Zadie Smith's White Teeth Identity and Progress - Essay Example

June Zadie Smith's White Teeth: Identity and Progress Multiculturalism is easier promoted than done. In Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Smith aims to explore the different characteristics that are sources of conflicts for people. Clara comes from a religiously fanatic family, while Archie believes in a multiracial society, where individual freedoms exist. Joshua supports the environmental group FATE, while his own father supports the genetically-produced FutureMouse. Samad’s twin sons, Magid and Millat, also believe in different goals; the eldest is one with Marcus and his scientific future, while Millat embraces a fundamentalist view of religion and society. White Teeth argues that people build relationships based on their inner preferences and external pressures on life and their differences will perpetually clash, but they have to accept that as part of human identity and progress. People are born to be different in ideas and beliefs, because of their own choices in life and external influences on the development of their human identity. The novel includes three generations that intersects the “themes of heritage and family history” (Chernysheva 3). Every generation has important questions that they wish to answer. For Samad, he wants to conserve history, which he also does through promoting the myth of his great-grandfather, whose role in Indian history is not entirely reliable. Archie also feels the same nostalgia for the past. His so-called war wound is not real, because he put it on himself. Despite this self-inflicted wound, Archie creates a memory of the war with a strong sense of “self-defensiveness” (Chernysheva 3). Samad and Archie essentially promote a traditional approach to history and identity formation. They repeat their wartime concerns, where they usually find people forgetting the war, as if it is not important. These best friends, nevertheless, do everything to preserve their fabricated history of the war. Samad comes from a generation that sees history in a linear relationship, where every action has a consequence (Chernysheva 3). He supports the notions of karma and fate. Clara’s mother, Hortense, has the same views but for her, religion has become a different lens from which she makes sense of history. The generation of the youngest characters experience and see the future in diverse prisms and for different expectations and goals. The Iqbal twins believe in conflicting values. Magid, who lives most of adolescent life in Bangladesh, returns to England with a more Westernized view than the English themselves, while Millat finds truth and peace in fundamentalist religion. Samad is disappointed that Magid becomes more ultra-Westernized, when he planned for him to continue their traditions. The twins follow extremes ideologies that threaten to break their family apart. Irie has her own personal struggles. She is divided between her volunteer work in Africa and an occupation as a dentist and also faces diverse choices for hairdos and weight-loss plans. Irie’s child, however, bears the consequences of Irie’s choices (Chernysheva 3). The demolition of the Berlin Wall represents the demolition of obstacles to individual freedoms and differences (Chernysheva 3). Traditions versus modernity clash in influencing human progress and identity. Samad “moves between positions of authority and deauthorisation or subordination” (Gustar 335). He wants to impose his authority, but he does not have any power over his own family. He exaggerates his claims regarding his life, but he is “also emasculated by a radicalized discourse in an ethnocentric culture that often treats him as subaltern” (Gustar 335). Ironically, he spreads lies about his heritage that only makes him smaller as a person, since he cannot achieve the same level of greatness. Since he cannot control his life, he applies power chiefly over his family and children and even uses kidnapping to send his elder child to Bangladesh (Gustar 335). He does this because he knows that in the end, his own wife can usurp his authority. Samad also seeks to differentiate himself during the war which forces him to mimic a captain, as he wants to have something to “tell his grandchildren about” (Smith 109). He is “always going on about being a hero” (Smith 114), and he thinks that a hero needs ‘blood on [his] hands’ (Smith 118). Samad’s fears for the absence of his “heroic masculinity, his lack of proper observance of his faith and his concern that his twin boys will repeat his own lack and become,” ironically forces him to make actions that further strengthen his emasculation (Gustar 335). He cannot even afford to send his boys back to Bangladesh, so he kidnaps one of them. When Smith questions Samad, she undermines his values about masculine privilege and the power that comes from that privilege (Gustar 335). Still, Smith wants us to understand that Samad is a victim of his culture. His culture abhors modernity that eats away the roots of traditions. Thus, in the novel, Smith shows Samad as a victim of traditions and the physical and emotional violence they endorse, as well as the promoter of traditions, because he seeks to maintain control over others (Gustar 335). Millat participates in the burning of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988) because he finds an anger that he can relate to (Morace 3). He soon joins the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation, a fundamentalist movement where politics and religion do not intermingle. These are the various faces of people’s differences and how they conflict with one another. People have to accept their difference, even their inner struggles, so that the world can progress as a multiracial civilization. Marcus Chalfen is a genetic engineer whose brainchild is FutureMouse. Every occasion in FutureMouse’s life will be programmed and expected; the mouse is expected to live for accurately seven years, from 1993 to December 31, 1999, the eve of the new millennium. The numerous conflicts of the novel intersect because of this genetic experiment: “Coincidences abound, chance meetings occur, all attempts to control outcomes fail, and the event ends in chaos and FutureMouse escapes” (Butterworth 2). The novel shows that the more that people want to control the nature of differences inside animals, the more that they will be different and want to break free from these controls. Fernandez explains the problems of being part of a pluralistic society: “This space is problematic; it is characterized by ambivalence and an ongoing process of juggling notions of belonging and exclusion; it is the outcome of processes of negotiation and change” (144). The novel is saying that people should stop suppressing their differences inside themselves and in society. Every human being is unique, because he/she can choose his own fate. He can pursue his traditions or modernity or a mixture of both. She can be a fundamentalist or a dentist. Either way, they should be free to be who they want to be, without being pressured to be someone else. White Teeth reminds the audience that people are human beings who are different. Their difference is part of their humanity and their differences will altogether be crucial to human progress. Chaos is inherent to human society, because it is inherent to humanity. People have inner struggles, because of their varied choices in their lives. In addition, they also struggle with society and their families that aim to change and control them. White Teeth illustrates that people cannot control who they are and they cannot control the people around them. Their families and society can only affect them to a certain degree, but in the end, they have to make the final choices for their identity. White Teeth asks people to embrace their differences, because a truly multiracial society is tolerant of differences. To agree to disagree is complex, but it is an essential part of progress, as it is an essential manifestation of the complexity of humanity. Works Cited Butterworth, Susan. “Zadie Smith.” Magill’s Survey of World Literature (2009): 1-5. Print. Chernysheva, Vera. “White Teeth.” Masterplots (2010): 1-3. Print. Fernandez, Irene Perez. “Representing Third Spaces, Fluid Identities and Contested Spaces in Contemporary British Literature.” Atlantis 31.2 (2009): 143-160. Print. Gustar, Jennifer J. “The Tempest in an English Teapot: Colonialism and the Measure of a Man in Zadie Smith's White Teeth.” Changing English: Studies in Culture & Education 17.4 (2010): 333-343. Print. Morace, Robert A. “White Teeth.” Magill’s Literary Annual (2001): 1-4. Print. Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2000. Print. Read More