Middlesex
Here's the place to discuss the complicated life of Calliope/Cal and to determine just what Oprah liked about it :). And the Pulitzer committee(but who are they, after all, when Oprah endorses you).
Due Dates:
Blog #1: 12/16
Blog #2: 12/23
Blog #3: 1/6
If you are not the first to post, be sure you've read all previous blogs before you contribute.
posted by Ms. Clapp @ 9:51 AM
12 comments
12 Comments:
So far the novel has definitely just been given a history with occasional snippets from how Calliope/Cal is now. I don’t think that Cal needed to go through that much detail about his family history at first but became really helpful later. From the burning village in Greece to the speakeasy in Chicago his family has gone through a lot. Most importantly though is the almost- didn’t-happen events. What if Lefty didn’t gamble? What if they didn’t see the show that night? What if Lefty kept his job; would Zizmo be so jealous? Cal has a way of writing that makes reality seem better than fiction.
I found the fight Desmonda has with her religion really interesting. Desmonda really does not want to have kids because she thinks they will be deformed in some way (which could have happened) but instead of just telling Lefty her fears she just pushes him away and eventually get her tubes tied. She seems devout in her religion but she keeps breaking all the rules. To Desmonda religion is her crutch she whips it out when she needs it. Mostly to make promises to insure her family’s safety.
Lefty and Desmonda are just trying to live the American dream and pass on there culture to their children. Which every immigrant tries to do for their children but ever generation seems to be moving further and further away from the small village in Greece where it all started. Desmonda and Lefty’s old ways don’t fit into the new changes that America is going through.
*Desmonda wasn’t wrong with the spoon!
Questions
• Why does he call his brother Chapter 11?
• Do you think that Sourlimena really cheated on Zizmo?
• Why weren’t Zoë or Milton born with any deformities?
• Why was his grandmother so apprehensive to love Cal? (she wasn’t like that with her own children)
When i read the book i also noticed the parallels of “what if” to the actual events. There are many places in the book were the author takes his time in describing the different events that might have happened if, for example, Cal’s parents had not been stubborn with each other one week before she was conceived. In the beginning I wanted to just write it off as the author’s way of telling the story, but then I realized that it might be a theme; the constant reminder that the protagonist had the chance to consciously change her own identity down to the basic, which was her sex, despite other events that had “predestined” who she would be. In this book I think that one of the themes is destiny versus free will.
One of the things that I like most about this book is the way in which the author narrates it. He makes it so dramatic and descriptive that it almost seems like you’re watching a movie. The clearest example of this is how he changes time setting on page 20 so that he can describe the “flashbacks” to better explain the present. The dialogue that goes also makes the narrating seem movie like, but I must say that I caused be some problems. Cal is telling the story but then, she goes into these very descriptive dialogues that you know can’t be exact, but then I was confused since there were times that she said the she could “really remember” but that she was pretty sure. Then there was the opening, in which the cal goes into detail of her medical background, and even gives sources so that the reader can verify her claims, which confused me even more. By page 100 I just gave up trying to figure out if the events drew too much from the author’s imagination, if the story was meant to be read that way or if the author had a hidden agenda connected to his descriptive passages.
Like Sabrina, I also noticed that there was a class between the new age and world and the old one. Desdemona had always tried to keep her family close their roots but she had not succeeded very well. I thought that she was a character that perhaps was meant to be like Ursula from 100 years, but missed her mark. What do you guys think? Was Desdemona a good role model and in equal standing to Ursula? Or did she fall short.
To answer the last of Sabrina’s questions
• Why was his grandmother so apprehensive to love Cal? (she wasn’t like that with her own children)
I thought that the reason why the grandmother was so restrained in her interaction with Cal was because to her (Desdemona) Cal’s existence was evidence to her “sin”. In the beginning of her and Lefty’s relationship as wife and husband, Desdemona always worried about her children coming out with a deformity that would point straight back to her incestuous joining, and when cal was born and later born again, it was just as bad as if she had been born deformed, since it still pointed the finger back at her.
my question is:
why does Cal call her brother Chapter Eleven?
but I’m also wondering:
do the number of strokes that lefty suffered have any greater significance?
I mean his first stoke was when Cal was born. Hmmmm…… doesn’t that sound suspicious?
My first response to the first part of the book was along the lines of how much is this family going to press their luck with incest?! Something was bound to go wrong, but people were waiting and waiting for it to affect the next generation, which is quite selfish. This actually reminds me of some sort of debt, each generation puts the family more into debt as they inbreed. This idea of debt also ties into the "Chapter 11" name for Cal's brother. Chapter 11, being bankruptcy of course. The name for a sibling suggests such great distance, and there's also some sort of condemning involved.
