In White Teeth, Zadie Smith develops characters obsessed with precision, categorization, and decisions. This is why Samad's punishment for making the sole decision to send his son to Bangladesh is for Alsana to leave him in a constant state of ambiguity. ““Maybe no one, Samad Miah. Maybe everything." Alsana refuses to answer even the most banal of Samad's questions with certainty. The unknown man pushes Samad against the wall and, worse still, his son still comes back more "English" than "Bengali", destroying the hopes of Samad to have a son come out as he wanted and definitively proving that his choice to send Magid was wrong. It seems that Smith's book punishes those who seek purity in race or culture the more the characters tend towards precision and calculation correct, the more impressed they are from the fate of the book. In this article I will mainly examine the characters of Samad, Archie and Irie to identify their tendencies regarding certainty and analyze how that element of their personality shapes them. I will relate these elements to how damned the characters are for show how the book supports the acceptance of fluidity over multiculturalism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay As shown briefly in the previous paragraph, Samad Iqbal is determined to be sure. He is attached to the history surrounding his ancestors, drawing meaning from the past which controls who he is in the present. Samad believes that his great-grandfather, Pandes, was a hero in Bangladesh. He tells the story of the war to everyone and repeatedly, even requesting that Pandes' photo be hung in a local bar. The more he enters history, the more those around him control it. Unfortunately for Samad, most historical evidence suggests that his great-grandfather wasn't actually a hero at all. Despite the overwhelming facts, Samad desperately clings to the information available to prove that his family was truly exceptional. His longing for the past diverts him from living in the present, leading him to try to apply his roots to things that no longer exist (and never really existed when we learn that Pande was not the person Samad imagines him to be), disappointing him. . The very structure of the book also attempts to let the past control the present. In “Chance and Gesture in Zadie Smith's White Teeth and Autograph Man: A Model for Multicultural Identity?” Jonathan Sell writes that "the foregrounding of the present [in the novel] means that the past is rendered as background and stripped of its conventional prerogative to shape the present, while the usual ironclad cause-to-effect sequence dissolves into a more liquid and arbitrary". relationship of analogy or fortuitous contingency” (2006). This interesting analysis also helps show how the book tries to transcend time, jumping around a lot but still getting ahead of the average. Marcus Chalfen is also in favor of ruling out the case and taking complete control of destiny. He also says that his Mouse of the Future “contains the tantalizing promise of a new phase of human history in which we will not be victims of chance, but instead directors and arbiters of our own destiny.” Sell ​​also finds this grounding in Marcus Chalfen “who believes that if you “[eliminate] the random, you will rule the world.” (2006). While not obsessed with conventional race, Chalfen is very attached to his family's culture, “Chalfenism”. The family members boast incessantly about their cultural superiority and know exactly which elements are "Chalfenists", as Joshua thinks Irie canhave roots. Their attachment to Chalfenism is no different from Samad's attachment to the Bangladeshi roots he wants to impose on his family. . The difference is that Samad is obsessed with the past while Marcus is obsessed with the future (literally his entire project contains the word Future). Neither of them are currently alive. Even with the most mundane measurements, the characters in this novel can't seem to get them right. After being caught proudly with weed, Joshua Chalfen is asked to measure out an eighth of tobacco to prove he is indeed a drug dealer. As if he knows the difference, he asks if he should show them “one eighth European or one eighth English”. He rolls a figure nowhere near close to either of them, embarrassing himself. Although they pale in comparison to the other characters in this book, Joshua's stubbornness and determination lead to miscalculations. The mouse behind which Marcus Chalfen and Magid stand represents “only certainty. Only certainty in its purest form." The end of the book boils down to an epic battle for a mouse that represents the characteristics I described: precision and control. The characters are divided on both sides of the issue, except for those who truly cannot form any opinion. It's interesting that Marcus/Magid is on one side of the debate and Samad/Joshua is on the other. It shows how imposing a culture on children inevitably fails, even by fully involving the characters. What happens though is that both children are still equally very determined people, interested in precision and certainty, they have simply moved on to the other side. Despite the obsession with decisions, Samad still believes in destiny created by God and even uses coins to make his choices, just like Archie. Turning away from the choices of reality while trying to create an appearance of resolve is Samad's problem. He apparently can never make a