Middlesex 4

"Lefty cleaned them. Making himself useful as always, he took upon himself the Sisyphean task of keeping all those Modernist surfaces sparkling. With the same concentration he trained on the aorist tense of ancient Greek verbs-- a tense so full of weariness it specified actions that might never be completed-- Lefty now cleaned the huge picture windows, the fogged glass of the greenhouse, the sliding doors that led to the courtyard, and even the skylights. As he was Windexing the new house, however, Chapter Eleven and I were exploring it. Or, should I say, them."
Page 260, Chapter 3, Book 3

In this passage, the narrator describes her/his grandfather's quest to clean the huge windows of their new house, aptly named Middlesex. The short sentences and the diction of the paragraph has a tone of nostalgia, while the mood is one of sadness, because the narrator has previously hinted that Lefty is soon to die. The narrator also makes an intertextual comparison between Lefty's task of cleaning the windows and the story of Sisyphus, who was condemned after he died to always be pushing a rock up a hill and never be able to reach the summit. This parallels the thankless task of trying to keep a house of huge windows clean, especially a house with small children. The narrator also uses the symbolism of a certain tense of ancient Greek verbs, portraying a never-ending task and also juxtaposing itself against Lefty's lack of weariness in this task.

Middlesex 3

"YOU HAVE HEARD OF THE DARWINIAN THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION? THIS WAS UNNATURAL SELECTION. BY HIS SCIENTIFIC GRAFTING YACUB PRODUCED THE FIRST YELLOW AND RED PEOPLE. BUT HE DIDN'T STOP THERE. HE WENT ON MATING THE LIGHT-SKINNED OFFSPRING OF THOSE PEOPLE. OVER MANY, MANY YEARS HE GENETICALLY CHANGED THE BLACK MAN, ONE GENERATION AT A TIME, MAKING HIM PALER AND WEAKER, DILUTING HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS AND MORALITY, TURNING HIM INTO THE PATHS OF EVIL. AND THEN, MY BROTHERS, ONE DAY YACUB WAS DONE. ONE DAY YACUB WAS FINISHED WITH HIS WORK. AND WHAT HAD HIS WICKEDNESS CREATED? AS I HAVE TOLD YOU BEFORE: LIKE CAN ONLY COME FROM LIKE. YACUB HAD CREATED THE WHITE MAN! BORN OF LIES. BORN OF HOMICIDE. A RACE OF BLUE-EYED DEVILS."
Page 155

This passage is part of the tirade of Minister Fard of the Nation of Islam. Capitalizing on the disenfranchisement of the black people living in the ghettos of Detroit, he weaves a tale of the genetic superiority of the black man, reminiscent of the uber-mensch declarations of Adolf Hitler years later, parallelism only in reverse. Fard takes the legitimate religion of Islam and twisting it so he can make quick money. The rhetoric he uses has a tone of contempt and causes the reader to feel threatened if he is white or uncomfortable if he is otherwise.

Middlesex 2 (post did not go through a week ago)

"Smyrna endures today in a few Rebitka songs and a stanza from The Wasteland:

Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna Merchant
Unshaven, with a pocketful of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.


Everything you need to know about Smyrna is contained in that. The merchant is rich, and so was Smyrna. His proposal was seductive, and so was Smyrna, the most cosmopolitan city in the Near East. Among its reputed founders were, first, the Amazons (which goes nicely with my theme), and second, Tantalus himself. Homer was born therem and Aristotle Onassis. In Smyrna, East and West... blended as tastefully as did the rose petals and hones in the local pastries."
Page 50

This passage describes the ancient city of Smyrna, where the protagonists are situated at this point in the novel. It is described as a place where opposites come together and mesh into a beautiful combination, as a conduit connecting the East to the West. The language the author uses is wistful, his tone being one of loss, because in the sentence previous to this passage, and at certain times during this passage, he foreshadows that the city is soon to be destroyed. In his reference to The Waste Land, the narrator makes an intertextual comparison between this setting of the novel and another work, which incidentally has the authors' name in the first line. The author also uses parallelism to describe the city and compare it to the poem, giving the reader a feel for the city. The narrator also mentions the Amazons in the city's history, musing that they go well with her theme of gender, the Amazons being powerful female warriors.