I have definitely picked up on the idea of the "what if" situations being compared to the actual outcomes. The author is absolutely suggesting some sort of emphasis on choices. People make choices constantly without taking second thought, but the book shows that a seemingly simple action may have years of and years of consequences.
The what ifs as a whole just put the idea of making a choice in gender into perspective, it demonstrates the gravity of it.
As the psychology group I think it's important to also try to look at Cal's actions on a psychological basis. Just imagine how torn Cal was when he had to make the decision on whether to be a male or female. I think its quite safe to say that those sorts of "decisions" or odds are to be determined by some greater force.
Having chosen a sex I think Cal will later suffer from some sort of identity crisis. Having no definitive gender definitely takes a toll on a person. Gender is one of the few things people often don't have a say in, but Cal does and because of this such big decison there will inevitably be some sort of regret. I haven't yet seen any sort of regret yet in the text(beyond the emphasis on 'what ifs'), has anyone else picked up on anything?
Anyone have any thoughts about the family's lack of change even as they journeyed from Greece to Chicago? Having been forced to cross an ocean you would think people would learn that what they were doing originally, wasn't quite working.
I don’t want to seem like a slacker, but based on my math, we weren’t supposed to have read Chapter 11 yet. We should have stopped after Chapter 8 or 9. That being said, I’ll try to respond where I can.
I’m not sure how many of you picked up on this, but one thing I noticed constantly while reading this book is how much it reminds me of One Hundred Years of Solitude. On a content level, it involves incest and begins with the original act of incest and ends with the final deformity. On a form level, the narrator reminds me a lot of the narrator in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Cal feels very free with his interpretations of time, often interrupting, stopping, and shifting around time freely. The main difference, obviously, is that One Hundred Years of Solitude is narrated from an omniscient, objective narrator while Middlesex is narrated by an actual character who has much more character.
Along the lines of the narrator, I really liked what Rosalinda said about the amount of detail provided by Cal’s retellings of these stories. Occasionally the amount of detail feels excessive, but mostly, I began to wonder how Cal knew all of these subtle, nuance-y details. Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t recall the book ever explaining (or at least not yet) how Cal came upon all of this information.
I definitely think that there’s a possibility of one of the themes being destiny vs. free will. That’s pretty much what I wrote my One Hundred Years of Solitude Essay about, and considering how many parallels there already are between the two stories, I wouldn’t rule it out. The most notable parallel being the fact that both books are narrated by someone who already knows everything that is going to happen in the end. Regardless of what is going on in the story, Cal will remind us, every so often, that the 5th chromosome is already messed up and is destined to become a part of him.
One other thing that I found sort of interesting that Sabrina started to get at was the fact that, upon arriving in America, Lefty and Desdemona begin living somewhat of a prototypical American life. This came off as rather ironic to me. Lefty worked at the car factory, ran a speakeasy, and had a family (one husband, one wife, one son, one daughter), yet he also took English classes and maintained a Greek identity that was most definitely not the archetypal American at the time.
I really enjoy the random bits of Cal’s stories in the present. I’m really interested in seeing where they end up taking us. I have the feeling that these simple moments will only grow more and more significant and interesting as we discover his history. Each step he takes, each action he makes will continue more meaning than the last because the readers will understand so much more.
This may be slightly off topic , but I was wondering how any of you guys would feel if you were dating someone that you thought was say a female as they appear to be, but they turn out to be a male and vice versa. I understand that it's difficult for Cal to admit that he is a hermaphrodite to Julie or anyone for that matter, but I think it's imperative to a relationship that a person is relatively honest with things that may very well alter the original interest in the relationship.
I also noticed that the set up of the book (in segments of family stories and Cal's personal insights)suggests that although Cal is a hermaphrodite, his life is not or should not be defined by this one characteristic. By developing Cal as a member of this entangled family and as an individual coping with issues of identity, the reader is better able to understand the connection between specific concepts and their roles on a larger scale.
It is very important that you are up front and honest with a person before you get into a relationship with them. By Cal never telling Julie or anyone else he is ensuring his loneliness for the rest of his life. Although it is understandable why he does this tho. He is just trying to keep from getting hurt. Again. He mentions in the novel that the time he did tell someone they said they were okay with it and he proposed and it ended up being a problem for her.
I found it really interesting how his brother has shifted from a nerd bookworm to this drug abusing loser. Maybe this is where the contempt starts for Cal?
The snippets in where Cal is talking about the present are really insightful to see how he is today. Never is he someone who only sees things the way a woman does or a man. He sees two different prospective (which in my opinion is very helpful) but have you all noticed his constant need to push the "girl" parts of his personality deeper down?
