White Teeth Lesson Plan

We learn that Irie is pregnant after her encounters with Magid and Millat. She will never know who the father is because they are twins and share the same DNA. What are we to make of this fact?

Towards the end of the novel, Irie seems to grow more and more tolerant of randomness, of the sorts of secrets that nature keeps. In contrast to the sort of quest for certainty that defines Magid's pursuits or the search for meaning that define Millat's, Irie accepts that there will be things that will remain ultimately unknowable or without easily identifiable meaning. The fifty-fifty randomness of her baby's paternity--and her comfort with that fact--is a strong metaphor for that...