Formal Blog

In our everyday life, people use things that are normally not regarded as important as objects of advice. In chapter seven, page 145 of Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth”, the old man named J.P. Hamilton was advising a couple of young people named Millat, Irie, Magid, who were sent to his place for a charity work in Honor of a Harvest festival. As Millat, Irie, Magid were with him, Mr. Hamilton used the opportunity to advise them about the importance of the human white teeth in the life of people when it comes to race, ethnicity and what not. Wisdom teeth are a metaphor for wisdom and something you inherit. This can be seen by the statement J.P. Hamilton made: “Because they are your father’s teeth, you see, wisdom teeth, are passed down by the father, I’m certain of it so you must be big enough for them.”(Smith, 145) this statement is very interesting to me because even though it may seem like to the young people that he is just talking about the wisdom teeth, I look a the whole phrase in a different way.

Because Millat, Magid and Irie were young people, they wouldn’t take what elderly folks say to them seriously. Because elderly people are more experienced in life, they talk in parables that the young people find it hard to decode in order to advise themselves. Analyzing the phrase, I take the word “wisdom teeth” as wisdom itself. So in my own understanding, Mr. Hamilton can also be saying that wisdom is always passed down from the father to the child. For instance, where I come from in Africa, wisdom is mostly associated with the father because he is the head of the family. And since he is the family head, God passes his vision through the Father, and then he shares the vision with the Mother and the rest of the family and therefore leads the family into the direction of that vision. Since the wisdom is mostly used to refer to the father, wisdom can be passed down from the father to the child, because the children are representation of the parents and as a matter of fact they would be also a representation of the wisdom of the father. But at the end of the statement he says that “so you must be big enough for them.” This statement in my own understanding means that when a person is young, they do not have life experiences unless they grow and become mature with the experiences that life brings in order to acquire wisdom. Even though the fathers wisdom can be passed to the younger ones, but the wisdom has to develop as they grow and mature by learning life experiences.

Another context that I can relate to this statement is inheritance. Where I am from in Africa, in a nuclear home, the son can inherit valuables from the father when he is of a matured age. Valuable properties of the father can be passed down to the son, but even if the father dies during the young age of the child, the child has to become of age or an adult before he can actually take over the valuables of the father. And also, in Africa it is not only the materialistic valuables that are inherited from the father but also the cultural values and ethics are also passed to the son or the rest of the children from the father. Because the father is simply the head of the household. And therefore as the children mature later in life, there should be a replica of the fathers’ cultural and ethic values in them that will make people identify them

And looking at the context of the story, I think Irie, Millat, and Magid should have listened to his advice. It is based for the fact that Mr. J.P. Hamilton is an elderly person and been through all walks and challenges in life and not forgetting the fact that he was also once a young person like them. After he made the statement about the wisdom teeth being passed down from the father, he also added to the fact that he actually knows it is a fact and therefore has experienced it. The statement he made saying “ I’m certain of it so you must be big enough for them” shows that he has lived and matured to know it is true and also tell them that a child must be matured enough to see what its father sees.