Middlesex

Middlesex defies easy classification. In some ways, it’s a bildungsroman, as Callie comes of age and discovers a new identity as Cal. In other ways, it manifests itself as a family saga, depicting the travels and travails of multiple generations of the Stephanides clan, which intertwines with Cal’s story. In many ways, the book reads as an historical novel, full of international events and sociocultural commentary. Like Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones or Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex uses a picaresque narrator whose exploits take place on the grand stage of history and whose self-identity is the product of those contentious forces. Cal Stephanides isn’t merely a character; he’s the symbolic culmination of the American immigrant story.

Part 1 takes place in the context of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the ensuing Greco-Turkish wars. If not for the deaths and displacement caused by these conflicts, the Stephanides siblings might not have immigrated to the US—and almost certainly wouldn’t have married. The author includes historical background to reveal the forces that led to mass migration, even during earlier times: “People had begun leaving in 1913, when the phylloxera blight ruined the currants. They had continued to leave during the Balkan Wars” of the early 20th century (28). This nearly empties out the small village in which Lefty and Desdemona are raised. These historical circumstances are reflected in the novel’s characters. For example, Desdemona remains “imprisoned by the past” (21) throughout the novel, never fully able or willing to assimilate. In addition, this background allows the author to comment, albeit obliquely, on the politics of the situation. He imagines two British naval officers communicating with one another about the war. One of them says firmly, “It’s not our war,” to which the other replies, “We might have supported the Greek forces. Seeing as we sent them in” (52). This implicit critique of the international response to the wars—the lack of moral responsibility—is later underscored by a tally of the dead, underplayed by Western powers.

When the Stephanides siblings finally arrive in Detroit, their initial experience is colored by the omnipresent factories, which belch pollution and noise. The Ford Motor Company, for which Lefty briefly works, dominates both the landscape and the American mindset at this moment in US history. The narrator describes the looming “shadow” of the plant and its pervasive smell (an “unbearable chemical taint”); it’s a “fortress” where foreign languages aren’t allowed, and foreign workers barely tolerated (94). The narrator notes the novelty of the circumstances: “Historical fact: people stopped being human in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line” (95). Just because the Stephanides have escaped their war-torn country doesn’t mean that they’ve escaped the yawning maw of history: “[I]n 1922 it was still a new thing to be a machine” (95). The author’s implicit critique represents the American experience as the modern experience—mechanized and dehumanized.

The narrator discusses his parents’ marriage in light of the events of World War II. Had Milton not left for the war, and had Tessie not realized how much she missed him, they might not have married at all, and hence Cal wouldn’t exist to tell their story. Milton fights in the Korean War too, and his experience in military service starkly contrasts with his oldest son’s defiance of the draft. The Vietnam War reveals the political rifts within the family, as do the countercultural habits of Cal’s older brother, whom he calls Chapter Eleven.

During these years, Detroit becomes roiled with racial conflict, as does much of the rest of the country. Even before the riots of the late 1960s, the narrator outlines the city’s changing demographic makeup, a result of the Great Migration, a phenomenon born partly out of the Great Depression: “Still, more and more [Black people] were coming every year, every month, seeking jobs in the North” (142). Because of racially prejudiced zoning laws and redlining real estate practices, Detroit becomes a racially segregated city, like many other locales in the north. When Desdemona procures a job working for the Nation of Islam, the experience is unsettling: “[B]lack people were still new to my yia yia,” or grandmother (150). The immigrant experience isn’t limited to interactions between minority groups and the dominant culture but also involves interactions among minority groups. In addition, prejudice itself isn’t limited to a Black-versus-white dynamic: Milton, who is himself discriminated against, displays prejudice toward Black people in ways both subtle and overt.

Callie comes of age in this era, riding her bicycle through the streets at the same time that tanks are rolling in to quell the riots: “I did what any loving, loyal daughter would have done who had been raised on a diet of Hercules movies” (243). What she does is rescue her father, who has been trying to protect his diner. Against the backdrop of history, Cal becomes her own kind of epic hero. However, like Odysseus, she has more journeys ahead before she’s allowed to come home, fully realized.

Ultimately, the novel spans more than 50 years, which emphasizes the epic scale of the work itself. Beginning in the 1920s with war and migration, it ends in the 1970s with another crisis: “My story began in 1922 and there were concerns about the flow of oil. In 1975, when my story ends, dwindling oil supplies again had people worried” (498). The narrator mentions this as a means to introduce his father’s last Cadillac, a gas-guzzling behemoth that is quickly becoming obsolete—like Milton himself, this suggests. Milton dies trying to save his supposed daughter, who has now become Cal, but she can’t be saved, as Callie only exists in his mind. The gesture is futile, though tragic, but Cal’s existence becomes Milton’s greatest legacy. Indeed, Cal embodies the American dream, perhaps even literally: He muddies binary notions of male and female; immigrant and citizen; the product of familial inheritance and personal reinvention.