Well, in response to Malik, i think that it is complicated for her (understatement) Since she has already set a designated reaction to all the people he tells, there is less of a chance that he may be accepted in a relationship. At the time I think there was even less acceptance than there is today as is shown by her being disappointed with her ethnic characteristics while at boarding school. When she falls in love with the Object, she takes a risk in being ostracized from her small school community, because if the Object had wanted to she could have made hi life difficult (as is shown in her reaction to Cal having sex with her brother).
I think that this section more than the last has something on the “coming of age” that a lot of other books embrace. The obvious difference in this book is that Cal, unlike most of the other characters has to decide what she will become, at the fundamental level. Sure she had male tendencies growing up, but it doesn’t change the fact that she had grown up a girl. In the small bit of psychology I remember, it says that a person’s basic personal traits are created during the first 7 years. How does that fit in the, if Cal grew up believing that she was a girl, and then realizing that she doesn’t have to be? That kind of seems like another fate/choice thing going on.
Malik commented about the structure of the book (having it be a section in the past, the present, then past….) giving insight to one particular character, and I agree, but I also think that the almost simultaneous narrating of different event in different times, also give background on which to build opinions for other characters. For example Mr. Milton. (Maybe I missed it and need to re read, but) was his reaction to Cal’s diagnosis affected at by need to reject anything un-American? He rejected his heritage, and alienated his son, so why wouldn’t he hold strong opinions about a sex change, which may have seemed so at the time even though cal wasn’t actually changing sex). There is such a big contrast on his ideals and that of the rest of his family that it makes me wonder if he ever did it on purpose.
Also I found it really funny that nobody ever figured out that there was something different about Cal, and that it took a Semi for doctors to get a closer look, and then STILL get it wrong. It goes to show how narrow minded we are. Nobody ever saw an obvious sign of male-ness in her so she was assumed to be a girl.
The whole gender-mentality thing is really interesting. In our society, we’re always told to “be yourself.” I know that Cal is in a unique situation, but which do you think is best? Should Cal be trying to force away his female tendencies, or should he embrace what is part of him? I know that there are plenty of heterosexual guys who are very masculine and manly and watch sports and such, but there are also plenty of heterosexual guys who are more feminine in nature, and there are girls who like both types.
Still, the issue of sex remains a problem. Everyone has their insecurities, and during our youth, sex is probably one of the biggest ones. But people usually stop caring as they grow older. I feel really bad for Cal because he’s already well into adulthood, but he still has to worry about what people will think of him.
I agree with what you were saying about for why the book goes back and forth between the past and the present. I think that ordinarily, the scenes in the present would be rather mundane, but through the “flashbacks” (if you can call them that), you develop a level of depth that justifies every little moment of Cal’s life and every action he takes. Although no direct connections are drawn, as I read each Cal scene, I can feel the resonance of his past.
I found Keith's question about choosing between suppressing feelings and embracing them quite interesting. I would say its better and far more productive to embrace them. While it seems idealistic, I think it honestly is a viable option. I'm a firm believer in the idea that a person must first be true to themselves and then take into account what others think. Cal isn't by nature entirely male or female, so why should s/he have to choose. Do any of you guys think that not choosing at all would be an option(well a practical one anyway)?
Another idea from the end of the book that caught my attention was when Cal made a comment about Detroit not "mock[ing]" his grief.
It's on page 517 he says "At least the city didn't mock my grief by being sparkling or winsome." I feel like Cal has found a lot of his past to be mocking. In a way each and every one of his anecdotes that document the presence of the gene that has defined him, mocks him. None of the factors that have contributed to his gender are of his choosing. By understanding where the faults in his family's genetics lie, he is simultaneously reminded of his lack of control. The knowledge of the gene's origin is an interesting story, but does it contribute to making decisions in his life currently? I would beg to argue that it doesn't, but rather distracts. Would you say the knowledge of the origin of the gene is a means of remedy or a burden?
I also enjoyed the comparison between the journey of maturity and a change in gender. Cal argues that a change in gender is far less drastic, that maturing is. I'm sure the two combined must have been difficult. Throughout the book it was apparent that the stories and anecdotes shared were just a means to provide context to a hermaphroditic gene and subsequent lifestyle, only to hear toward the end that essentially "it was no big deal". Do you guys think that the mentioning of a choice in sex being "no big deal" to be helpful to the story as a whole or detrimental?
Jeez. So much has happened in the book. Overall, it was a great reading experience. I didn’t really like the ending very much.
So here I am. Middlesex: a retrospective. One of the things that often impressed me was the level of detail and personality in everything that happens. From the cars that Milton buys to any of the political or social events at the time, Jeffrey Eugenides perfectly capture the essence of the time period. There is also just enough sort of fourth wall breaking moments in the narrations to make them more fun to read.
