History, by definition, is a survey of the human yesteryear. It is a construction that orders and investigates human clip and infinite. In White Teeth, Zadie Smith presents the histories of three different households. Alternatively of composing her novel as a simple chronological narration, she uses two different types of historical clip degrees: recent and distant history. The recent history of the characters ‘ lives takes topographic point between 1974 and 1999. The writer links the day-to-day modus operandi of the Iqbal and the Jones household to prominent political events of the period. Her protagonists remark on the Satanic Verses contention, the blackwash of Indira Ghandi and the autumn of the Berlin Wall which are indirectly connected to their personal struggles. The reunion of East and West Germany in 1989, for illustration, ironically mirrors the reunion of Magid and Millat after their long geographical separation. Smith ‘s manner of taking the reader back into the last three decennaries before the novel ‘s publication is a method that Victorian writers, e.g. George Eliot in Middlemarch, have already used to develop generational, societal and political struggles within a part.

The narrative strand of recent history is interrupted by flashbacks to of import events of distant history: the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the temblor in the West Indies in 1907 or the Second World War in the Balkans in 1945. While the method of retrieving the recent yesteryear helps to develop a bird’s-eye position of modern-day society, distant history presents the colonial background of the characters and the fortunes under which they have come together. Smith already explains this in the novel ‘s epigraph, which is quoted from The Tempest, Act II, scene I: ‘What is past is prologue ‘ . Interventions in Britain ‘s colonial history have influenced the characters ‘ motives and their individuality jobs in the present postcolonial epoch. The troubled matter between Poppy Burt-Jones and Samad, for illustration, must be examined under consideration of colonialism which has badly distorted people ‘s sentiment refering the relationship between white English adult females and Asiatic work forces. Shiva points out that such relationships are bound to neglect because of the load of the yesteryear in a conversation with Samad: ‘Too much history at that place, adult male. You see: It ai n’t merely you she ‘s angry with, is it? ‘ No, adult male, history, history. It ‘s all brown adult male go forthing English adult female, it ‘s all Nehru stating See-ya to Madam Britannia. ‘ ( 202 ) .

Zadie Smith uses history as the dominant subject in the novel. She besides uses dentitions as the taking motive to research the individuality building of her characters. Root canals, grinders and eyetooths resemble different phases in a figure ‘s yesteryear, present and future development. Despite the battle of distancing themselves from their cultural heritage and their past experiences, the novel ‘s characters can non to the full escape history. The storyteller points out that particularly immigrants are non ‘blank people ‘ who can easy submerse with ‘Happy Multicultural Land ‘ ( 465 ) but instead people who ‘ can non get away their history any more than you can lose your shadow ‘ ( 466 ) . However, the characters in White Teeth have wholly different attitudes towards history. Populating harmonizing to his slogan ‘Go heterosexual past Go! , Archie-boy, ‘ collect two hundred and do n’t for gawd ‘s interest expression back ‘ ( 18 ) , Archie thinks that merely destiny and happenstance determine the way of life. In contrast to this, Samad believes in the ageless force of history: ‘the coevalss ‘ speak to each other ‘ life is non a line ‘ it ‘s a circle ‘ That is why you can non read destiny ; you must see it ‘ ( 119 ) . He does non see his cultural heritage as a load but prides himself in holding a long Bengali household history and being related to the mutineer Mangal Pande. Samad attempts to determine the life of his boy Magid by conveying him back to his topographic point of beginning and therefore closer to his cultural roots. Ironically, it is Millat ‘s development which reveals hints of heritage and the round character of history. As a overzealous Rebel neglecting to assassinate Marcus Chalfen due to his drunk status, he closely resembles his ascendant Mangal Pande:

‘Millat ‘ is non following instructions, at least non the sort that are passed from oral cavity to talk or written on pieces of paper. His is an imperative secreted in the cistrons and the cold steel in his interior pocket is the reply to a claim made on him long ago. He ‘s a Pandy deep down. And there ‘s mutiny in his blood ‘ ( 525 ) .

Marcus Chalfen has yet another attack to history. Through his familial experiments, he tries to actively step in into the natural class of life. By foretelling the life span of FutureMouse that is genetically engineered to endure certain complaints and dice at a fixed day of the month, he can predetermine history. As history is a important factor in building a sense of ego, non holding a history is tantamount with missing individuality and position. To accomplish some kind of acknowledgment, marginalized characters who are denied an ain history attempt to do a grade in history. In World War II, Samad wants him and Archie to execute a heroic title in the devastation of immorality which will be remembered in history. Towards the terminal of the novel, several junior-grade extremist groups, FATE, KEVIN and the Jehova ‘s Witnesss, attempt to compose history at Marcus Chalfen ‘s presentation of the FutureMouse through planned activism.

