LITERATURE TERM PAPER

SUBMITTED BY

RIDA RASOOL HASHMI

SAMINA WAHID
DATE OF SUBMISSION

29TH APRIL 2011

various customs ,traditions, religions and lifestyles .Where these cultures are coming together

in a melting pot of the culturally diverse urban setting of London. The protagonist of White

Teeth is Archibald Jones with whom the story starts and around his life ,friends and family

takes the reader to appreciate the diversity of the world we live in specially when it is in a

place like Willesden. All the characters in this book are of importance as they give this book

the nourishment a story needs to hold on its place. Mian Samad Iqbal , Millat ,Hortense and

Ryan are some of those characters which give it its nourishing story line for they set the

mood for the latter story to fold out as well as then take it forward to its end.

Zadie Smith laid out the setting for cultural variety and religious diversity by selecting its

characters form the realistic settings of London which bears people from India , West India ,

Bangladesh and England itself . She tends to portray life as a means of mingling with people

who are most unlike us yet we still live with them happily or grudgingly and always tend to

know them whether we like it or not. Her representation of religion in the essence is same as

cultural diversity because she attempts to portray how people coming from different religions

and cultures start bearing with each other on the basis of mutual religious understanding or

start hating each other on the same subjects misunderstanding not only this ,she also attempts

to show how people tend to use religion as a tool to get to their aims and how it is not always

used for divine guidance but as a means of hypocrisy and manipulation for desired or

undesired action
The ways in which Smith sets out to portray religion is through her characters Hortense,

Clara , Ryan ,Samad, Magid ,Millat ,Marcus , Joyce and through the organizations of KEVIN

and FATE.

White teeth if taken into account for its religious representation attempts to portray how

people internalize their religions and as life and try to live by it as well as make their families,

friends and relatives live according to it but when they fail to do as directed by the divine

guidance than how they attempt to hide ,rectify or manipulate religion so that they could do

as they please without having the guilt of doing so or simply leave the faith by referring to it

as incorrect.

THE DIFFERENT STORIES PORTRAYING RELIGION

1. The story of white teeth unfurls on its religious aspects with Hortense, a staunch

believer of the faith Jehovah’s Witness, who is deeply believing and strictly enforcing

the faith in herself and seeks to make her daughter Clara and the people around her

also followers of her faith in order to save them from the dooms day.Where Hortense

belief remains as a characteristic of life for her ,it becomes suffocating for Clara

(Hortense’s daughter) who cannot live a normal life as a normal teenager with an

immigrant identity because of her mothers’ strictness which she justified with her

faiths law and guidance. Thus Clara eventually rejects her faith secretly by dating

Ryan her crush and plays the character who portrays religion as a thing which restricts

peoples life from becoming what they desire. She openly rejects the faith and despises

it even more when the first love of her life Ryan also becomes a staunch believer of

Jehova’s Witness.

2. White Teeth introduces another religion making the story more unique with the

introduction of Mia Samad Iqbal and his religion Islam and identity of Muslim.
Samad a Bengali man who comes to live in London for a better life portrays the image

a person who is taught to embrace religion as life yet cannot follow its divine law of

guidance and is often tempted away from it when he wants to enjoy the luxuries of

life such as drinking, sexual experience out of marriage, masturbation. Yet what

happens after the temptation has been fulfilled are immense feeling of guilt and regret.

Although these feelings make him lament his deeds yet he still does not give them up

and makes up his own version of understanding religion and lines so that he could

justify his actions and continue with them .The two main fake themed version of

Islam which he used to justify religion was in 2 lines that he spoke “cant say fairer

than that” and “for the pure everything is pure”. He marries a young Bengali woman

Alsana and haves twin sons Magid and Millat with her. Both his sons have different

personalities with one of them Magid a border line genius and Millat a born naughty

and aggressive child like his mother Alsana. Samad a week man of religion and

principles deeply criticize the environment of London as a bad place for good brought

up of his children but when his own actions are caught by his sons he understands that

it is not the environment that is bad for them but he is the influence which effects

them. Under this impression he plans to send them off to Bangladesh yet could not

afford to send both thus sends only Magid in hope to make him a good Muslim with

deep religious roots. Thus portraying how a religion can be manipulative for fulfilling

desires yet still be imposed on others and used a means of getting rewards from Allah

in hopes that if he could not do it right his sons would make him proud. Although he

plans well but his plans backfires as both his sons either turn into a gangster in the

name of religion or an atheist both showing that too much or too less of religion can

lead to destructive circumstances rather than creative ones.

the organization of KEVIN which uses religion as a tool to impose their rule and

thinking on other people as well as authorizing violence in the name of religion as just

thus portraying that religion is not only a means of manipulation or living one’s life

but also a source through which people can cause severe damage to others with wrong

justifications and manipulating religious devotion into becoming negative.

THE CONSIDERATION OF RELIGION WITH RESPECT TO CHARACTERS

1. HORTENSE:

One of the most deeply religious characters in the book Hortense represent the

aspect of religion in which the followers of the faith only believe that the meaning

of their existence is to please the lord and can go to any extents to prove this to

their god. Her belief exceeds the limits of patience and she ends up becoming a

very strict person on her daughter making her daughter run away from the faith

which she so dearly embraces.

2. RYAN:

He is the only character in white teeth who is a non believer of any faith and

converts to a religion and finds solace of life in it . He is the portrayal of the

aspect of religious people who truly turn to their faiths and stay there to fulfill

what is required of them . He is the only character of the book who truly finds

solace in his faith and does not use it for any ulterior motives.

3. SAMAD

Samad is the character of White Teeth who truly represents hypocrisy of people of

any given faith who believe it to be true yet are unable to spend their lives in

accordance to them but claim to be spending it according to the faith deceiving

themselves and others too. He also is the person who would go to any lengths to
 prove that he belongs to the faith and is performing according to it which is

defined in his actions when he sends Magid off to Bangladesh. He is the

representation of a huge population of Muslims who have forgotten the divine

scripture and only follow it as rituals without meanings rather than a lifestyle.

4. MILLAT

He is the representation of those people who are looking for their identities but

forget it in process of finding it and instead of becoming what they sought to be,

become a means of violence with their young and zealous energies misguided. He

is the representation of people who become terrorists or use religion to justify the

acts of violence and do not feel guilty over their acts. He is the representation of

people who use religion for ulterior motives blindly.

CONCLUSION

Zadie Smith tries to represent religion in a neutral way and attempts to define the way it is

being used around by different people as well as Atheist in order to achieve different

meanings and aims of life . she attempts to do it neutrally but in the end after the above

analysis of the religious representation it is more likely that religion is a source of negativity

more than positive outcomes in the book White Teeth but that is a means of molding of the

story to become what it has be and not an attempt of attack on religion with core intention.