The White Teeth Hypertext

By now you will have read at least one version of the hypertext of Chapter One of Zadie Smith's novel White Teeth. The text presented is short, and has its limitations. You will find many full-length hypertext novels more easy to understand because there is more material to work with, but this short example effectively presents the form of the hypertext novel.

What was going on?
You may feel that you have read a version (or versions) of the hypertext that 'doesn't make sense'. This is the first dislocation that many readers of hypertext experience. When we read a novel we often find that the format is driven by plot. If we redirect the urge to find a direction or meaning in the text, to a desire to find symbols, icons or themes we may have a better idea of what the hypertext form can achieve.

What were the themes?
The themes that recur among the 'nodes' or 'lexia' (the individual pages of text) are those of:

• chance (often second chances)
• choice
• routes

It is not especially important to understand what is happening to the protagonist of this text, it is these themes that are crucial. The text is saying something about these ideas, and about the randomness of the choices that order our lives. Much as you made random choices as to what to read. The text was dealing with choices and routes, and the chance outcome, much as you made choices through routes, not certain of what the outcome would be.

How do the teeth fit in?
The preliminary screen that you encountered ('What's past is prologue') and the images of teeth that you found through the text might have indicated to you a further meaning to the word 'routes', as we hear it. 'Roots', both in a general sense of past and a racial sense are crucial to this text, and to the novel as it appears in print. The sense of chance is mediated by an equally strong sense of history. These are themes that are clearly present in the chapter as it appears in full, and in the novel as a whole.

What does the hypertext do that a novel can't?
The hypertext form removes other information from around these ideas so that they are clearer to the reader, and the constantly changing form or vision of the text means that the reader is forced to be constantly alert to new ideas. The reader has a lot more control over how they read the text, and a lot more freedom to draw their own conclusions about the text. For more on the issues of authority, go to The Death of the Author page.

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