The Voice In Zadie Smith's On Beauty

Zadie Smith’s On Beauty utilises a multitude of aspects to create and convey the variations and influence of voice to her readers. Mainly voice serves as a method of identity and how our voices change to adapt to different occasions. But this changing of the voice, and essentially identity, begs the question of does changing our voices mean losing who we are, and evidently losing our identities. Smith uses voice as various vehicles to show identity, flexibility in social situations and voice as a method of separating class/castes. Smith highlights how voices find themselves between two points and therefore needs to be ambiguous enough to conceal the truth of who they really are. On Beauty delves into the lives of the Belsey and Kipps families

As a teenager who is still unsure of himself and his place in the world, the character of Levi is explored in contrast to Carl. Levi as a character raises the question of what it means to be authentically black. As the youngest child of an intellectual, mixed-race middle-class family that lives in a predominantly white neighbourhood, Levi is a far cry from the authentic black man in America. Yet, he firmly believes in his identity as a black man and his ‘street’ style is one aspect of him showing it. The reader observes as Levi goes through a period of uncertainty and confusion in which his sense of identity becomes insecure, due to his unique position in society. It is seen that levi does not know where he is positioned and rather excludes himself from the elitist academia of Wellington and thus withdraws from an identity imposed on him by others. He instead immerses himself in the Haitian neighbourhood of Boston and adopts a fake Brooklyn accent (much to the chagrin of his family). The reader is then forced to think whether this means Levi loses his voice and identity or whether he is braver then the rest of his family in that he chose his own identity and remained faithful to it despite what those surrounding him were

Distinct modes of speech ties to specific ethnic groups and class. Smith effectively uses her writing to convey accent which gives her characters depth and dimension. In the first passage Kiki can be seen ‘lowering’ the way she speaks in order to bridge the gap between herself (a middle-class African American woman) and the owner of the stall (a lower-class Haitian man). The Haitians were viewed as the lowest caste at the time. Kiki feels the uncontrollable need to impress him with her knowledge of Haiti (or lack thereof) and therefore find some way to relate to him. This can also be seen in the second passage where Levi’s fake Boston accent becomes more pronounced in order to get his point across as to why he stole a very expensive painting. This however only serves to anger Kiki just as well as how Kiki’s attempt to relate to the stall owner merely irritates him. However, it is noted how Kiki’s voice immediately changes after her engagement with the stall owner as she adapts to talking to an intellectual,