choice without worrying for very long, and then let a coin or God make the real call. The idea of ​​dividing two brothers, one originally from Bangladesh and the other from contemporary England, shows the inability to choose just one race, instead trying to experience both. What Samad doesn't understand is that there was a "root canal". Once a generation has crossed the boundaries, there is no turning back; the root has been removed. The Jehovah's Witnesses in the novel are not exempt from this analysis and correlation and are probably the most obvious example of criticism of not living in the present. Whenever a date that they believe will be the end of the world passes without a hitch, they notice a miscalculation that caused the inaccurate prediction and proclaim a new date. While they are not obsessed with dividing their movement along racial or cultural lines, they do exclude women from accessing their movement at a higher level. They spend the time before the proclaimed date making preparations and living entirely for the appointment. Jehovah's Witnesses live this way in the future instead of the past, which still leads them to throw their lives away. Their determinism in faith and keeping women away distracts them from being rational human beings most of the time. Unlike Samad, Archie Jones is willing to leave everything to chance. Use a coin to decide between life and death twice (both give life). Even the meeting with Clara is a completely random event. Archie doesn't seem to be interested in making choices on his own, but still demands that they be made instead of leaving things open-ended. This means that Archie is still in favor of sending one of Samad's sons to Bangladesh and choosing a position on Future Mouse, it just means that he doesn'tit is interesting to reflect on the decision. In her presentation at the Literature Colloquium, Paula mentioned the incident where the children go to deliver a care package to an old white man who tells them a war story about using the contrast between white teeth and brown skin to determine who to kill. The problem was that when the teeth rotted, it would be difficult to tell who the bad guy was. Paula says this is another example of ambiguity in the novel leading to a decision that results in life or death. Especially when you remember that the teeth in this novel represent rootedness and tradition, the book seems to argue that when culture or race is not defined, safety is guaranteed (because you are harder to target). Archie's passive nature towards the decision is passed on to his daughter. Irie Jones is easily influenced and a victim of the choices that other people make for her. In particular, this happens when he discovers that his idol, Marcus Chalfen, thinks he can become a dentist but nothing more. He promptly changes his career aspirations and enrolls in dental school, leaving Chalfen to have jurisdiction over choices that should have been his. This section is still in a moment where Irie struggles with her identity (typical for someone her age, but her struggle is rooted in race, which is more interesting than the average non-mixed-race teenager). In Michele Braun's “The Mouseness: The Competing Discourses of Genetics and History in White Teeth,” she writes that Irie “wants to be one with the Chalfens, to separate” from the chaotic, random flesh of his own family and [to be ] transgenically fused with another. A unique animal. A new race” (2013). In Irie's imagination, the hybridity of a transgenic animal is attractive. It allows her a fantasy of escape from the tyranny of her family life and her part-black, part-white bodily features because she imagines that a mixed identity will transcend the limitations of "black or white." At this point in the novel, Irie is intrigued by mixing cultures and races to achieve the best of multiculturalism. He has not yet learned to openly reject these things. When I argue that the novel supports fluidity, I don't mean multiculturalism. I actually think the novel takes a much more radical position and advocates the total elimination of culture based on geographic or racial lines. In “After the Century of Strangers: Hospitality and Crashing in Zadie Smith's White Teeth,” Ryan Trimm writes that “Smith's novel uses the family as a miniature of the nation, a well-worn cliché about how domestic units transform” social processes into natural processes. , instinctive,” a process that emphasizes racial homogeneity.” (2015). I think Trimm is right in his analysis that this novel shows the harms of prioritizing things like racial homogeneity, but I think they are wrong in calling it a worn-out cliché because I think Smith's allegory shows something different. Instead of calling attention only to racial homogeneity, Smith calls out every instance of certainty, of borders, of value on borders. I think this is what makes this novel unique and interesting. Hoping for certain outcomes usually leaves characters disappointed. When Archie hopes for certain outcomes, such as that his half-black daughter will have blue eyes, he is usually disappointed. Archie doesn't really consider race when he makes the decision to be with Clara. In fact, she is thrilled to have a daughter with dark skin and blue eyes. This attachment to multiculturalism leads to his disappointment when Irie ends up having dark eyes (along with the other "worst parts of both parents"). With this, Smith criticizes the.. 2016.