White Teeth: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

It has been six years since Hortense and Irie last saw each other: Hortense is now 84, and Irie is 16. When she was younger, she had visited Hortense’s house while her mother was at night school, but once Clara caught wind of the visits, she put an end to them. Hortense’s house seems not to have changed in six years, though Darcus has died, leaving his chair empty. Hortense asks Irie if she is sick and treats her with bay rum to “burn de fever away”; she expresses her satisfaction that Irie has run “from that godless woman,” Clara. Irie asks Hortense if she can stay at her house to study for a few months.

Irie sleeps in the living room that night, and when she awakes, she sees a “bandy-legged redheaded man” walking into the house. Hortense tells her that the man is “Mr. Topps,” who has been helping her since Darcuss died. Irie realizes that Mr. Topps has been living in Hortense’s apartment for six years: he has never married, since he is “married to the church” of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Ryan enters the house, talking about church teachings, and Hortense introduces him to Irie, telling him that “she might have been yours.” Ryan stares at Irie, dumbstruck, before quickly composing himself and telling Irie that he doesn’t remember anything about Clara anymore.

Hortense tells Irie that Mr. Topps is working with Jehovah’s Witnesses from Brooklyn about “fixing de final date”—the date for the end of the world. Ryan Topps takes Hortense out to church on his motorbike, which he has kept for many years. Later, Clara calls Hortense, angrily saying that she doesn’t want Hortense to fill Irie’s head with religious nonsense. But while Clara’s atheism is “fragile,” Irie’s is “robust,” and she treats her stay with Hortense with “detached amusement.” “Bowdenism,” she realizes, involves “living in the eternal instant,” always anticipating the end times and living by superstition; for example, Hortense always does the opposite of what’s advised in weather reports, since she does not trust meteorology as a science (since she believes it defies God).

After skipping class for a few weeks, Irie returns to school in January. She avoids Millat, the Chalfens, and her parents, only seeing them on the weekends; instead, she spends most of her time digging through Hortense’s house, looking at pictures of her great-grandmother Ambrosia and Captain Durham. Durham looks “handsome and melancholy,” “every inch the Englishman”: by looking through the photos, Irie lays “claim to the past—her version of the past—aggressively.” One day, she hears Joyce Chalfen on a program on Hortense’s radio, talking about nurturing the “recalcitrant English soil”; she switches the radio off, thinking of Jamaica, which appears to her as a place “where things sprang from the soil riotously and without supervision.” Irie imagines Jamaica as a place beyond fictions, myths, and lies, a true homeland.

Joshua turns up at Hortense’s house one day, carrying a leaflet for an organization called FATE, or Fighting Animal Torture and Exploitation. Joshua tells Irie that the group is “working from an anarchist perspective,” and that by joining FATE, everything has changed for him. FATE’s leader, Joely, thinks Marcus and the FutureMouse project are dangerous. Joshua has decided to become a vegetarian, since he believes that only major changes will get through to his father, who Josh believes is exploiting animals through the FutureMouse endeavor.

On April Fool’s Day, Samad turns up at Hortense’s house to ask Irie about Millat, who has been missing for three weeks. Samad tells Irie that Magid is coming back to England to study English law, paid for by the Chalfens; he is disappointed in Magid and Millat, who, in his opinion, have both “strayed so far from the life [he] had intended for them.” Irie thinks that if Samad could take his sons back “to the start of the story, to the homeland,” things might change; Samad says that in England, “you are never welcomed, only tolerated,” but that he cannot leave, since he no longer feels as if he belongs anywhere.

That evening, Hortense and Ryan are excited, since they believe that they have received a final confirmation for the date of the end times. Hortense explains to Irie that the Witness church is where her roots are, and she admits that she is tired with the church trying to tell her that she isn’t educated enough: “dat’s always bin de problem wid de women in dis family. Somebody always tryin’ to heducate them about someting.” Ryan announces that the end of the world will come at the end of 1999, before 2000, and Hortense rejoices. She tells Irie that they will go to Jamaica to see the end of the world together.