Certitude, Ambiguity, and Miscalculation in White Teeth Maya Simkin College

In White Teeth, Zadie Smith develops characters who obsess over preciseness, categorizing, and decisions. This is why Samad’s punishment for making the sole decision to send their son off to Bangladesh is Alsana leaving him in a constant state of ambiguity. ““Maybe none, Samad Miah. Maybe all.” Alsana refuses to answer even the most trivial of Samad’s questions with certainty. The unknown drives Samad up the wall and even worse, his son comes back more “English” than “Bangladeshi” anyways, wrecking Samad’s hopes for one son coming out like he wanted and definitively proving his choice to send Magid incorrect. It seems like Smith’s book punishes those who seek purity in race or culture. The more characters strive towards precision and correct calculation, the more they are struck down by the book’s fate. In this paper I will primarily go through the characters of Samad, Archie, and Irie to identify their tendencies regarding certainty and analyse how that element of their personalities shapes them. I will relate these elements to how damned the characters are to show how the book makes the case for acceptance of fluidity over multiculturalism.

As briefly shown in the previous paragraph, Samad Iqbal is determined to be sure. He...