Response 1: Personal experience

Azel Kahan

Middlesex Blog: personal experience

Everyone experiences traumatic events in their life at a certain point, and Middlesex delivers spectacularly a part of the protagonist’s life that not many experience. This is the 1967 Detroit race riots, which depict Callie’s hometown as an apocalyptic war zone with tanks, gunshots, and the burning down of her father’s restaurant, the Zebra Room. ”The French toast sign was in flames. The zebra-skinned barstools were like a row of torches” (Eugenides, 250). Upon reading this passage, a part of my childhood was able to relate to the story of Callie witnessing something disastrous. During my second year of elementary school in the Lower East Side, the teachers rounded all of the students up unexpectedly for an early dismissal, a “surprise half-day” or so I thought. My parents were not the ones to pick me up from school that day. Instead, I went along with my friends and walked to the Williamsburg Bridge through a fog of dust and fire truck sirens to go back home in Brooklyn. An unknowing 5 year old, I interpreted this strange end to the day as something good; I would be playing with my friends for the rest of the afternoon. However when my parents met us at the bridge, their facial expressions concealed worry, stress, and a hint of fear. Walking up the bridge none of us asked any questions about the fog, or the early dismissal or the fact that we weren’t taking the subway home. At the middle of the Williamsburg bridge I turned around briefly to get a view of the city, only to see an enormous cloud of smoke resonating from an area not too far away from my school. Helicopters buzzed overhead as we slowly distanced ourselves from Manhattan. Much like Callie’s experience in Middlesex, I was oblivious to the reality of the danger and more confused that I was scared. The ending of this memory involved me and two of my friends from school sitting on the couch in my living room flipping through channels on the TV, only to find the same news cast of the world trade center in smoke. None of us really cared, we simply kept pressing a number on the TV remote, hoping SpongeBob or Scooby-doo would appear on the screen. This form of ignorance I only realized years later helped me get into Callie’s shoes when talking about past experiences, and highlighted the importance of reflecting on major events in one’s life.

Response 2: Key passage

Azel Kahan

Middlesex blog: Key passage response

Throughout most of middlesex's second book, Cal as a narrator explains all of the events that influenced how he became who he is. Many of these events are traumatic, such as the Detroit race riots or the slow decline of his grandfather Lefty, but what also contributes to Cal's life changing experiences are the complexities of puberty he faces growing up as Callie. Callie questions her life and purpose when she observes others becoming adults and accelerating past her in terms of physical growth. A powerful analogy that reflects Callie's angst is on page 302 when she talks about the collection of Great Books in her library and how her dreams of the future no longer carry the same importance in her mind as when she was much younger: "Even then the Great Books were working on me, silently urging me to pursue the most futile human dream of all, the dream of writing a book worthy of joining their number, a one hundred and sixteenth Great Book with another long Greek name on the cover: Stephanides" (Eugenides, 302). This passage touches upon feelings of existentialism that many people inevitably come across when growing up. this being a natural part of life in human society, I believe including this passage among the more significant ones in Middlesex in a necessity. Thoughts of purpose and meaning reach everyone, and the fact that Jeffrey Eugenides decided to include this in the book that revolves around Callie's youth defines it as a moment that added to the creation of Cal as a separate living being. It is safe to say that Calliope's rebirth into Cal, regardless of when and where or how it happened was due to his experiences as his former self. The sheer experience acquired through youth comes in many different forms; this includes Callie's thoughts of life itself.

Response 3: Text-to-text

Azel Kahan                                                                                                     5/4/15

Middlesex Blog: Text-to-text

A text-to-text comparison worth motioning in the chapter The Obscure Object is when Calliope feels a very peculiar combination of emotions that can be related to a style of literature studied earlier in the academic year. This is when one of the characters in Middlesex, Maxine Grossinger, has an aneurysm on stage at a performance. Normally and event like this one would be extremely traumatic, instilling horror and sadness into everyone in the scene. However, Calliope reacts differently. “While the sun set melodramatically over a death that wasn’t in the script, I felt a wave of pure happiness surge through my body”(339). This reaction almost resembles a story element found in Shakespearean plays, the hamartia. This is the downfall of a hero/heroine, often a result of dealing with death, as seen in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The character Macbeth possesses hamartia because after committing murder once, it becomes a turning point in his character development that sends him down a spiral of more death and self-destruction. Callie may be similar in the sense that her witnessing the death with the obscure object in her arms brings her pleasure, making her see other events in a controversial manner. This event is also similar to Shakespeare’s Macbeth because this death changes the protagonist slightly, altering her development through the story. Jeffrey Eugenides may or may not have borrowed story elements from the 16^th century poet, but there is no question that the significance of these two passages are paralleled in some manner.

Response 4: Current Event

Azel Kahan                                                                                                     5/15/15

Middlesex Blog 4: Current Events:

A current event that many people have highlighted and related to Callie’s story in Middlesex is Bruce Jenner’s gender transition. Jenner stated in April during an interview that he was a trans woman who dealt with gender dysphoria for a while. Gender dysphoria is also known as gender identity disorder, in which case Bruce Jenner wasn’t content with living his life as a male. The prevalence of this disorder in the retired athlete made me think strongly of Calliope’s conundrum in Middlesex, and how she is confused about her own gender identity in her awkward teenage years. The drama surrounding Bruce Jenner’s transition is seen everywhere in pop culture oriented tabloids and other articles in publications such as People magazine and so on. The actual transition along with the drama itself can also be tied back to the Middlesex chapter ‘Gun on the wall’ where Calliope boldly enters new grounds when touching her female friend intimately. In previous chapters Cal tells the reader that his former self had been fond of her for quite a while, without being quite sure why. The confusion begins to fade when Callie crosses this threshold and explores new territory. Such may be said as well for the television personality Bruce Jenner, and how he might have found his gender identity. Whatever influence or events lead up to Jenner’s decision can be paralleled to Calliope finding herself during a time period of her life where one’s gender carries an enormous weight on their life in society.

Response 5: Creative

Azel Kahan                                                                                                     5/16/15

Middlesex Blog 5: Creative response

I chose the quote from page 438, when Calliope writes her letter of farewell to her parents before running away: “Despite its content, I signed this declaration to my parents: ‘Callie.’ It was the last time I was ever their daughter.” I used this quote as an inspiration to create a small comic that was based on the chapter ‘Looking myself up in Webster’s’; since I believed that this is one of the most significant passages in the book. Callie crosses the threshold from being a daughter to a son, after discovering a shocking truth about her own body, which is the moment the reader has been anticipating since Cal as the narrator begins his autobiography.