White Teeth

White Teeth ' by Zadie Smith

In the novel White Teeth ' Zadie Smith depicts modern society , its values and traditions , hopes and everyday life . This novel is full of different symbols which help to unveil the message of the story and force readers to interpret events and behavior of the characters in a peculiar way . Archie Jones , the protagonist of the novel , a war veteran who tries to overcome depression and psychological pressure caused by war

Thesis Archie likes to flip a coin in moments of indecision which symbolizes his liberation and

freedom from social norms and the second chance Life gives to him

A coin symbolizes destiny and fate for Archie . The main change concerns his understanding of the chance and destiny as an invisible hand which rules his life . For Smith , a person has to obey to general rules and law based on traditions and morals . The irony of indecision depicts the gap between expected , traditional , usual things and reality people try to escape . Smith underlines that a coin has double meaning which can symbolize great expectations and hopes , but it can be interpreted as fate and death Archie wants to face . Smith changes this tradition depicting that a coin gives everyone a chance to try his destiny for the worse . Solemnly he flipped a coin (heads , life , tails , death ) and felt nothing in particular when he found himself staring at the dancing lion (Smith , 2000 ,

. 10 . Smith leaves it to readers to decide the significance and impact of these manipulations on Archie 's life . To some extent , symbol of a coin underlines unimportance of life and Archie 's indifference towards death . He had flipped a coin and stood staunchly by its conclusions . This was a decided-upon suicide . In fact it was a New Year 's resolution (Smith , 2000 ,

.3 . It seems that subconsciously Archie is looking for a death which he has escaped during the war . Smith depicts that this is the most difficult time for all soldiers to come to grips with changes occurred in their society . In death as he was in life and all that (Smith , 2000 ,

.4

The flip of a coin symbolizes of the protagonist 's life . Probably , a coin itself is the same thing where a chance determines the destiny of every person . In practice , it is possible and desirable to create new law and values , because new environment forces people to change their personal priorities and morals . It is possible to say that the flip of a coin becomes a kind of religion preached by Archie which influenced life of all people around him . On the other hand , Smith underlines unimportance of the coin which confronted with eternal values and virtues : Nor did it lie in gender faith , their relative ability to dance to a syncopated rhythm or open their fists to reveal a handful of gold coins . The real difference was far more fundamental . It was in the earth . It was in the sky (Smith 2000 , p...