How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
So there existed fathers who dealt in the present, who didn't drag ancient history around like a ball and chain. So there were men who were not neck-deep and sinking in the quagmire of the past. (12.326)
After dealing with Archie and Samad, Irie is pretty blown away by Marcus Chalfen. Why do Archie and Samad drag the past around with them everywhere they go? Why do they need it so much?
Quote #2
The rest is that terrible thing: history. (13.28)
In White Teeth, history takes up a lot of space. It is required to explain just about everything that's going on in the present. And it isn't always pretty.
Quote #3
"I see. Is she Hindu? Muslim? She ain't Sikh, is she?"
"That is the worst of it," said Samad, his voice breaking. "English. White. English."
Shiva shook his head. "I been out with a lot of white birds, Samad. A lot. Sometimes it's worked, sometimes it ain't. Two lovely American girls. Fell head over heels for a Parisian stunner. Even spent a year with a Romanian. But never an English girl. Never works. Never."
"Why?" asked Samad, attacking his thumbnail with his teeth and awaiting some fearful answer, some edict from on high. "Why not, Shiva Bhagwati?"
"Too much history" was Shiva's enigmatic answer, as he dished up the Chicken Bhuna. "Too much bloody history." (6.216-220)
Shiva says that it will never work between a Bengali Muslim man like Samad and a white English woman like Poppy Burt-Jones (not that Samad wants to leave Alsana for her). There is too much history between their countries and races for even a relationship between individuals to survive. History is powerful stuff.
Quote #4
But Irie was sixteen and everything feels deliberate at that age. To her, this was yet another item in a long list of parental hypocrisies and untruths, this was another example of the Jones/ Bowden gift for secret histories, stories you never got told, history you never entirely uncovered, rumor you never unraveled, which would be fine if every day was not littered with clues, and suggestions; shrapnel in Archie's leg... photo of strange white Grandpa Durham... the name "Ophelia" and the word "madhouse"... a cycling helmet and an ancient mudguard... smell of fried food from O'Connell's... faint memory of a late-night car journey, waving to a boy on a plane... letters with Swedish stamps, Horst Ibelgaufts, if not delivered return to sender... (14.77)
Why do some families, like the Bowden/Jones families, bury their histories and turn them into secrets, while others, like Samad, talk nonstop about their family histories (Mangal Pande anyone?)?
Quote #5
"My Niece-of-Shame believes in the talking cure, eh?" says Alsana, with something of a grin. "Talk, talk, talk and it will be better. Be honest, slice open your heart and spread the red stuff around. But the past is made of more than words, dearie. We married old men, you see? These bumps"—Alsana pats them both—"they will always have daddy-long-legs for fathers. One leg in the present, one in the past. No talking will change this. Their roots will always be tangled. And roots get dug up. Just look in my garden—birds at the coriander every bloody day." (4.134)
Alsana credits their old age for the way Archie and Samad can't let go of the past. Old men, she calls them. The past, according to Alsana, is a tangled thing, and it is not the kind of thing that will just let us be. This is the idea we are left with at the end of the novel, as Archie, Samad, and Dr. Sick stand in the same room once again, almost fifty years after they were all together the first time.
Quote #6
She tried to be reasonable. She asked him: Why are you never here? Why do you spend so much time with the Indian? But a pat on the back, a kiss on the cheek, he's grabbing his coat, his foot's out the door and always the same old answer: Me and Sam? We go way back. She couldn't argue with that. They went back to before she was born. (3.10)
Does Clara accept this as an answer? Is "going way back" a good enough reason for Archie to spend more time at O'Connell's than with Clara? The bigger questions here are: how does Clara understand the past? How does she understand personal histories?
Quote #7
A wall was coming down. It was something to do with history. It was an historic occasion. No one really knew quite who had put it up or who was tearing it down or whether this was good, bad, or something else; no one knew how tall it was, how long it was, or why people had died trying to cross it, or whether they would stop dying in future, but it was educational all the same; as good an excuse for a get-together as any. It was a Thursday night, Alsana and Clara had cooked, and everybody was watching history on TV. (9.238)
There is a sense of ambiguity in this passage about the fall of the Berlin Wall. History is always in the process of becoming history, but people are much less often aware of it happening around them. Yet, on one otherwise normal Thursday night, the Iqbals and the Joneses watch history on TV.
Quote #8
"[…] you're all he's got. He needs you. You two have history. You really know him. Look how confused he is. One day he's Allah this, Allah that. Next minute it's big busty blondes, Russian gymnasts, and a smoke of the sinsemilla. He doesn't know his arse from his elbow. Just like his father. He doesn't know who he is. But you know him, at least a little, you've known all the sides of him. And he needs that. You're different." (11.202)
Irie and Millat have history, according to Neena, but Irie doesn't want history. Millat says something very similar to this to Irie; it's clear that their shared experiences are important to him as well. But Irie wants something that exists in the now.
Quote #9
Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. (1.88)
Ancient abilities. Fake beards. This is one interesting passage. What gender stereotypes are being evoked here? Do you think modern laws still make such escapes from family responsibilities easy?
Quote #10
It escalates in moments, and they make a mockery of that idea, a neutral place; instead they cover the room with history— past, present, and future history (for there is such a thing)— they take what was blank and smear it with the stinking […] of the past like excitable, excremental children. They cover this neutral room in themselves. Every gripe, the earliest memories, every debated principle, every contested belief. (17.221)
The Past = 1,000,000, Neutrality = 0. The past scores pretty much all the points in this novel.