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Book 3: Middlesex
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Middlesex, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Rebirth vs. Continuity
Ancestry, Inheritance, and Fate
False Binaries
Migration, Ethnicity, and the American Dream
Secrets
Summary
Analysis
When the rest of the Stephanides family asks Father Mike to figure out why Desdemona refuses to get out of bed, he explains that she doesn’t like being “left alone” in the U.S., and feels that her life is over now that Lefty is dead. Father Mike promises that “it’ll pass,” but it doesn’t. Desdemona sleeps late, barely eats, and tells Callie to pray for her to die and rejoin Lefty. At this point, Cal pauses the story to provide an update on his trip to Pomerania with Julie. While they are there, Cal notices that there is a real estate boom happening in the area. Without knowing why, he suggests to Julie that they could buy a house in the area. They end up touring two of the mansions.
Through juxtaposing Desdemona’s misery following Lefty’s death and Cal’s half-joking suggestion of buying a house with Julie, this passage provides a reflection on the nature of love, and lifelong romantic partnership in particular. In a sense, Cal seems to be gripped by a fantasy that he and Julie could have what his grandparents have, even though on the grand scheme of things they hardly know each other.
Themes
However, on the way back to Berlin, Cal becomes withdrawn, and after they get home Julie doesn’t call him for days, which leads him to conclude that their budding romance is over before it began. Back in Middlesex, Callie often brings Desdemona’s meals to her bed. Desdemona is always happy to see her, but frank when discussing her own misery. While bedridden she becomes more of a hypochondriac than ever, and ignores Dr. Philobosian’s advice due to the fact that he’s too old. She tells Milton and Tessie, “Get me a new doctor who isn’t already dead himself.” However, each new doctor says the same thing: there is nothing wrong with Desdemona.
While most people are hypochondriacs due to a fear of illness and dying, Desdemona has a tragicomic reversal of this problem. Because she wants to die as soon as possible, her hypochondria is more like a kind of aspiration or fantasy, and she is furious when doctors do not humor this fantasy.
Themes
All members of the family try to get Desdemona out of bed, including Sourmelina, who calls from New Mexico. She refuses, and instead starts dividing up her and Lefty’s possessions and making her own funeral arrangements. Desdemona doesn’t fear death, which she sees as “only another kind of emigration.” She believes that Lefty has “already gotten his citizenship” and is waiting for her. Milton, meanwhile, has started a new business: a chain of hot dog restaurants called Hercules Hot Dogs. The décor of each location is a mix of Greek and American influences. Callie doesn’t like these new restaurants and misses the diner. However, they make much more money than the Zebra Room ever did.
There is an interesting contrast here between Lefty and Desdemona’s views of death. Lefty was convinced that death was an absolute end, rather than a shift or rebirth, and for this reason he feared it. Desdemona’s belief that it is “only another kind of emigration” seems like a strange reason for her to crave it, considering she was not enthusiastic about her first emigration. At the same time, her love of Lefty appears to be overriding these fears.
Themes
One night, Chapter Eleven goes down to the kitchen and get a snack. He decides to make hot dogs but doesn’t want to wait for water to boil, and slices the hot dogs in different ways in order to create more “surface area” when he fries them. To his astonishment, one of the hot dogs stands on its end and then “blast[s] off into the air.” Milton incorporates this innovation into the Hercules Hot Dogs experience. This made the chain famous, and Milton (unwisely) declined an offer to buy the rights so that his hot dogs could be sold in stores. At this point in his life, Chapter Eleven identifies as an “inventor” and hangs out with a group of boys who are nerdy and unpopular.
Chapter Eleven’s accidental dancing hot dog innovation is one of several surreal, absurdist elements of the novel. It is sometimes difficult to know how seriously the reader is supposed to take these, whether they are embellishments from Callie’s childhood memory, or whether the world of the novel has slightly different rules and norms than the real world.
Themes
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Callie, meanwhile, is undeniably beautiful, to the point that impacts the way people treat her. She feels like “the world ha[s] a million eyes,” all staring at her. She has noticed that Chapter Eleven has started masturbating, which he does secretly in the bathroom. Years pass. During this time, Sourmelina’s girlfriend, Mrs. Watson, dies, and Lina moves back to Detroit. Among the Stephanides’ neighbors are an Orthodox Jewish family made up of Sam and Hettie Grossinger and their daughter Maxine. Tessie frequently has them over for dinner, although, despite her efforts, rarely manages to make a properly kosher meal.
