White Teeth

Archie's "past-tense, future-perfect kind of mood" makes a complicated point about his emotional state. The "future-perfect" describes a grammatical tense which describes events that will have happened in the future, for example, "when we take the test, we will have read the book by then." So Archie feels a change from the past tense, what has happened, to the future perfect, what will have happened. Archie knows that he will always be looking back to the past, in both cases concerned with what he has done. Still, Archie's turn toward his new future causes him to randomly choose a new street to drive down, seemingly so he can say that he will have been on it.

Archie, as a native Englishman, is part of the country's "backbone." This metaphor casts Archie as an indelible part of his country, like all citizens; but as "one of the many essential vertebrae," he does not feel the need to defend his country personally, only to fit in and coordinate with the rest of society. Despite his bone-deep connection to Englishness, he does not feel a strong connection to it. 

In contrast, as Samad interrogates the child, his fervor for the war effort seems to try to "escape his skin." As an immigrant, Samad's Englishness is more surface-level, a new title put onto complex life experience. Still, though, Samad, a brown immigrant whose Englishness only goes skin-deep, is more patriotic than Archie.

Each disparate social group "mark[s] off land within land," claiming their own space, like warring nations fighting over territory. There follows a list of the sorts of geographical arrangements that represent the school's dynamics. All these geographical metaphors describe ways in which certain groups assert themselves or ostracize others. These metaphors are taken from colonialism (territories, satellite states, enclaves, islands) or else segregative urbanism (states of emergency, hangouts, ghettoes). The school, therefore, is organized in a similar way to the colonial world that the novel critiques. "There were no maps" to record these arrangements, but the narrator implies that this geography is known to all. 

Note that the narrator's depiction here is primarily metaphorical rather than literal. In all of the descriptions of life at Glenard Oak, students from various social groups are packed together into the school's small courtyard, intermingling with one another. This results in Irie, Millat, and Joshua, who wouldn't usually spend time as a group, being dragged in front of the principal together for marijuana possession. The school's social dynamics make it seem like there are vast, warlike nations at play, but in reality, their conflict often comes from being packed into a small space. 

The narrator describes England as a "gigantic mirror" that doesn't reflect Irie. This metaphor claims that people can draw their identity from their native country by feeling "reflected" in it. In other words, English people who look like other English people will feel more English. Irie, on the other hand, does not feel reflected in England's "gigantic mirror," making her feel like an outsider not just for her weight but also for her nationality. The metaphor is especially cruel given that Irie has been peering into real mirrors, analyzing her appearance in various clothes, trying to fit in, and yet still finds she is not "reflected" in broader society.

A Punnett square, as taught in many grade school biology classes, is a simple diagram to describe the probability of inheritance of dominant and recessive traits, usually represented in upper- and lowercase letters, respectively. Millat is fully Bengali, represented by his BB allele. By intermarrying with Aryan people (i.e., those from the "Aryan race," the pseudoscientific hypothetical ancestors of a unified White race), his children would have mixed traits from both, eventually leaving "a legacy of unrecognizable great-grandchildren." The narrator turns the Punnett square metaphor into a joke, as the "a"s representing "Aryan" start piling up until they become a scream of terror: "Aaaaaaa!"

Race is not a strict genetic reality, but a complex result of genetic inheritance mixed with cultural, societal, and political factors. Because of this, Alsana's Punnett square is metaphorical: races cannot actually be defined by simple dominant and recessive traits. However, colonialist ideology has often been justified by scientific racism, which claims that races have fundamental biological differences. Those who believe such a thing would not take this passage as metaphorical at all. The novel, especially through the Futuremouse project, is especially interested in genetics and what is fundamental about a person (or any organism) as compared to the choices they make. This passage, though funny, reminds the reader that simple genetic theories have real consequences when applied to real people.