White Teeth Analysis

"Oh fuck me, another leaflet? You can't fucking move-pardon my French-but you can't move for leaflets in Norf London these days" (373). Leaflets, brochures, letters, and other forms of publication and circulation are recurrent motifs in White Teeth (much to the annoyance of people like Abdul-Mickey) and Zadie Smith explores the humorous and poignant results of her characters' struggles to communicate. Smith characters have causes, and throughout her narrative they fruitlessly and comically attempt to press their own beliefs on others, refute others' beliefs, and convert others to the correct way of thinking. Leaflets and other forms of publication are the tools they use to proliferate their ideologies and-as Ryan Topps declares to Marcus Chalfen,
It mean I presumed" (418), Smith's characters all suffer anxiety over their own historical inconsequence. Upon finding his father's name, Millat sneers at his father's small contribution, thinking: "It just meant you're nothing...a man who had spent eighteen years in a strange land and made no more mark than this" (419). Samad believes wholeheartedly that his ancestor Mangal Pande is a hero, but Archie disagrees, arguing, "All right, then: Pande. What did he achieve? Nothing" (213)! Though every book save one describes Pande as a military traitor, Samad chooses to believe the one "bound in a tan leather and covered in light dust that denotes something incredibly precious" which claims the little known Mangal Pande "succeeded in laying the foundations of the Independence to be won in 1947"-in 1857 (215). People are arbitrary and believe the ideas they will, and when an idea somehow relates to their self-concept, like Magal Pande's heroism to Samad's personal history, it becomes even more entrenched. Joshua Chalfen becomes a militant animal rights activist out of resentment toward his father, not because he actually cares deeply about animals. Even as he rants to Irie about the injustice of the battery chicken's life, he admits that he is not yet a vegetarian ("I'm becoming a fucking vegetarian") and that he has not given up animal products ("I'm giving up
These three texts embody the conflict of new generations with older generations as social and cultural values shift. Disgrace and Things Fall Apart are more austere presentations of the postcolonial genre and the conflicts they explore are not definitively concluded but are left ambiguous. Things Fall Apart summarises the conclusion of the postcolonial struggle in general and the cause of conflict within the postcolonial family, “what is good among one people is an abomination among others”. The difficulty of younger generations in overcoming these conflicting influences on their identity and character is a serious concern in both. The suicide of Okwonkwo is relatively unexpected and extremely ambiguous; Achebe leaves the reader to assess the impact of the colonisers on the Ibo. Similarly, David’s character disintegrates and his actions are often difficult to