Open AccessTransformative dystopia in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth
Author(s) -
Hristo Boev,
AUTHOR_ID
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
lûboslovie/lûboslovie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2603-5111
pISSN - 1314-6033
DOI - 10.46687/bxzg5617
Subject(s) - dystopia , transformative learning , bulgarian , turkish , white (mutation) , multiculturalism , aesthetics , art , history , sociology , literature , political science , philosophy , law , pedagogy , linguistics , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
This paper explores a hitherto unexplored issue in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), and namely the meaningfulness of the fact that two of the main characters in the novel, the Englishman Alfred Archibald Jones (Archie) and the Indian Bengali – Samad Iqbal, go through an extreme dystopian experience leading to their discovery of multiculturalism during World War II in the spaces of a defunct British tank and of a little Bulgarian village near the Greek and Turkish border. The paper examines some of the cultural incongruities in the novel, which renders the “Bulgarian” experience there locked in a dystopian space generated by the Bulgarian village as well as delineates the transformative significance of this experience in Archie’s and Samad’s awakening to multiculturalism.