Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth” (post 4): Why are identical twins, a literary metaphor for multiple personality, in this novel?

Its table of contents divides this novel into four quarters, named after the main characters: 1. Archie, 2. Samad, 3. Irie, and 4. Magid, Millat, and Marcus. Magid and Millat, sons of Samad, have deep roots in the novel, but Marcus is more incidental. So the author’s table of contents points to Magid and Millat as the characters who are most symbolic of what the author meant to convey, ultimately.

Since Magid and Millat have major differences between them in their attitudes, and since they are raised apart for a part of their childhoods—one in England and the other in their family’s homeland, Bangladesh—you might think that they symbolize something about culture. But they are described as already different from each other before their separation, and the attitudes they develop do not neatly correlate with whether they lived in England or Bangladesh. So they do not appear to symbolize national, cultural differences. What, then, do these characters symbolize?

The most salient fact about Magid and Millat is that they are identical twins. Since no good use is made of this fact to make any point culturally, the question is: What are identical twins doing in this novel?

Recall my first post about this novel. In the novel’s first section, featuring the character, Archie, it was mentioned in passing that his first wife had symptoms of what I pointed out was multiple personality. So another question is: What was that doing in this novel?

As it happens, the literary metaphors for multiple personality are doubles, doppelgängers, and twins. For example, in Dostoevsky’s The Double, the protagonist’s double thinks and acts quite differently from the protagonist, but looks exactly like him; that is, they look like identical twins. And that is exactly what is seen in multiple personality: The alternate personalities think and act quite differently from each other, but they look identical, of course, because they share the same body.

Mark Twain is the writer I discuss in this blog who is best known for his frequent use of twins. Search “Twain twins.”

Getting back to Zadie Smith, it would appear from the author interview quoted in post 2 that she had no knowledge of her novel’s having anything to do with multiple personality. But she (her host personality?) also said that it felt to her like somebody else wrote it.