Thesis On White Teeth By Zadie Smith

What he does not understand is that fate isn’t determining his moral decisions for him.Fate (if there is such a thing, which the novel argues against) is standing back and letting him live with the consequences of his own indecisiveness.

What he does not understand is that fate isn’t determining his moral decisions for him.

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In her novel, White Teeth, Zadie Smith argues against fate and the appearance of randomness that the concept of predestination brings along with it.

Her counter-argument is the idea of self-determination and its consequences.

Archie was too bewildered by the odd turn of the coin to realize the life-altering development that fate was not determining things for him.

The coin, landing “straight into the slot” never had a chance to give him his result, and still left Magid in a position to make a decision himself, without the help of Archie and without the help of fate.

Here, Smith states clearly, through the solitary event of Archie’s first coin flip, that the appearance of randomness is only the results of the decisions people make in life. Sick had figured out the definitive reality of this, “Man makes himself, after all.

And he is responsible for what he makes.” (445) He told Archie how to be a man and how the universe operates.There is no divine entity turning the coin one way or the other. Sick then decided to make the decision, the moral decision that would save his life and turn the events of Archie’s future into turmoil.The future events that happened in Archie’s life could have been very different.No matter what genes are controlled or how long a person can live does not make them the person they will become.It is the choices they make or do not make that shape how reality turns out.Interweaving the ideas together one can see that she ultimately shows that fate has nothing to do with what transpires in life.Life is not random; it is the consequences of the ethical decisions people make.Then the rest of it was up to them, to shape for themselves into the men they would become.Genetic code will not mold the future, but the environment and personal choices of that group of genes will.Moreover, Archie made that decision, a decision to not decide and let fate flip its decision into light, and the consequences changed his life and the lives of those around him.Marcus’s Future Mouse project is a mechanism in the novel to show just how much that the random things in life cannot be controlled, because life is not random.