Zadie Smith’s White Teeth epigraph “What is past is prologue,” means that what has occurred in the past has led up to what is happening in the future or present. Smith illustrates the struggles three families go through for identity, legacy, striving for a good future while holding onto the traditions of the past, and maintaining ones religion or beliefs. Through the text, the thematic significance of the past occurs often with the recurring flashbacks which sometimes goes as far back to 1857; with Samad’s mutinous great-grandfather and 1907 with Irie’s past about her great-grandmother and white colonial great-grandfather. The novel takes a comical and ironical approach to alleviate the tension that is actually occurring in the narrative. Samad is constantly trying to figure out his place in his new home, he has difficulty with reconciling his desire for tradition and the influences of the Western World. He displays a longing to return home, in a conversation with Shiva he says, “I don’t wish to be a modern man! I wish to live as I was always meant to! I wish to return to the East!” (200). All he longs for is to have children who uphold their Bangladeshi culture, yet he says to Archie that the way his boys, Millat and Magid are growing up “Shattered [his heart] into so many pieces and each piece stabbed me like a mortal wound. I kept thinking: how can I teach my boys anything, how can I show them the straight road when I have lost my own way” (260). Samad struggles with settling in England and also absorbing their ways. Like Clifford says, “Diaspora cultures thus mediate, in a lived tension, the experiences of separation and entanglement, of living here and remembering/desiring another place” (311). Samad tries to fi... ... middle of paper ... ...at place where they have just been. Because this is the other thing about immigrants (‘fugees, émigrés, travelers): they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow. (631-32) This event really shows how inescapable the past is. The brothers cannot relate to one another without referencing their histories and this reflects how their roots or routes shaped their identities and now has left them as strangers. The history of the parents taught to the children leave marks that can never be erased. They will both share the same experiences but each having a completely different ideology. Millat like Pande will lead a militant’s life and it would seem that Magid will continue trying to run from his past, although like a shadow it will never be lost. Works Cited Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. New York: Vintage/Random House, 2000.
Mark Wyman, the author of the brief essay known as Coming and Going: Round-Trip to America, had a different perspective about immigration to America from the various counties during the 1880’s through the 1930’s. A common belief, regarding the immigration to America, held that immigrates stayed in America during the massive shift of population, due to the enormous creation of factories and cities that erupted in America. The past day literature entices readers to believe that all immigrates came to America to work and eventually settled down to create their own families. It’s taught that all of these families stayed in America for their entire life span. Although despite the common belief, Wyman held to his own thoughts on the controversial debate and pioneered a new way of thinking. He believed that countless immigrates, which came from all over the world, actually only
...did through his poems. Although the themes of slavery, past and longing were depicted in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poems, he provided a different aspect in each one; portraying ‘A Drowsy Day’ of a lonely reminiscent narrator, who was trapped in their confined home as well as their mind, being unable to escape from the constant swirl of memories. He uses ‘An Old Memory’ to convey the past as positive and full of hope, although disappointed by his present day, the past remained to have a ‘subtle charm’ – contrastingly in ‘Sympathy’, the poet describes the past as ‘cruel’, thus portraying it in a more dark and unwelcome light. Arthur Miller portrays the past as full of regret for Biff, but also of ambition for his father. All of these texts portrayed the past as a place where identity was stronger, however it could be argued that the past was where slaves had no identity.
Wes (the author) has a family who wants to see him succeed. Although Wes didn’t know his father for long, the two memories he had of him and the endless stories his mother would share with him, helped guide him through the right path. His mother, made one of the biggest effects in Wes’s life when she decided to send him to military story, after seeing he was going down the wrong path. Perhaps, the other Wes’s mother tried her best to make sure he grew up to be a good person, but unfortunately Wes never listen. His brother, Tony was a drug dealer who wish he could go back in time and make the right decisions and he wanted Wes to be different than him. He didn’t want his brother to end up like him and even after he tried everything to keep Wes away from drugs, nothing worked and he gave up. As you can see, both families are very different, Wes (the author) has a family who wants him to have a bright future. Most importantly, a family who responds fast because right after his mother saw him falling down the wrong hill she didn’t hesitate to do something about it. The other Wes isn’t as lucky, as I believe since his mother already had so much pressure over keeping her job and her son Tony being involved in drugs. Same thing with Tony, he was so caught up in his own business that no one payed so much attention to
In The Marrow of Tradition, Dodie symbolizes the forthcoming of the White race in the United States. During many different instances Dodie’s life is exposed. Most of the times that his life is threatened it is in his parents’ efforts to preserve the rigid color line that separates White and Black races. His parents regul...
D'Aguiar's central purpose is to make us reflect upon American society during the slavery era and to acknowledge its realities so that we understand the capability for evil that exists in society. D'Aguair has used Whitechapel and his memories to encapsulate the brutality and inhumanity of slavery. The succeeding narratives further our understanding of the society and these are presented in a manner that forces the reader to accept D'Aguiar's judgements. The characters represent all of the voices of the society including people from different races, social status's and both genders so that the reader can see the position society imposed upon all citizens. The forms of the individual narratives help us to understand the reality of society because they allow the characters to emerge as individuals, telling their own stories with undisguised honesty. The Longest Memory is told from the oldest to the youngest character showing how society instilled its ideals on each generation in an uncompromising manner and so the stories overlap and intertwine, to illustrate this D'Aguiar has used an overwhelming tone of sadness and despair to emphasise the negative feelings that society created.
Another link between these three characters is their family ties. They highly regard their elders, and consider the effects of the decisions they make on t...
