White Teeth

by

Zadie Smith

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White Teeth: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
At 6:27 a.m. on January 1, 1975, in Cricklewood Broadway, Alfred Archibald Jones is lying facedown on the steering wheel of his Cavalier Musketeer Estate, having resigned himself to suicide. Archie feels that it is only proper that he should die on this unpleasant city street, living alone at the age of 47. From the car, he watches pigeons flying above and landing on Hussein-Ishmael, a halal butcher nearby, and considers that the pigeons have an “instinct for the Unlucky.” They pass by Archie, however, since though he does not know it, luck is with him: “Somewhere, somehow, by somebody, it had been decided that he would live.”
White Teeth begins with a scene that takes place in the middle of Archie Jones’s personal history. Much of the rest of the novel concerns Archie’s family life years later, but the novel nonetheless opens with this earlier scene. History, then, is a highly significant theme from the outset, since the novel promises to explain the full arc of Archie’s life.
Themes
The Influence of History Theme Icon
The Hussein-Ishmael is owned by Mo Hussein-Ishmael, a large man who despises the pigeons. On this morning, Mo is swearing loudly at the pigeons and “playing cricket”—trying to hit them with a bat. He calls Varin, his trainee, in to help. Mo believes that one day, Cricklewood and its residents will thank him for his “daily massacre” of the pigeons, since the town is covered in pigeon droppings. He spots Archie’s car and asks Arshad, his son (and employee), to find out what’s it doing in his driveway, blocking the way of his delivery trucks. Arshad returns to tell Mo that Archie has told him that he is “gassing himself.” Mo storms out angrily, pushes down Archie’s window, and tells him, “We’re not licensed for suicides around here.”
Though the novel begins with the perspective of a middle-aged white man, it quickly shifts to include a person of color—Mo Hussein-Ishmael—whose presence in Cricklewood suggests the multiethnic composition of the London neighborhood, immediately highlighting the importance of race and multiculturalism in the narrative.
Themes
Race, Racism, and Multiculturalism Theme Icon
Archie lifts his head off of the steering wheel as Mo yells at him. Suddenly, he has an epiphany, realizing suddenly that the world wants him to live after all. He begins to sob and thanks Mo profusely, then reverses his car and pulls away from the street. It is revealed that Archie attempted suicide because Ophelia, his wife—a “violet-eyed Italian with a faint mustache”—recently divorced him after thirty years of marriage. His marriage had felt like a pair of shoes that never fit, but are nonetheless worn “for the sake of appearances.”
This passage suggests that Archie’s life dramatically shifts after his divorce from Ophelia and his subsequent marriage to Clara Bowden, whom he meets at the end of the chapter. However, it is later made clear that Clara and Archie’s marriage is as loveless and staid as Archie’s previous marriage to Ophelia: history still repeats itself, even when it seems like everything is changing.
Themes
The Influence of History Theme Icon
Archie met Ophelia Diagilo in a Florentine coffeehouse in the spring of 1946, after he “stumbled out of the darkness of war.” She did not know that Archie can never maintain positive perceptions of women for long; deep down, he doesn’t trust them, and he is only able to love women who “wear haloes.” Ophelia also had a family history of mental illness, which she did not tell Archie about.
Archie’s ingrained misogyny sheds light on the place of women in British society during this era. As an “everyman” character, Archie seems to stand for a generation of 20th-century British men who either mistrust women or valorize them for the wrong reasons—for their status as one-dimensional angels (who “wear haloes”).
Themes
Female Independence Theme Icon
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On Boxing Day, six days earlier, Archie went back to his and Ophelia’s home in Hendon to collect his Hoover vacuum cleaner, encountering Ophelia’s extended Italian family, who had come to help her. She had had a mental breakdown, and when Archie saw her, she was “curled up in a fetal ball on the sofa.” One of Ophelia’s relatives told Archie that the Hoover was broken, but he was determined to fix it. Yet Archie also began to feel that “The End was unavoidably nigh,” and he flipped a coin to decide on his own suicide—“heads, life, tails, death.”
Throughout the novel, Archie resorts to coin-flipping to help him make important decisions. This action becomes a motif, one of the myriad ways in which history repeats itself through individuals’ acts: each and every time Archie flips the coin, the decision he makes based on the flip has unintended consequences.
Themes
The Influence of History Theme Icon
However, Archie is neither a hero nor a martyr—the only people who can successfully commit suicide. Though the result of the coin flip ordered him to commit suicide, he ignores the omen and drives around aimlessly with the Hoover tube in his car (which he considers sticking down his throat in order to kill himself). On December 29, Archie meets with his old friend Samad Miah Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim with whom he fought “back when the fighting had to be done.” After meeting at O’Connell’s Poolroom, their new haunt, the men play poker “with only three hands”—since Samad’s right hand is a “broken thing.”
Samad and Archie’s is a friendship that crosses cultural and racial boundaries. The two men are united on common ground—O’Connell’s Poolroom, which becomes a recurring setting in the novel.
Themes
Race, Racism, and Multiculturalism Theme Icon