The Stephanides family may have moved to a remarkably WASP-y neighborhood, but they still manage to find some of the few other ethnically and religiously diverse residents there. The presence of both the Stephanides and Grossinger families in Grosse Pointe, as well as Sourmelina’s return from her years spent living with her female lover, indicate that times are changing.
Themes
When busing is starting to be discussed as a desegregation tactic, Milton disapproves. In 1972, candidate Coleman A. Young begin his campaign; he will soon become the first African American mayor of Detroit. Callie is 12 and in sixth grade. On the first day of school that year, she notices that several of her classmates have grown breasts over summer. Callie herself, however, remains completely flat-chested. She doesn’t know much about what happens in puberty. Dr. Philobosian is at this point in his 80s and married to the nurse who helped deliver Callie. His medical practice is completely out of date, and when Callie goes to her yearly checkup with him he barely looks at her when he speaks, instead addressing Tessie.
Puberty is obviously a difficult time for all 12-year-olds, but a number of factors make it especially tough for Callie. Of course, the primary reason why is that she is intersex (although she doesn’t know it yet), which makes her develop differently from the girls around her. However, just as problematic is the fact that she doesn’t have access to transparent and clear information. Everything that is happening (and supposed to happen) to her is a mystery.
Themes
Tessie is prudish and thus avoids discussing anything related to sex or the body. Thanks to Aunt Zo, Callie has a very vague understanding of what menstruation is, but doesn’t think it’s going to happen to her anytime soon. One day at Callie’s summer camp, Camp Ponshewaing, Callie watches as a girl from South Carolina gets a dark red stain on her white shorts while performing in a talent show. When the girl realizes what has happened, she runs offstage screaming. Callie remains terrified that something like that will happen to her, but it doesn’t. Over time, her fears about going through puberty transform into fears about not going through it.
It is unsurprising that Callie would be terrified of puberty, particularly considering how little she knows about it. At the same time, her competing fear that she will not go through puberty at all illustrates the particular pain of adolescence. Adolescence itself is, of course, a kind of middle, a transition period in which becoming an adult can seem scary, but staying a child is perhaps even worse.
Themes
Callie notices other changes in the kids around her, like armpit hair. The boys’ voices begin to drop, and some of them get the beginnings of facial hair. Desdemona, meanwhile, suffers from a series of health ailments but remains alive. A doctor enrolls her in a study on the relation between the Mediterranean diet and longevity. However, the doctor’s investigations are based on misperceptions; he thinks that Desdemona is 91 when in fact she is only 71, and ignores the fact that despite eating the same diet, Lefty died fairly young after suffering several strokes.
In this passage, the reader can sense that Callie’s undiagnosed intersex condition is leaving her feeling alienated from her peers, since they are all undergoing the physical transformations of puberty while she is staying the same. The book also appears to be taking a jab at popular scientific wisdom about the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet. It suggests that such wisdom, while possibly valid, should perhaps not be taken too seriously. In this sense, the novel challenges stereotypical American perceptions of Greek culture.
Themes
Callie and Tessie’s relationship undergoes a tense period. When Callie asks if she can get a bra, Tessie laughs, which infuriates Callie. Meanwhile, Callie protests Tessie’s cooking, saying she wants “normal food” and then clarifying this means “American food.” Callie’s complaints are based in her fear that the same Mediterranean diet that is keeping Desdemona alive has also stopped Callie herself form developing properly. Growing upset, Tessie explains that American food is terrible for people’s digestion, which is why Americans buy so many laxatives. Chapter Eleven joins in the fight, teasing Callie for her lack of breasts while Callie retorts by calling him “zithead.” At that moment, Milton exclaims in horror as the news reveals that busing is being instituted in Detroit—and will extend to Grosse Point.
Although Callie and Tessie’s interactions are infected with the particular issues Callie faces—her undiagnosed intersex condition, her hybrid Greek-American identity—the tension in Callie and Tessie’s relationship is extremely normal for a mother and daughter. Indeed, this is one aspect of puberty that Callie is going through, although this is a fact that likely doesn’t bring her much comfort.
Themes
