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.

Middlesex 1

"My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent drivers license (from the Federal Republic of Germany) records my first name simply as Cal. I'm a former field hocky goalie, long-standing member of the Save-the-Manatee Foundation, rare attendant at the Greek Orthodox Liturgy, and, for most of my adult life, an employee of the U.S. State Department. Like Tiresias, I was first one thing and then another... A red-headed girl from Grosse Pointe fell in love with me, not knowing who I was. (Her brother liked me, too.) An army tank led me into urban battle once; a swimming pool turned me into myth; I've left my body in order to occupy others--and all this happened before I turned sixteen."
Book 1, Chapter 1, Page 3

In this, one of the first paragraphs of the book, we learn a great deal about the protagonist. In the first place, we learn that, while she was originally named femininely, later in life her name was shortened to the masculine "Cal". This implies that which the title, "Middlesex", has also implied, that the novel will deal with the subject of gender. Her surname, Stephanides, and her mention of the Greek Orthodox Church lead one to believe that she is of Hellenistic origin, further enhanced by her use of Tiresias, a figure in The Odyssey as well as Greek Mythology. Tiresias was transformed into a woman for seven years, according to the myth, and the narrators comparison of herself/himself to him also further implies that the narrator's gender might be called into question. The narrator lists things that have occorred in her life, but not their context, nor how they affected her, which adds a mood of suspense and anticipation to the opening pages of this book.

Dracula 7

"There was in the room the same thin white mist that I had before noticed... I felt the same vague terror which had come to me before and the same sense of some presence. I turned to wake Jonathan, but found that he slept so soundly that it seemed as if it was he who had taken the sleeping draught, and not I. I tried, but I could not wake him. This caused me a great fear, and I looked around terrified. Then indeed, my heart sank within me: beside the bed, as if he had stepped out of the mist—or rather as if the mist had turned into his figure, for it had entirely disappeared—stood a tall, thin man, all in black. I knew him at once from the description of the others. The waxen face; the high aquiline nose, on which the light fell in a thin white line; the parted red lips, with the sharp white teeth showing between; and the red eyes that I had seemed to see in the sunset on the windows of St. Mary's Church at Whitby. I knew, too, the red scar on his forehead where Jonathan had struck him. For an instant my heart stood still, and I would have screamed out, only that I was paralysed."
Chapter XXI, Page 305

This passage depicts when and how Dracula first appears to Mina when she is awake. It contains several examples of symbolism, most prevalent being the physical appearance of the Count. The clothing he wears is black, symbolizing his intentions as well as his relation to the darkness and by extension. The scar on his forehead seems to symbolize that, however, he can be damaged. The way he appears from the mist is reminiscent of the sexual connotations of his feeding by the way he enters the room as the mist, sneakily, seductively. Also, the fear that Mina feels and the darkness of his appearance is a Gothic trait.

Dracula 6

"We were prepared for some unpleasantness, for as we were opening the door a faint, malodorous air seemed to exhale through the gaps, but none of us ever expected such an odour as we encountered... here the place was small and close, and the long disuse had made the air stagnant and foul. There was an earthy smell, as of some dry miasma, which came through the fouler air. But as to the odour itself, how shall I describe it? It was not alone that it was composed of all the ills of mortality and with the pungent, acrid smell of blood, but it seemed as though corruption had become itself corrupt. Faugh! it sickens me to think of it. Every breath exhaled by that monster seemed to have clung to the place and intensified its loathsomeness."
Chapter XIX, Page 268

Here the door to Dracula's lair is opened for the first time. The narrator, Jonathan Harker states that even before the door opens, the reek is coming out of the sides of the door, which brings to mind a dank, humid atmosphere the almost gives the air a more solid texture, as if it could be parted with a hand. When the door is actually opened, the rankness pours out, almost like a liquid. The thing described, the smell, actually lends more to the mood than anything else could. It is already clear that the men are in a dark house, but the description of the horrible smell lends an almost slimy tangibility to the mood. Even the smell of the earth is described as a dry miasma, which means a noxious fume, so all in the air is really evil and they are truly entering the stronghold of the devil. The author makes his usual great use of simile and metaphor to describe the Gothic mood of the scene, and the bloodiness of the setting.