Of all characters, Millat has the strongest desire to come in history as a glorious guardian of Islam and a gangster-like terrorist. Smith plays with the impression of how history is constructed. As a scientific subject, ‘history confirms, every bit much as any eleboration of the discourse of modernness, the domination of the modern, advanced, civilised West over the premodern, crude, colonised society ‘ . By juxtaposing the family tree of the Chalfen and the Bowden household, she draws a comparing between the written history of the colonisers and the disconnected history of the colonized.

While the Chalfen ‘s lineage is well-documented and their household tree reaches back into the seventeenth century, the Bowden family tree is based on narratives and rumors and can bearly be traced back for three coevalss. It is marked by the effects of British colonialism on the West Indies and reflects the relationship between white male Masterss and black female retainers through the mixture of Anglo-European and African-Jamaican cistrons. By stating the Chalfens that her household is ‘more of an unwritten tradition ‘ ( 339 ) , she places it in the realm non-Western civilization. Samad is obsessed with the thought of ‘correcting ‘ historiography and reconstructing his great-grandfather Mangal Pande to his righteous topographic point in colonial history as a great revolutionist of the Indian Mutiny of 1857. He refutes dominant Eurocentric historiography and rewrites colonial history from the position of the colonized as a agency of determining his ain individuality and deriving self-esteem. By invariably reiterating his version of the Mangal Pande narrative, he creates ‘a contrary narration, which claims to offer a more immediate or ‘truer ‘ image of post-colonial life, a record of those experiences omitted from imperial history, is inserted into the historical record ‘ . Dominant historiography is non ever indistinguishable with the historical truth. To do the reader inquiry dominant history-writing, the storyteller gives another illustration of undocumented history in the instance of scientist Wilkins whose scientific accomplishments in developing the coiling DNA theoretical account with his co-workers Watson and Crick where forgotten. Merely those two entered the biological science books as scientific masterminds: ‘Wikins won the Nobel in medical specialty with Crick and Watson.But no mark of Wilkins in the exposure. Just Crick and Watson. Watson and Crick. History likes lone masterminds or dual Acts of the Apostless. ‘ ( 336,337 ) . Smith satirizes the thought of documental history by including a mock timeline on The Post-War Reconstruction and Growth of O’Connell ‘s Pool House ( 245-247 ) . O’Connell ‘s is a topographic point of stableness and continuity in which things have remained the same for decennaries. To Samad and Archie, the saloon is a safety from the outside universe in which history, beginning and position ceases to affair: ‘you could be without household in O’Connell ‘s, without ownerships or position, without past glorification or future hope ‘ you could walk through that door with nil and be precisely the same as everybody else in there ‘ ( 244 ) . Furthermore, it is a topographic point in which history is preserved through the retelling and memory of events and for the supporters, the topographic point besides possesses history because they have experienced many things at that place, held of import conversations and reached important determinations.

Zadie Smith does non specify flexible, intercrossed individualities in negative footings as missing stableness but alternatively, the immature migrator coevals is presented as being better equipped for a globalized and fractured universe. In a clip of postmodern deconstructionism, postcolonial authors like Zadie Smith are get the better ofing impressions of fixed individualities and cultural differences by building new individualities. White Teeth in non so much a piece of ‘ethnic ‘ or ‘subaltern ‘ literature as an basically modern novel about urban British civilization. At the terminal of the novel the storyteller does non propose a bright hereafter or a perfect signifier of sing the universe and building one ‘s individuality. The last two paragraphs explain Smith ‘s ideas and steer the reader back to the concluding event of New Year ‘s Eve:

‘But certainly to state these tall narratives and others like them would be to rush the myth, the wicked prevarication, that the yesteryear is ever tense and the hereafter, perfect. And as Archie knows, it ‘s non like that ‘ Archie, for one, watched the mouse ‘ He watched it dash along the tabular array and through the custodies of those who wished to trap it down. Travel on my boy! thought Archie. ( 541-542 )

This merely distinguishes between two groups of people: those concentrating on the past and trusting on history, and those go forthing things up to destine and looking into the hereafter.