M-Sex Four Sins of the Father
"Middlesex" has multiple protaganists. Not just Cal, but his parents and grandparents are all central figures. Do you think their stories are central to the book's success? How would it have been different if you had only known about Cal's life, without knowing about his grandparents? Why do you think Eugenides told a saga of generations, instead of one individual's story?
posted by JenniNapa at
6:41 PM
3 Comments:
I do think everyone's stories are important. To understand how Cal came to be the way he is, you need to know the whole family history.
By
PCOSMama, at 8:29 PM
I certainly think that it would have been a very different novel if we didn't have the stories of several generations. I agree with pcosmama that to fully appreciate Cal's story, you must have the information from the family. Why Desdemona wasn't shocked by Cal's admission in the end could only be explained by the fact that her mother had told her this sometimes happened in their remote village.
I think that Eugenides told the entire families story was to give you that much more of a connection to Cal. Not just in understanding the history of how he came to be, but to give him a bigger voice than telling just his own story. There are times when you know that Cal is making things up because there is simply no way he could have known the information. In these portions, I think we learn more about Cal than about his family. (Perhaps all of the angst that Desdemona and Lefty felt - it didn't seem like Desdemona was in a condition to share that kind of information once Cal was in a position to hear it...)
By
MamaChristy, at 6:29 PM
Interesting! I was thinking this was Eugenides' tip of the hat to classic literature: the Bible, The Iliad etc. All of the biggies have long lines of histories and family backgrounds -- and, not coincidentally, they all have a strong Greek influence.
I agree that knowing the backstory of his grandparents and parents makes Cal's situation more understandable, but I wonder if that's why Eugenides did it. He may have thought, "The only way anyone will read 600 pages about a confused Greek-American hermpahrodite is if I make it *not his fault*." I wonder if he felt presenting Cal/Callie just as a character would give us less sympathy toward him because we wouldn't have known what was coming all along. In other words, I think presenting it as fait accompli was an author's device to make the reader accept the inevitable fact of something that would otherwise make them very squeamish.
This reminds me of a study I read once in some journalism class. It was talking about the coverage of crime in media, and it questioned why we always want to know details about the person affected. What did they do for a living? What race were they? Where did they live? Did they go to college? Did they have kids? We want to know these answers so we can find the differences between ourselves and the victims of crime so we can mentally distance ourselves. As in, "Oh, she lived in the bad part of town. No wonder she got shot. But it won't happen to me because I don't live there." I think Eugenides knows that we, the readers, want to have a reason for what happened to Cal, so we can distance ourselves enough to be comfortable reading about him and liking him. We know this is not his choice. People like reasons. We like order, and we like to believe we can protect ourselves from things we don't want and/or understand. (The lesson here? Don't marry your brother, and, if you must, don't further dirty the waters by letting your children marry a first cousin! Aieee!)
By
JenniNapa, at 9:56 PM
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