I found myself a little disappointed with the ending. It felt a lot like life in that sense. I’m reading along with this fascinating and engrossing story of an interesting character. I know roughly what’s to come (Cal meeting Julie Kikuchi), but the path leading there is a complete mystery. In the end, I suppose I was let down not by high expectations, but by my complete lack of expectations. I just didn’t know what the end of the book was to hold.
Middlesex is a different sort of story. It felt more like an epic or something than just a novel. There wasn’t any blatant message or single moment of climax. There wasn’t a redemption or a single moment of self-discovery. The entire book was all of these things. Every moment is a piece of Cal’s discovering and rediscovering himself.
I also didn’t really like what was going on around the end of the book. After the birth of Cal, the stories about him/her are significantly more interesting than the random tangential bits about other people or places. I also felt like the present situation with Julie didn’t develop very much. Or at least, it didn’t develop in a majestic way. It was natural, real, and suitable, but perhaps I expected the final moment of Cal being able to sleep with Julie to be a more climactic moment. There were very few mentions of the present Cal after his birth.
As a sort of question, if anyone wants to answer: what do you make of the ending? What did you get out of the reading as a whole? On page 511, Cal says “A real Greek might end on this tragic note. But an American is inclined to stay upbeat.” Is the ending funeral and such more upbeat?
The ending disappointed me as well. After all of his self discovery, important insights on humanity and society to have the story end as his big comment to gender be that it is "no big deal" is a little disappointing. I felt like the ending was rushed. With his grandmother telling the big family secret like it was not this dark evil fear she kept to herself for most of her life seemed a little unrealistic. I definitely thought she was going to take that secret to her grave. Although she was not in the right state of mind at that time so that might have contributed towards it.
As for the quote at the end when Cal states “A real Greek might end on this tragic note. But an American is inclined to stay upbeat.”; I think he might have been referring to how he was reunited with his family again. How his mother and Chapter 11 were making an effort to recognize his decision and letting him back into the family sphere. See big happy American ending. Before that Cal had stated that it might have been better that Milton always remembered him as Calliope not Cal. Which seeing how his father was sort of a narrow-minded Republican I can see how maybe his death wasn't all bad. His family history does resemble a Greek Tragedy with all the jealous family member and incestuous love tho.
Do any of you guys think that not choosing at all would be an option(well a practical one anyway)?
Is it possible to not choose at all. I mean if gender identity is not biological but instead depending on how the child is reared based on influence from media, social class, family, culture than the child will have to lean one way or another. Cal is very interesting in that he clearly has feminine characteristics in his writing as well as in demeanor (he said) but he identifies himself as a male. I feel as if you can't straddle the fence on gender identity you identify as being either male or female or you have more characteristics of either a male or a female.
P.S. I didn't like Julie Kikuchi, I could have had less of her and more of the Object!
I agree with Malik, in Cal’s situation there isn’t really an option to be “who s/he really is because society only allows 2 (acceptable) options, and since she is neither she has two chose between one or the other which means that she can’t really be who she is. It’s confusing I guess, but I think it has to do a lot with the psychology that I mentioned in the last blog. Cal couldn’t have really been comfortable with choosing option 3 if she grew up thinking there was only option G and B, and even then, when she chose to change gender it was such an emotional ordeal that she had to run away from her life. This brings me to my first question; do you think that Cal ran away from her life as a girl or that she left to better understand her new role as male?
the next question that caught my attention was “Would you say the knowledge of the origin of the gene is a means of remedy or a burden?” I think that I it was different for different characters. In the beginning of the story and of the novel, the knowledge of the gene cause Desdemona a lot of grief and worry, but for Cal, it caused her to be weary of her surrounding and companions, but then one could argue that that wasn’t really the effect of the genes knowledge but the consequences of it existence. At the end of the story though, when the secret is revealed, it becomes a remedy for Cal’s concerns. He now know the cause which give him in a sense closure.
Speaking o f the end, the end of the story was a letdown to me when I finished reading, but after thinking about it I wondered if the anticlimactic end wasn’t really the climax. I mean throughout the book the author chooses the style of narrating to build up to a climax where the message would become obvious, but I think that the fact that it isn’t told explicitly sais more that if it had. After the funeral and Cal’s self-discovery, everything continues on as it had before, there is not explosion of change, and the world doesn’t shine for losses or accomplishments. I thought that the message would be of acceptance of one’s self and our disregard for the world’s reaction, because despite of your decisions it will continue as it had before. Apart from being a theme on fate and free will, the book is also a coming of age story.
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