White Teeth tackles immigration, assimilation, colonialism, multiculturalism, racism, patriarchy, sexism, feminism, domestic violence, genetic engineering, British colonial history, the purpose of existence, and other serious issues, but the book is also very funny. The author, Zadie Smith, writes in a distinctive narrative voice that conveys a sense of absurdity, cynical wisdom, and compassion for human failure. The voice is that of an omniscient narrator, able to see inside all the characters equally and provide a wide, overarching view of the comedy of life.
The story has two main protagonists, Alfred Archibald Jones, and Samad Miah Iqbal. Archie Jones is a dull, rather unimaginative Englishman who marries a much younger Black woman, Clara Bowden, a recent immigrant from Jamaica. Archie’s best friend Samad Iqbal is a devout Muslim from Bangladesh who has an arranged marriage with Alsana Begum, a much younger woman. Archie and Samad spend most of their free time with each, so Clara and Alsana also become friends and raise their children together. The two families live in Willesden Green, an otherwise ordinary London suburb with a growing multicultural population, including a large cast of eccentric characters from many places in the former British empire. The plot follows the two families as they navigate through the social upheavals of the late twentieth century, especially the issues caused by colonialism, immigration, and assimilation.
Several different antagonists impede Archie and Samad’s efforts, with the antagonists united by the desire to improve the human condition. Three generations of scientists — Dr. Marc-Pierre Perret, Dr. Marcus Chalfen, and Magid Iqbal — experiment with genetic engineering as a means to eliminate undesirable human characteristics. School officials and social workers provide well-meaning but often racist advice. Groups of Islamic extremists, religious fanatics, and animal rights activists contribute to the emotional and psychological disorder of Archie and Samad’s world.
The story is not told in chronological order but is carefully structured by time. Exact dates are part of the section titles and often appear in the text. The main action of the story happens between 1975 and 1999, with flashbacks that reach back to 1857. The history of Bengal, the homeland of two of the main characters, Samad and Alsana Iqbal, provides another structure for establishing a chronology. The earliest event, the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857, takes place when Bengal is a British colony. Bengal is still a colony when Samad serves in the British Army during World War II. After the war, Bengal becomes East Pakistan and then Bangladesh. The new country is beset by violence and natural disasters, leading to an economic collapse that drives many Bengalis, including the Iqbals, to immigrate to England. Smith adds another level of chronological structure by following the Jones and Iqbal families through multiple generations. The earliest character, Mangal Pande, is the great-grandfather of Samad Iqbal and a Bengali hero of the Great Indian Mutiny. The youngest character is the granddaughter of both Archie and Samad, who is born in 1993.
Clara Bowden Jones and Samad and Alsana Iqbal face a conflict common to immigrants: they must not only adjust to their new lives but also watch their children grow up in a culture that is different from their own. The generation gap that all families experience is worse for the families of immigrants because the parents fear that their rebellious adolescents are also losing their cultural identity. The parents’ fears are well-grounded. Their British-born children do indeed belong to a new, interracial and multicultural world, made even more different by global youth culture.
The action of the complex plot rises over several generations and includes the emotional traumas that each generation suffers. For example, Captain Charlie Durham, a white Englishman, impregnates Clara Bowden’s grandmother Ambrosia, a young Black servant. Ambrosia’s daughter, Hortense, feels shame at being mixed-race and marries a Black man, Darcus Bowden. Hortense rejects her daughter, Clara, because Clara marries a white man, a rejection that leaves Clara’s daughter, Irie Jones, with a deep sense of not belonging anywhere. Similarly, Samad Iqbal’s devotion to Islam leads the older of his twin sons, Magid, to reject religion in favor of secularism and science, while the young Iqbal twin, Millat, becomes an Islamic extremist.
The rising action leads toward the final episode of the novel, in which the genetic engineers introduce the world to FutureMouse. All the main characters and their antagonists converge at the same location, and suspense builds as readers wonder which antagonists will perform which disruptive acts and how the protagonists will respond. The climax comes in one split-second act when Archie stops a bullet and thus keeps Millat Iqbal from becoming a murderer. The falling action includes Archie and Samad having to rewrite their autobiographies because the old war story that has bound them together for decades is now proved untrue.
A non-human character, FutureMouse, embodies the themes of existence, assimilation, and racism. The little brown rodent exists for scientific research, directed toward altering the gene pool. FutureMouse is isolated from its kind and forced to become a new species. At the climax of the story, when Archie accidentally smashes the glass box and FutureMouse escapes, the reader, like Archie Jones, wishes the mouse well in its new life of freedom.
