White Teeth: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Clara tells Archie that she is two-and-a-half months pregnant while he is at work, and he feels ecstatic. He goes out to get some Indian sweets and brings them back to the office to celebrate, though Noel, his coworker, feels uncomfortable: “despite being in the direct-mail business, Noel hated to be spoken to directly.” Maureen, the receptionist, is friendlier, though both she and Noel are somewhat repulsed by the Indian sweets. Maureen reflects that Archie is “always talking to Pakistanis and Caribbeans like he didn’t even notice,” and that she was shocked when he showed up to an office dinner with a black woman as his date. 

Kelvin Hero, Archie’s boss, asks to see him in his office, where he tells him that the company dinner—which Archie brought Clara to—was uncomfortable and “unpleasant.” Kelvin says that he is not a “racialist,” but that Archie’s “attitude is a little strange”: Clara is beautiful, but the men in the company “don’t like to think they’re wanting a bit of the other when they’re sitting down to a company dinner with their lady wives,” especially because Clara is black. Kelvin gives Archie a wad of Luncheon Vouchers, and as Archie is on his way out, he says that Archie wasn’t selected to go to the next company dinner.

Clara and Alsana start to see more of each other, meeting for lunch in Kilburn Park, often with Neena. On one occasion, Alsana tells Clara and Neena that she is having twins; the three women discuss baby names, and Alsana tells Clara that she should let Archie choose the name he wants. Neena mocks Alsana for being a “submissive Indian woman,” but Alsana insists that keeping quiet is the best way to go about family life. Alsana adds that Neena’s generation can’t understand that “not everybody wants to see into everybody else’s sweaty, secret parts.” She says that she liked Samad well enough when they first met, but the more she learns about him, the less she likes him.

Neena says that it’s a shame that Alsana and Clara are going to have boys, since “men have caused enough chaos this century”: she says that if she knew she was going to have a boy, she would have to “seriously consider abortion.” Sol Jozefowicz, the unofficial park keeper, walks by during their conversation, and Alsana, offended by Neena’s comments, asks if “the murder of innocents” is funny. Sol replies that in his experience, it isn’t funny, and all three women suddenly realizes that the ex-park keeper may have history of his own having to do with “the murder of innocents.”

Alsana says that she does not have time to worry about the truth: she has to worry about the truth that can be “lived with.” She believes that because she and Clara have married older men, their children “will always have daddy-long-legs for fathers,” “one leg in the present, one in the past.” Alsana also says that Samad and Archie were not war heroes, only mediocre men, and Clara agrees. When looked at “close up,” the two are dull and pathetic, with boring and unimportant jobs.