Blog 3:

In chapter seven of Zadie Smith's White Teeth novel titled "Molars", it talks about of the significance of teeth to humans in my point of view. Mr. J.P. hamilton, an old man whom Magid, Millat and Irie were assigned for charity work in honor of the Harvest Festival, was a senile person and advice the young ones on the importance of dental hygiene. There is a statement that Mr. Hamilton made that actually caught my attention to the text. In this chapter, he made a statement saying that "One sometimes forgets the significance of one's teeth. We're not like the lower animals-teeth replaced regularly and all that-we are of the mammals, you see." (Smith, 144). This statement stands out to me because he was trying to point out to the children how important the teeth is in human communication. The teeth is a vital tool in human communication because it is one of the main non verbal communication tools to help begin effective communication between people from all backgrounds. There are so many different races, ethinicities, cultures, and backgrounds of humans around the world. Among all these different race and ethnicities, every group of people have their own ways of understanding each other with their own languages. For example, Chinese people understand their own people when they are communicating in their own language. But when a Chinese person meets an African person, communication will be difficult to begin because they do not spak the same language. But when either one of them smiles first, it will send a positive message to the other that they are pleased to meet them, and therefore, the other person will also return a positive response with a smile. this means that smiling, in which the teeth is responsible for, even builds positive bridges between people of different races even though they might not speak the same language. So this context to me, is why Mr. Hamilton was serious to Millat, Magid and Irie about the care of ones teeth. I also believe that, the brighter your smile, the more positive message you send to people.