Before White Teeth begins its journey in exploring the roots of a specific and collective history through various ideological stances, Zadie Smith opens with a reminder that “What is past is prologue”. The novel’s epigraph, a gravid phrase taken from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, tells us the story about to unfold is an inevitable one, a fated account. Smith’s narrator, from the very start knows this—she knows everything there is to know. She is blunt, bemused, casual and almost shaking their head at the stories she is relaying as if trying her best to elude the true sentiment attached and rooted at its very core. Searching for meaning, Smith’s listless characters bumble about, talking at each other through ideological vagaries and crusades of self-validation—all convenient and performative social veils. White Teeth succeeds in emphasizing these themes with its idiosyncratic narrator and a stylistic use of irony, carefully weaved in the novel’s long sentences, thick paragraphs, often interrupting thoughts and added anecdotes. It is an
Sundara and her family lived in Cambodia, and we live in America. There are lots of different things about stuff we do and use to what they use. Like how we are have computers, tvs, phones, and newer technologies. In Cambodia they have radiators but they don’t have tvs or computers or phones. When you move schools and states you don’t feel like you fit in like Sundara, when she first moved to Cambodia she was trying so hard to fit into her school but in the book it said that four years later, she is now fitting in more. In Cambodia you had to date or marry somebody that was Cambodia. When Sundara is at her aunt and uncle’s house she flees from Cambodia with her aunt, Soka, her grandma, and her uncle, Naro, to escape the 1975 takeover of the
Firstly, one’s identity is largely influenced by the dynamics of one’s relationship with their father throughout their childhood. These dynamics are often established through the various experiences that one shares with a father while growing up. In The Glass Castle and The Kite Runner, Jeannette and Amir have very different relationships with their fathers as children. However the experiences they share with these men undou...
Who decides that being different is a trait to be looked down upon? In the late 19th century, it was the English Parliament with the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Bill, specifically outlawing all forms of male homosexual expression. This law, combined with the already negative attitude surrounding the gay community before and after World War I, implied that homosexuality was something to be ridiculed and scorned. This trend unfortunately continues yet over a century later. Pat Baker's Regeneration, starting on page 54 and continuing throughout the novel, repeatedly uses a non-fictional character, Siegfried Sassoon, to exhibit the unnecessary hurt that homosexuals experienced throughout history, an angle that was often neglected when homosexuals were discussed one hundred years ago. Regeneration displays the conflict that many homosexuals are tormented by when deciding whether to live for themselves and their personal needs or whether to conform in order to blend in with society.
John Edgar Wideman’s “Our Time” is an indirect narration of his brother, Robby Wideman’s life, and a parallel journey of Wideman through those times. The story is in fractions; presented in the direct point of view by Wideman, his mother and Robby: while at the same time Wideman representing all of them from his point of view. A person is more like a mid-point of a triangle, where environment, family and personality strike at him perpendicularly, while each of them is parallel to a person’s action. Robby was the youngest of his family, the reason for him being the pampered and the unruly child. The family failed to teach Robby the difference between the black people and the white people. During the time, black people were void of any rights. Robby was more like a spring, he was compressed during his youth period and when he was let go, it bounced off over the boundaries.
1. Samad’s Great grandfather, Mangal Pande, Played a huge role in history because he was the one who allegedly started a revolutionary uprising in India. Mangal Pande shot the first bullet in the Indian mutiny of 1857. Samad looks up to his great grandfather and hopes to be just like him. Samad thought he should be treated like royalty because of his blood. I believe having his great grandfather in his blood gave him hope and made him believe in himself. Samad feels the need to let everyone know who his great grandfather was. He considers himself above other because of his family history.
In her novel, White Teeth, Zadie Smith tells the story of two wartime friends, Samad Iqbal and Archie Jones, and their families in London. The story focuses on the latter half of their lives, while continuing to look back on their history as friends and comrades in arms. Alfred “Archie” Jones is an ordinary and uncertain man, preferring to make his most important decisions with the flip of a coin. The story begins with his ex-wife, Ophelia Diagilo, walking out on him apparently driven insane by his mediocrity. In a coin toss decision he attempts suicide, only to be interrupted which leads him to meet Clara, who he later marries. Clara is a Jamaican woman who is less than half his age; she has abandoned her religion as a Jehovah's Witness, and is missing her two front teeth. Together Archie and Clara have a daughter named Irie, who becomes mixed up with the three characters of the second generation. Archie's best friend is Samad Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim from Bangladesh. The two men served together in World War II in the British Army, they were part of a tank crew which worked its way through Europe in the final days of World War II, leaving Samad with a crippled right hand. Samad Iqbal immigrated to Britain and married Alsana Iqbal, where he now works as waiter and the two have twin boys, Magid and Millat, who are the same age as Irie. The reader follows these characters’ stories and their creation of their own covers stories, for as Stuart Hall puts it, “identity is within discourse, wishing representation...identity is a narrative of the self, it's the story we tell about the self in order to know who we are” (Hall). This novel focuses on the intercultural identities formed through emigration, ethnicity, generations, and religion...
Life is a series of frequent changes. At some point in life one will be tossed into circumstances that urges one to make decisive life choices and adjust particular behavior for the aim of becoming a better form of oneself. Despite one’s recognition that modifications have to be done, the process of changing is difficult. Thus, some individuals are scared to change and refuse to do so. In “ A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner uses literary tools such as the setting, symbolisms and the conflicts to develop his theme that fixation of the past will wound one’s present. Falkner exemplified that changes are inevitable and refusal to accept the progression will only result in decadence that eventually will induce negative effects in one’s life.
Everyone has an ugly past some uglier than others but that drives them to be better to head toward success. Everyone wants a better future then their past mine just happens to be that ugly past but my future is going to be so different you would think I lived like a princess in the past and everything on the path of where I want to be by the way I act. humble. My past and my future maybe have some similarities but the differences will be extreme only success in the future for me.