White Teeth Chapters 1 & 2 Summary & Analysis

Chapters 1 & 2

Summary: Chapter 1, The Peculiar Second Marriage of Archie Jones

Early in the morning on New Year’s Day 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones tries to commit suicide by gassing himself inside a sealed car. Archie parks in a lot that belongs to a halal butcher. Mo Hussein-Ishmael, the butcher, is launching his usual dawn attack on the pigeons. Mo forces the car window open and rescues Archie.

Archie Jones settles on suicide because he cannot overcome his dull childhood, a failed marriage, and a dead-end job. Archie’s time in the war was nothing much. His greatest moment of glory, competing as a track cyclist in the 1948 London Olympics, was accidentally erased from official records. Archie still gets postcards from Horst Ibelgaufts, a Swede who tied him for thirteenth place. Archie’s last thought, just before he passes out from gas fumes, is of Daria, with whom Archie and Horst celebrated their victory.

But thanks to Mo Hussein-Ishmael, Archie now wants to live. Archie drives eight circuits on a roundabout and takes off down an unfamiliar street. He sees a house with a banner in rainbow colors, advertising an End of the World Party. Archie rings the doorbell, gets invited into the house by a man named Merlin, drinks with various people, and argues about World War II. Archie sits on the stairs, recovering from that argument, when Clara Bowden descends. Clara is tall and Black, nineteen years old, and the most beautiful person Archie has ever seen. Clara and Archie get married six weeks later.

Summary: Chapter 2, Teething Trouble

Clara Bowden comes from Lambeth, by way of Jamaica. Clara has a history with Ryan Topps, the man she is running away from when she meets Archie Jones. Ryan Topps is highly unpopular, so Clara thinks of Ryan as a kindred spirit. Clara lives with her parents. Her father, Marcus Bowden, lives on the dole and never moves from his armchair or does anything except watch television. Her mother, Hortense Bowden, is a devout Jehovah’s Witness who is planning for the end of the world, which she believes will come on January 1, 1975. Hortense insists that Clara help her pass out pamphlets about the event.

Clara is passing out pamphlets when she rings Ryan Topps’s doorbell and meets her hero. Soon Clara and Ryan are going out with each other. Ryan goes to Merlin’s commune to smoke dope and takes Clara along. Clara entertains the commune members with tales of the end of the world and convinces them to have a party.

Meanwhile, Ryan joins Hortense in trying to reform Clara. He takes Clara out on his motor scooter to lecture her. On the way home, Ryan crashes the scooter. Ryan walks away unharmed, but Clara loses her top front teeth. Ryan spends New Year’s Eve praying with Hortense. Clara rings in the New Year at the commune party. The next morning, she meets Archie Jones.

Analysis: Chapters 1 & 2

In the opening chapter of White Teeth, the reader meets the main character, Archie Jones, and discovers the narrator’s distinctive voice. Author Zadie Smith uses the technique of the third-person omniscient narrator, who observes the action from the outside and sees inside all the characters equally. Although the emerges, someone with a sense of the ridiculous, worldly, cynical wisdom, and a gift of compassion for human failure.

Absurd, even outrageous situations and dialogue make it clear that large parts of White Teeth are satirical. For example, the opening scene, in which Archie Jones tries to commit suicide, also includes the savage attack by Mo Hussein-Ishmael and his assistant on the flock of pigeons that infest Mo’s halal butcher shop. Thanks to the pigeons, Mo finds Archie in time to save his life. There is more broad comedy in Archie’s visit to the commune and his encounters with the hippies who have just thrown an End of the World party. Archie’s extreme step of trying to take his own life explains the emotional high that makes him fall instantly in love with Clara. Archie goes from an ordinary existence and place in mainstream society to an extraordinary one, as the older white husband of a young Black woman.

In the second chapter, attention shifts to Clara Bowden, a teenager who wants to belong but who stands out from the crowd because of her size, race, and religion. Clara’s appearance¬¬¬ (she is flamboyant, Black, and six feet tall) creates a striking visual image. Her attachment to Ryan is the normal rebellion of a teenager brought up in a highly religious household. The narrator exaggerates Hortense’s expectations about the end of the world for comic effect and to make Clara’s rebellion even more understandable. The narrator adds irony by using Clara’s pamphlet distribution to bring Clara and Ryan together. In a further satiric twist, Clara and Ryan meet secretly for a while, only to have Hortense befriend Ryan and convert him to her cause.

The first two chapters also introduce themes that will recur throughout the novel, such as the purpose of existence. Archie Jones questions existence itself in the opening suicide scene and his subsequent discussions at the commune. The commune members talk about “positive karmic energy,” so when Archie Jones and Clara Bowden meet by accident, the meeting seems intentional. Chapter 2 introduces Hortense Bowden, a woman with a clear purpose in life: to warn people about the end of the world. More thoughts related to the purpose of life appear in letters from Horst Ibelgaufts, Archie’s Swedish pen pal. Similar letters will appear at decision points in Archie’s life, and Archie will come to think of the letters as omens or talismans.

Next section Chapters 3 & 4