Samad tells Archie that marrying Alsana, his new wife, has given him “this new lease on living,” since she is young and full of energy. Samad moved to England in the spring of 1973 with Alsana, who was then 23 (while Samad is middle-aged); he decided to move to the same borough as Archie, and the two rekindled their friendship. Samad tells Archie that he has not met the right woman yet, especially because Ophelia is mad: she believes that she is the “maid of the celebrated fifteenth-century art lover Cosimo de’ Medici.” Archie reflects that hindsight is always 20/20, but he later decides that he cannot take Samad’s advice: on New Year’s morning, he decides to commit suicide after all.
Samad seems to regard his wife as a prop for his own identity and development—she’s meant to provide a benefit for him, a “new lease on living,” rather than existing as a person in her own right. This remark again demonstrates the ingrained misogyny found in 20th-century British culture.
Themes
Female Independence Theme Icon
The story jumps forward to New Year’s, as Archie’s car is filling with carbon monoxide. He experiences a flashback of his life to date and deems it dull and depressing; he remembers fighting in the last year of World War II, looking for work on Fleet Street after the war and being told that experience as a soldier wouldn’t be adequate for a job as a war correspondent, and ending up in a job at MorganHero, a printing firm on Euston Road that designs folded materials (envelopes and leaflets). This job is not much of an achievement, but Archie reflects that “you’ll find things need folds, they need to overlap, otherwise life would be like a broadsheet: flapping in the wind and down the street so you lose the important sections.”
Once again, the theme of history proves significant: Archie is fixated on his own past, and obsessed with the ways in which his life has gone wrong. Archie’s reflection that things “need to overlap” in life speaks to another prominent aspect of the novel: the entangled, interconnected relationships that form between its characters.
Themes
Family Ties Theme Icon
The Influence of History Theme Icon
Archie was once a competitive track cyclist, and in 1948, he participated in the Olympics in London, sharing 13th place with a Swedish gynecologist named Horst Ibelgaufts. Because of an error, Archie’s name was omitted from Olympic records, but Horst continues to write Archie, sending cheerful messages from Sweden about his family and his newfound hobbies (such as playing the harp). After their race in 1948, Horst and Archie got drunk and hired prostitutes in London, one of whom Horst slept with in front of Archie. Archie remembers the prostitute he hired, Daria, and before he blacks out, he thinks of the smile he saw on her face: “if there was any chance of ever seeing a look like that again, then he wanted the second chance.” After leaving Mo’s driveway, Archie is ecstatic, speeding through street signs and choosing new routes he has never taken before.
Archie’s personal history continues to hold sway over the present as he reminisces about his friendship with Horst and his experiences with the prostitute Daria during the 1948 Olympics. Thinking back on the past—and the way that he felt in his memories—motivates him to pursue a “second chance” in his life. This passage also includes another example of a woman who, from a man’s perspective, exists only to serve his goals: just as Alsana revives Samad’s enthusiasm for life, here the memory of Daria gives Archie new energy.
Themes
Female Independence Theme Icon
The Influence of History Theme Icon
Quotes
The story changes to the perspective of Tim Westleigh, more commonly known as Merlin, who wakes up on the kitchen floor to his doorbell ringing. At the door, he greets a “middle-aged man dressed head-to-toe in gray corduroy.” Merlin asks if he is a traveling salesman or a missionary, and Archie tells him that he saw Merlin’s sign while driving by: a white bedsheet with rainbow lettering reading WELCOME TO THE “END OF THE WORLD” PARTY, 1975. Archie joins a table where “two black guys, a topless Chinese girl, and a white woman wearing a toga” are playing rummy. After many drinks, Archie feels intimately acquainted with the people he has just met, though they quickly fall into an argument about World War II that puts a damper on things. Archie wonders if he is the type of man who, far from being a hero or the center of attention, is “just there to make up the numbers.”
The ”End of the World” party represents a multicultural London, with its diverse cast of characters—radically different from the homogeneous world Archie has known before. As a result, Archie does not feel like part of the group: his age and personal history set him apart from this contemporary world.
Themes
Race, Racism, and Multiculturalism Theme Icon
Yet something is destined to happen that will transform Archie: his encounter with Clara Bowden, a woman “beautiful in all senses except, maybe, by virtue of being black.” She comes striding down the stairs toward Archie, who regards her as “the most comforting woman he had ever met,” one who wears her sexuality “with an older woman’s ease.” She speaks to Archie is a lilting Caribbean accent, and he sees that she has no top teeth. Archie tells her that he nearly died today, and Clara solemnly tells him that “dis life no easy!” Suddenly, Archie sees a look on her face identical to the one he saw in Daria’s. Six weeks later the two marry: Clara is 19, and Archie is 47.
Clara represents a new kind of woman to Archie: independent, bold, and self-assured (unlike the mentally incapacitated Ophelia). Yet her blackness is also striking, and clearly marks her as different, even in diverse London. The narrator notes that Clara is beautiful “except” for “being black,” which also points at the racist standards of beauty that will become more prominent later in the novel.
Themes
Race, Racism, and Multiculturalism Theme Icon
Female Independence Theme Icon