‘NW’: The Burden of Disguising your Voice
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Zadie Smith’s NW shatters the common belief of luxurious benefit lurking around every corner of our lives upon its association with socioeconomic advancement. The novel’s relatable narrative of individuals with vertical and social mobility soon realize that climbing the ladder, and even staying on top, is no easy feat. Smith employs an arsenal of unconventional writing strategies that allow the reader to view a different perception of what is expected when a higher socioeconomic class is achieved and proves that life is not always greener on the other side of the white, picket fence. NW presents the concept that no matter how hard you try, you cannot escape your past and who you are because they are a part of you. Smith utilized this platform as means to create a desire from the reader to contemplate making a change in the socioeconomic structure by self-awareness through subtle provocation in the story’s nonlinear narrative. She provokes the reader to see themselves as the “sole author” of their lives and to realize the importance of embracing his or her individuality, rather than hide it in order to please others.
NW represents a north-west postal code in London that houses the middle to lower class community. Smith appropriated three main characters who grew up in NW and live in various economic classes to offer the reader a look into the classes’ dynamics and how they affect the lives of those included. Through a unique and interesting approach Zadie Smith chose to introduce the characters in NW through sections dedicated to each character. While each section is sophistically different, each is linked together thematically to allow the reader to make the connections between the sections and their characters.
Leah Hamwell goes to college to further her education in order to offer herself social mobility. Leah’s section, entitled Visitation, is sorted through number chapters. Throughout Visitation, we gain a sense of disconnect in Leah and the life she is living, as we are witnessing her story unfold and her thoughts, simultaneously. Leah is introduced as a character that struggles with the forces that proceed to move forward in her life, including a husband who is looking to advance their financial status and start a family. While Leah desires some aspects of advance, Leah’s thoughts are troubled by the disconnect that she witnesses in her long-time friend Keisha Blake and the person she has become, as she has made a rather comfortable living for herself and her family. Witnessing the changes in Keisha as she moved up in class, Leah does not want to lose herself and wants the world to stop changing around her. “Why won’t everybody stay still? She has forced a stillness in herself, but it has not stopped the world from continuing on” (Smith 85). With every announcement of a new arrival to the family, she feels more and more betrayed and left behind from those she loves.
Felix Cooper’s heart-wrenching story takes us on a day’s journey with this ex-drug dealer who wants to do better for himself. Felix’s section, Guest, takes on a more traditional approach with quotes from various characters he encounters in his section. What makes Felix’s section different, is that it is not broken into chapters, but appears as rather one long chapter. While his story is relatively short, we witness the tragic results of his act of losing himself in attempts to better his situation. He became a talented filmmaker but wanted to advance himself to impress his new girlfriend who was educated and got promoted at her job. While on a train ride home from his ex-girlfriend’s house, he is on his path to making things right and encounters a pregnant women standing in a bus and attempts to help her find a seat. The mistake of confronting a group of youths occupying more seats than they needed is greeted with a tragic turn of events that results in his death.
Keisha, later Natalie, has a rather interesting section, as well, Host. Her section includes many short and numbered paragraphs. Her story is told in a diary or journal fashion that we can imagine her writing. Keisha is the only one who makes it up the social ladder by attending college, becoming a lawyer and marrying a successful husband. Throughout her success, she finds that she has lost herself along the way, even changing her name to Natalie, changing her dialect to match her peers and dressing to play a part that leaves her feeling emotionally incomplete. She goes as far as seeking sexual relations with others to try to fill this void. “Everything was the same in the flat, yet there was a new feeling of lack. A new awareness. And lo they saw their nakedness and were ashamed” (Smith 295). She is greeted with a self-awareness that she is still very much a part of NW and NW is very much a part of her and changing her appearance, name and dialect will never change who she truly is.
In addition to being finessed into each character’s world, we are also welcomed into their thoughts through an unconventional third-person point of view. Smith offers a significant invite into the characters’ stream of consciousness as we witness the events through a flow of their inner monologue, awareness, imagination and recollection. While this deemed to be initially challenging to read, it gains traction and the narrative becomes clearer as the story progresses. Rather than offering a linear narrative, this atypical point of view forces the reader into the shoes of each character in order to form their own opinion as though they were walking down each character’s path. Not only does this result in a more powerful and immersive narrative, but it also results in the reader sharing the characters’ experiences.
We witness similar narratives in E.M Forester’s Howard’s End and Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, in which the main characters are offered a sense of mobility or change. Both Margaret Schlegel and Oliver Twist find their happiness and are secure in their upper classes with a similar happily-ever-after type ending. Smith took a different approach: rather than placing the focus of the moral dilemma in the struggles of rising in social and economic classes, Smith affords the characters this mobility and instead, allows the reader to contemplate its worth. Her moral proposition is indiscreetly entangled in the story of these three individuals and through her use of layers in nonlinear narrative for the reader to find. In her own game of hide and seek, Smith displays the sacrifice involved in mobility and promotes the thought that sacrificing one’s self to please others can prove to be a burden that outweighs its contribution.