Dracula 5

"I feared she might catch cold sitting there, and asked her to come in and sleep with me, so she came into bed, and lay down beside me; she did not take off her dressing gown, for she said she would only stay a while and then go back to her own bed. As she lay there in my arms, and I in hers the flapping and buffeting came to the window again. She was startled and a little frightened... I could hear her poor dear heart still beating terribly. After a while there was the howl again out in the shrubbery, and shortly after there was a crash at the window, and a lot of broken glass was hurled on the floor. The window blind blew back with the wind that rushed in, and in the aperture of the broken panes there was the head of a great, gaunt grey wolf. Mother cried out in a fright, and struggled up into a sitting posture, and clutched wildly at anything that would help her. Amongst other things, she clutched the wreath of flowers that Dr. Van Helsing insisted on my wearing round my neck, and tore it away from me. For a second or two she sat up, pointing at the wolf, and there was a strange and horrible gurgling in her throat; then she fell over—as if struck with lightning, and her head hit my forehead and made me dizzy for a moment or two. The room and all round seemed to spin round. I kept my eyes fixed on the window, but the wolf drew his head back, and a whole myriad of little specks seemed to come blowing in through the broken window, and wheeling and circling round like the pillar of dust that travellers describe when there is a simoon in the desert. I tried to stir, but there was some spell upon me, and dear mother's poor body, which seemed to grow cold already—for her dear heart had ceased to beat—weighed me down; and I remembered no more for a while."
Chapter 11, Page 157

This is the passage in which Lucy witnesses her mother's death, described in grisly detail. First, the mother lying next to the daughter as thought the daughter was protecting her, and then the mother dying, is symbolic of the daughter being dangerous and a foreshadowing of how Lucy is almost a magnet for danger, and she is becoming that danger herself. The wolf is a tool, used by Dracula as a method of breaking into Lucy's room and frightening the mother into removing her protective garlic necklace. The mother herself has proven before to be a danger to her daughter, by previously removing the garlic in her room, and even in death she causes her danger by freaking out and falling on top of her almost as though she wanted to pin her to the ground. Once Lucy is pinned and incapable of resistance, something resembling a sandstorm flies into the room, compared to a simoon, or a harsh Arabian wind. The entire passage is tailored to effect a mood of horror, and when Lucy finally passes out, the scene immediately, almost physically, stops.

Dracula 4

"...I saw Van Helsing break down. He raised his hands over his head in a sort of mute despair, and then beat his palms together in a helpless way; finally he sat down on a chair, and... began to sob, with loud, dry sobs that seemed to come from the very racking of his heart. Then he raised his arms again, as though appealing to the whole universe. “God! God! God!” he said. “What have we done... that we are so sore beset? Is there fate amongst us still, sent down from the pagan world of old, that such things must be, and in such way? This poor mother, all unknowing, and all for the best as she think, does such thing as lose her daughter body and soul; and we must not tell her... or she die, then both die. Oh, how we are beset! How are all the powers of the devils against us!” Suddenly he jumped to his feet. “Come,” he said, “come, we must see and act. Devils or no devils, or all the devils at once, it matters not; we fight him all the same.”"
Chapter 11, Page 147-148

In this passage, we see a humanity in Van Helsing we have not seen before in the book. Previously he has been very aloof and calculating character, but now he finally expresses his emotions. The author uses simile to describe Van Helsing's emotions, "as though appealing to the whole universe". His dialect in the way he talks is also noticeable: "as she think" instead of "thinks", and "or she die" instead of "dies". He describes the powers they are set against as "pagan" and that fate works against them, as though his actions are actively contested by a manifestation of evil. In reality he is, which is dramatic irony.

Dracula 3

"There was a bright full moon, with heavy black, driving clouds, which threw the whole scene into a fleeting diorama of light and shade as they sailed across... Then as the cloud passed I could see the ruins of the abbey coming into view; and as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword-cut moved along, the church and churchyard became gradually visible...the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white...it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell...The town seemed as dead, for not a soul did I see;...it seemed to me as if my feet were weighted with lead, and as though every joint in my body were rusty. When I got almost to the top I could see the seat and the white figure...There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure. I called in fright...and something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a white face and red, gleaming eyes."
Chapter VIII, page 102

This passage, where Mina witnesses Lucy under the thrall of Dracula for the first time, is rife with Gothic imagery. The bright moon and shifting clouds, as well as the setting of a crumbling church and graveyard, are staples of Gothic tone. The authors diction makes heavy use of sharp consonants i.e. "as sharp as a sword-cut" and "light of the moon struck...", thus lending the scene a lot of tention and a sense of unease and what might be described as "the need to move quickly". Lucy is consistently described as white, a color with the connotation of innocence and child-like qualities; the count is described as a black figure leaning over the fallen white one, unmistakable imagery of an evil man taking advantage of an innocent girl. The recurring motif of death in this passage, and the metaphor of "a sword-cut", and the similes which Mina uses to describe her body as "weighted with lead", all add more to the mood of fear, tension, and all-around panic of the scene.