White Teeth (2000)
By Zadie Smith
Genetic engineering; Inherited traits; Nature/nurture; Transgenics
Oppositional forces from religious and political groups converge around the genetically modified FutureMouse, revealing in the process the inherited and environmental motivations that inform these positions.
Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal have been best friends since World War II, living and raising their families together. After a failed first marriage, Archie marries Clara Bowden, a Jamaican Jehovah’s Witness missing half her teeth. Their daughter Irie becomes a shy girl, uncomfortable with her appearance and infatuated with Samad’s son, Millat. Twins Millat and Magid are opposites from infancy; Millat is the rebel who listens to Bruce Springsteen and plays video games, and Magid is the studious son who wears ties and slacks to school. Fearful for his sons’ moral development in lax London society, but unable to afford a trip for both boys, Samad sends Magid to Bangladesh. The boy’s separation causes a rift in the family; their mother Alsana, not consulted about the permanent separation, cannot forgive Samad, and the boys grow inexorably apart. While Magid becomes invested in legal studies, popular Millat sleeps with scores of girls and smokes marijuana. When Irie, Millat and classmate Joshua are caught with marijuana, they are forced to attend weekly tutoring sessions at Joshua’s house. The Chalfens are brash, opinionated, and extremely intelligent, and soon Irie and Millat are adopted into the family. Marcus Chalfen is a geneticist who has engineered FutureMouse, altering DNA so that cancerous growths appear on a schedule and aging processes are delayed. Through Irie, Marcus begins a letter correspondence with empiricist Magid, while Millat joins a fundamentalist Muslim group opposed to Marcus’s project. As Marcus prepares FutureMouse to be unveiled, oppositional forces led by Millat, Joshua and Clara’s mother each plan ways to express disapproval of genetic engineering.
While FutureMouse is ostensibly the main genetic project of the novel, the twins’ separation is an interesting study in nature/nurture. Twin studies have long been a fundamental tool of genetics research, and the novel plays on this scientific procedure by conducting its own, unscientific experiment on the effects of separating the twins in two radically different cultures. Presumably, Magid will be influenced by the culture of Bangladesh, but he returns more English while his brother embraces elements of the Muslim religion. Marcus compares the cloning of his mice to delayed twinning, in that genetic composition does not necessarily determine outcome of individuals. Beyond cloning, the genetic engineering necessary to FutureMouse’s creation evokes hysterical reactions from several quarters. Though there is no talk of eugenics in Marcus’s pop science book, the inevitable conclusion many readers draw is that genetic engineering will lead to a futuristic society of perfected clones. Marcus intends for his mouse to eliminate the random in DNA, scientists solving life and death issues through stage-by-stage observations. The opposition arising in response to FutureMouse illustrates the popular perception of scientific abuses much in contrast to the altruistic underpinnings behind Marcus’s project.
Evaluation: Smith contextualizes genetics through a network of religious, familial, political and social dynamics that reflect the multitudinous influences on popular conceptions of inheritance and genetic technologies. The two seemingly disparate plots – the fate of FutureMouse and the nature/nurture ambiguities surrounding the twins – ultimately indicate that while social debates rage about technological application, the tools for genetic change are constantly at work within us.
– Natalie Champ