of mainstream culture and her peers to facets of the culture of her homeland. This is exhibited by Clara and Ryan’s relationship and then Ryan’s bond with Clara’s mother Hortense Jones. Ryan is the catalyst of Clara’s diversion from her heritage, while Clara serves as the medium for Hortense’s introduction to whiteness and Ryan’s to blackness and a new religion. Similarly, Samad meets his mistress Poppy Burt-Jones, the twins’ teacher. Ironically, when he becomes involved at school to fight for the incorporation of celebrating Muslim holidays at the school. These second-generation immigrants reflect Smith’s argument of the past and present being in dialogue, as their present lives disrupt their parents connection to the past.

The multiple view points allow for Smith to approach the idea of multiculturalism and the racial undercurrents of Western society from the viewpoints of many different characters. While characters like Alsana deal with the prejudices of London society, she, too, can subscribe to similar prejudices. “Black people are often friendly, though Alsana, smiling at Clara, and adding this subconsciously to the short ‘pro’ side of the pro and con list she had on the black girl. From every minority she disliked, Alsana liked to single out one specimen for spiritual forgiveness." The wider scope of characters allows Smith to delve into all the people populating a community, viewing it from all sides and all nuances. Smith once wrote "I just wanted to show that there are communities that function well. There's sadness for the way tradition is fading away but I wanted to show people making an effort to understand each other, despite their cultural differences."

While the main families in the plot attempt to create lives for themselves, there is still a struggle to hold on to their past. For instance, Samad feels that the English life is not conducive to an adequate Islamic upbringing. He attempts to preserve Magid’s faith and sends him to Bangladesh, yet Magid grows up to be a man of science, not faith. Millat moves in the opposite direction: he becomes involved with KEVIN, a militant and fundamentalist Islamic group. Irie is obsessed with the question of one's roots. She is excited to visit Jamaica with her grandmother, but at the same time hates her kinky African hair and her Jamaican curves. She dreams of a future when roots will not matter. When she gets pregnant and realizes she'll never know who the father is, she is almost happy her daughter will not have to deal with problem of roots. Roots are a pervasive theme in White Teeth. Samad clutches onto them, viewing them as sacred and necessary. He worries that he or his family will lose their roots. Samad once says to Archie regarding his children losing their roots, "People call it assimilation when it is nothing but corruption. Corruption!" Archie doesn't have any roots, and Clara tries to escape hers. She leaves her mother and Jehovah's Witness past behind, but can never truly purge it. "But how fragile is Clara's atheism! Like one of those tiny glass doves Hortense keeps in the living-room cabinet--a breath would knock it over." Religion is a large part of both the Bowdens' and the Iqbals' roots. Hortense is preoccupied with continuing the Jehovah's Witness tradition, and Samad worries about losing his Muslim faith.

The leitmotif of teeth and in particular the white teeth of the title play a recurring role throughout. While the families in the book have numerous things that set them apart, white teeth is an overarching quality. No matter the color of their skin, the religion they follow, or the country they come from--they have white teeth. Although Clara loses her teeth in a moped accident early on in the narrative, they are replaced by a set of false ones, the existence of which is only discovered by her daughter when she is a teenager. Irie's decision (if it can be classed as her own decision) to become a dentist is another recurrence of this theme. Irie, by becoming a dentist and looking after the teeth of her community, shows that she is trying to look after a unifying element in society, rather than the diversifying elements. This unifying element (unifying parts of different cultures in a new host culture) is a typical theme of literature by and about the offspring of immigrants in different cultures.

The theme of teeth illuminate an overarching theme of the novel - universalism. Most of the critical relationships in the lives of the main characters are ones developed by chance. Archie and Clara Jones incidentally stumble upon one another at a New Years Eve party. They are drawn together by “accidental” similarity, as both Clara and Archie are both coming out of serious relationships (with Ryan and Ophelia, respectively). Even Clara and Ryan are also bound together by chance. They are united by the difference that separates them from everyone else at St. Jude’s, both being “neither Irish nor Roman Catholic.” Smith’s characters are not just raced or ethnicized beings, they are first and foremost human beings. The characters in “White Teeth” do not fall neatly into assumptions of how persons of a particular group are supposed to behave. She does not essentialize Jamaicains, Bengalis, Muslims, or any group of people. In fact, often in “White Teeth” characters of different races and ethnicities have more in common than those within the same group, as discovered in many of these chance encounters.

This book also delves into the concepts of human relationship. Archie and Samad remain best friends despite the failed relationships of their families and culture. Magid and Millat, on the other hand, do not approve of each other's lives and never become cordial brothers.

Another underlying theme that can be found in Zadie Smith's "White teeth" is the theme of chance and coincidence, which is used quite often in the lives of the Iqbal family. Samad's failed attempts to control his sons destinies only pushes his sons further away, as Milat becomes a rebel and Magid "More English than the English." Milat and Magid are subjects of constant coincidence and chance, which can be seen when one brother breaks his nose and the other brother break his nose as well. Ultimately Samad, Milat or Magid have no control over their destinies. Archie too relies heavily on chance usually making his decisions based on the flipping of a coin even his own life.