Zadie Zmith's White Teeth: A Review
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In the poem, Wasteland, T. S. Eliot wrote that “Between the idea/ And the reality/ Falls the shadow. In White Teeth, Zadie Smith presents the idea, the reality and let the reader deduce the shadow.
Using complex plots, multi-layered and deep, she takes a swipe at religious differences and cultural confusion. She presents intertwined lives of men and women from several generations, cultures and different economic status and makes a mockery of their senses of reason.
She starts the novel with a high degree of tension captured by Archie’s suicide attempt. She goes on to weave subplots that enhance the main actions in the story. The story itself explores the universal theme of the desire to belong, the quest for the self and the fear of disappearance.
She creates a grand finale where the issues raised in the lives of the characters are finally resolved.
Using different points of view to tell the story, Smith successfully gives each voice its own language. Her hybrid of voices flow with ease, from Jamaican to English to Asian, to the old to the young, to the affluent, each maintaining his or her own vernacular.
She uses a lot of flashbacks and forwards to fill the holes in the story. As a mark of her success, she makes readers care not just about a character, but also the offspring of the character.
The story, though full of implausible occurrences, (like Ryan Topps becoming a Witness, Millat and Magid having sex with Irie the same day with a baby conceived as a result, Dr. Pierre whom Archie failed to kill at the war front re-emerging as the mentor of Marcus who will be saved the second time by Archie etc ) she still carries her reader along.
She has a way of introducing tangential pieces like Joyce’s cross pollination of plants, Marcus’ genetic engineering as a further ways of illustration the changes, desires and circumstances confronting her characters.
She has no single main character.
White Teeth is a serious book that is written in a comic way. Her narrator is the intrusive kind who is chatty, full of opinions and ready to dish them out.
This satire on the fate of mankind is charming, full of wisdom and at the same time funny.
