Friday, June 04, 2010

Characters in "White Teeth"

This novel has a fairly large and diverse cast of characters. Which character's point of view do you most identify with? Or were most sympathetic to?
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11 comments:

Erin said...

I definitely identified most with Irie, specifically her adolescent awkwardness, her unrequited love, her desire for a little normality and a little adventure.

2:46 PM, June 07, 2010
Erin said...

I definitely identified most with Irie, specifically her adolescent awkwardness, her unrequited love, her desire for a little normality and a little adventure.

2:47 PM, June 07, 2010
Erin said...

Sorry, blogger sucks.

2:48 PM, June 07, 2010
Erin said...

I definitely identified most with Irie, specifically her adolescent awkwardness, her unrequited love, her desire for a little normality and a little adventure.

3:06 PM, June 07, 2010
kc said...

I identified most with Irie, too! She was also sassy and supremely rational most of the time (not when she was drooling after the unworthy Isrrael ... er, I mean Millat).

I didn't understand her sexual and emotional behavior with the two brothers, but I was glad that she did not get hung up on that in the end. It was kind of like her hair-straightening experience. She was all gung-ho and determined to get this thing she desperately wanted, but she realized fairly soon afterward that it wasn't going to make her happy, that it wasn't who she really was, and that going down that road, in both the case of the hair and the boy, would mean a lifetime of pain and expense and subduing her own nature to please others (who were not going to be all that pleased anyway).

I like, too, that she ended up back in Jamaica! It seemed fitting for her, oddly more than for anyone else in the book, for her to return to those roots.

3:28 PM, June 07, 2010
cl said...

Erin, I

4:05 PM, June 07, 2010
cl said...

Erin, I can't get a feel with which character stuck out to you the most.

(Hehe. Just kidding.)

Yes, I thought the story picked up best with Irie. Like I had my hero. She was an epicenter to all the insanity.

4:06 PM, June 07, 2010
cl said...

Oh, look. I double-posted, too. Fuck you, Blogger!

4:07 PM, June 07, 2010
cl said...

I appreciated, too, how Irie finally left off from the Chalfens, even retreating to her nutty grandmother and possible father in the process. She gave up those false, Chalfen roots and went back to her own.

4:09 PM, June 07, 2010
cl said...

I didn't hate Millat. He was confused, and he was a bit of a hustler, but I think he recognized his good looks were what drew everyone to him (Joyce Chalfen included), and if they were going to be so superficial, he might as well take advantage of them. Had he treated Irie the same way, that would be one thing, but I think he genuinely cared for her. (Including realizing they shouldn't have slept together, which, unfortunately, is how it goes for some longtime friends.)

He was earthy, and his brother was on Planet Elsewhere. His brother was smart, but he wasn't really connected to anyone. He wanted to live apart, and Millat would run with anyone for a taste of what they were about.

4:11 PM, June 07, 2010
kc said...

cl, what did you make of the fact that Irie ended up with Joshua Chalfen in the end? I guess maybe we're supposed to think that both kids escaped the Chalfen family.

And did you get the sense that Hortense, back in Jamaica, was maybe going to shed some of her crackpot religious views? There's no mention — is there? — of what becomes of the creepy Ryan in the end.

9:25 PM, June 07, 2010

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