Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in White Teeth, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family Ties
Race, Racism, and Multiculturalism
Female Independence
The Influence of History
Summary
Analysis
Alsana believes that the difference between people is not color, but something more fundamental—something in the earth, in the sky. For Alsana, it seems that some people live on solid ground, while others—the people of Bangladesh—live “under the invisible finger of random disaster, of flood and cyclone, hurricane and mudslide.” This is what Alsana holds against Samad: that Magid has been sent to a dangerous country. For weeks after he left on the flight to Bangladesh, Alsana mourned his departure with her relatives, though she realizes that many of them take pleasure in her misfortune. She learns that Magid broke his nose in a cyclone, after a vase fell off a shelf in the mosque he was in.
Alsana is devastated by Magid’s departure, since she knows that Bangladesh is a dangerous place in which to live. Despite the difficulties of living in England, Alsana also realizes that living in the West is stable—that it is “solid ground,” as opposed to Bangladesh. The fact that Magid is injured while in a mosque also hints that Samad’s plan to protect Magid through religion might not go as intended.
Themes
Alsana has decided to stop speaking directly to her husband so that he can have the same experience that she has after Magid’s disappearance—"never knowing, never being sure.” The Iqbals receive a letter from Magid, and when Samad reprimands Millat for being so unlike his brother—whom Samad calls “a leader of tribes”—Millat laughs so hard that he loses his footing, slips, and breaks his nose against the kitchen sink. Magid has been preserved in Samad’s mind as “invisible and perfect,” and Samad learns to worship that invisible idea, whereas Millat proves difficult. Though younger by two minutes, Millat does not think of himself as a follower but as a “rudeboy,” a “badman,” obsessed with gangster movies and sex. Samad believes that Millat (and other immigrant children he knows) has turned out badly because immigrant children are “too safe” in Britain, living with overprotective parents and carefully mapped futures.
The Iqbals are torn apart by Samad’s plan to return Magid to Bangladesh. Though the brothers will be forced to grow up apart, Millat also breaks his nose at the same time that Magid does, so that the two boys maintain similarities even while separated—and even though Samad thinks of them as radically different. This persistent connection shows that family ties and the pressure of shared history are often stronger than any attempt—like Samad’s—to reshape the future.
Themes
Though separated, Millat and Magid are living parallel lives: while Magid walks through the violent crowds of Dhaka, Millat is battling three drunken Irishmen outside a pub; when Magid almost died in a tornado in 1989, Millat almost contracted an STD from a girl he slept with. In 1987, a storm hits London, and Millat, Alsana, and Samad escape from their house—which is battered by the weather—to Archie’s.
Magid and Millat’s lives are eerily similar, despite the distance between them, suggesting the enduring power of their family ties: both experience natural disasters, violent scenarios, and have close calls with death.
Themes
When Millat walks into Archie’s house, Irie is writing about him in her notebook: “Millat just walked in. He’s sooo gorgeous but ultimately irritating!” The two families gather together, and Samad discusses the story of Mangal Pande as a means of entertainment. Suddenly, a tree crashes through Archie’s house; Samad, Archie, Alsana, and Clara are shaken, but Millat and Irie walk outside to observe the storm. Millat confronts Irie about her crush on him, and while mocking her, he kisses her briefly.
Throughout the novel, Irie experiences romantic feelings for Millat, who does not reciprocate these feelings. As Joyce Chalfen says later in the novel, the two have “history” between them, and they are bonded like family, despite their differences in culture, ethnicity, and upbringing.
Themes
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On January 14, 1989, Millat is traveling to Bradford with his “crew” (Rajik, Ranil, Dipesh, and Hifan). After taunting the ticket man, who calls him a “Paki” in response, Millat and his crew rush to board a train without tickets. They consider themselves part of a new breed, Raggastani: their mission is “to put the Invincible back in Indian, the Bad-aaaass back in Bengali.” Millat’s friends ask him if “he” is going to be in Bradford, calling the anonymous man a “fuckin’ geezer.” Millat says that they are attending a protest, and the man who they are protesting for a book he has written—Salman Rushdie, whose novel is considered anti-Islam—will not be there.
Millat becomes more and more radicalized throughout the novel, attempting to adhere to fundamentalist Islamic beliefs: this is in response to his upbringing in England, where he feels powerless, like an outsider (as emphasized by the ticket man’s use of the word “Paki,” which is a derogatory term for East Indian people). The protest that Millat mentions refers to real-life protests against the novelist Salman Rushdie, whose book The Satanic Verses drew extreme and sometimes violent controversy for what critics said was its blasphemous depiction of Islam.
Themes
Back in Willesden, Samad is also complaining about Rushdie’s novel, and he gets into an argument with Alsana. They notice Millat on the television as part of a news report on the protests in Bradford; he is burning Rushdie’s book. Later that night, Millat returns home to see all of his “secular stuff”—albums, posters, clothes, books—placed in a bonfire. Alsana says that Millat had to be “taught a lesson” for burning other people’s things.
Though Samad and Alsana are also religious (Samad more so than his wife), they are disturbed by their son’s fundamentalist actions, which they view as overly extreme. Millat is a product of both Western and Eastern cultures (evidenced by the number of “secular,” Western items he owns), and his parents struggle to address the problems this tension causes. Millat chooses fundamentalism because he is frustrated by his own position in between these two different systems; it is only later in the novel that Samad acknowledges the challenges of his son’s double identity.
Themes
On November 10, 1989, the Iqbal and Jones families gather to watch the Berlin Wall come down—though no one really understands how this event came to be or what it means. Irie, who feels confident in her own beliefs, says that she knows more about Germany than Samad, since he and Archie left the country in 1945. The families bicker about the importance of the wall: Samad claims that he and Archie are like “wells of experience” or “encyclopedias” for their children.
The Iqbal and Jones families bear direct witness to a number of important historical events: the end of World War II, and now the collapse of the Berlin Wall. These monumental events seem disconnected from their personal histories (they’re not even clear on what the Wall’s significance is), yet events that Archie and Samad believe they left behind in World War II recur later in the novel—world history and personal history continue to intersect.
Themes
