Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Middlesex, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Rebirth vs. Continuity
Ancestry, Inheritance, and Fate
False Binaries
Migration, Ethnicity, and the American Dream
Secrets
Summary
Analysis
Cal and Julie go to dinner at a restaurant called Austria. Julie is a photographer who looks 26, though she is, in fact, 10 years older than that. Cal likes Julie, yet worries that he is getting ahead of himself, as they haven’t even kissed yet. The narrative switches back to 1944. Theodora, now going by Tessie, is 20 years old. World War II is ranging, Prohibition has ended, and Lefty has closed down the speakeasy. Using the money from the erotic photographs, he opens a new Zebra Room, this one an “above-ground” bar and grill. Most of the patrons are auto workers. Working behind the bar, Lefty listens to them complain about everything from union-busting to black people.
Like Jimmy Zizmo and various other characters in the novel, the Zebra Room doesn’t die, but instead undergoes a kind of rebirth. Indeed, Lefty’s willingness to transform the former speakeasy into a diner shows that he is aware of the changing times and is willing to change with them. Particularly as an immigrant, such flexibility is arguably key to being prosperous in the U.S.
Themes
One day, when a group of customers come in saying they have just beaten a black man to death, Lefty refuses to serve them, forcing them to leave at gunpoint. While Tessie sits at home painting her toenails, she hears someone playing an Artie Shaw tune on a clarinet. The clarinet player is Milton, who is currently a college student. Downstairs, Desdemona and Lefty are sitting in the living room with Gaia Vasilakis and her parents. The four adults are drinking sparkling wine. Gaia is one of a series of girls Desdemona has been trying to set up with Milton. Having been rejected by the army, Milton is studying at night school and working in the Zebra Room during the day.
Although much about the Stephanides family has changed in the years that have passed, there are also key points of continuity. Just as Desdemona once tried to matchmake a wife for Lefty, she is now attempting to do so for Milton (and, as the reader will guess from the fact that Tessie and Milton ultimately end up getting married, for the same reason). Meanwhile, Milton is going into the family business by working at the new Zebra Room.
Themes
Desdemona goes to get Milton, begging him to come downstairs. She asks why he always plays with the window open. Milton claims it is because he gets hot, but Desdemona suspects it has something to do with “the growing intimacy between Milton and Tessie.” The thought of this intimacy has been giving Desdemona heart palpitations. She has taken to aggressively attempting to matchmake Milton with one girl after another. Reluctantly, Milton comes downstairs with her. He is wearing his Boy Scout uniform, and Gaia’s father comments that he has a lot of badges. Milton eats one of the cookies Gaia made, and says, “This cookie is lousy.”
Just as Lefty did when he was a young man and “spoiled” by the care of his parents and Desdemona, Milton is childish and irresponsible. Perhaps, like Lefty, his rudeness to Gaia emerges from a lack of interest in her (or any of the girls that Desdemona is setting him up with) and resentment of another person being in control of his life.
Themes
Cal comments that it is basically impossible to imagine one’s own parents falling in love. At 18 years old, Milton is unattractive, skinny, covered in zits, and prone to wearing too much Brylcreem in his hair. Tessie, on the other hand, is pretty. She is short and slender, with a “pretty, heart-shaped face.” Her manner is completely American, partly due to the fact that American women helped raise her while Sourmelina worked in a florist’s shop. In defiance of her boisterous, heavy-drinking, unconventional mother, Tessie is “quiet,” sensible, and conservative. As a result, until recently Milton thought of her as “prim” and cold. However, this all changes when he sees Tessie with painted toenails for the first time.
This passage explores the way in which children inherit both their parents’ traits and their opposites through the desire to rebel against whatever precedent one’s parents set. While it is generally more common for children to rebel by being more boisterous and less conservative, in Tessie’s case the opposite has happened, suggesting that the underlying desire to rebel is more important than whatever one is rebelling against.
Themes
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This same day, Tessie asks Milton to play her something on the clarinet. He does, and then without knowing why, puts the clarinet on her knee and blows a note. This is the start of a strange ritual, in which Milton holds his clarinet against different parts of Tessie’s body and plays, in a way that over time becomes more and more directly sexual. In 1944, however, Tessie is also being seduced by someone else: Michael Antoniou, who sings religious songs to her through the phone. He is a student at the Greek Orthodox Holy Cross Theological School in Connecticut. Desdemona is keen to encourage the romance between him and Tessie so that she will lose interest in Milton.
Tessie and Milton’s clarinet-based sexual experimentation is undoubtedly one of the funniest parts of the novel. Again, however, it shows that just because sex can be ridiculous and comic doesn’t make it any less erotic, profound, and intimate. Indeed, however bizarre the clarinet ritual might seem, it draws Milton and Tessie together against the odds of their familial proximity and parental opposition.
Themes
One day, when Michael comes over for Sunday lunch, he and Milton have an argument about religion. Tessie is struck by the contrast between the two young men. Later, when Milton offers to play a song for her, she tells him she doesn’t “want to do that anymore.” She and Michael start going on chaste dates every Sunday, and before long they are engaged. On hearing this, Milton curses Tessie, growing red-faced while pretending not to care. Cal reflects that it is obvious why Tessie thought Michael was the better, more practical choice. After a period of moping around, Milton suddenly decides to enlist in the Navy. Lefty is furious; he finds the decision arrogant and naïve, and reminds Milton that he missed out on becoming and Eagle Scout because he never got his last badge, which was for swimming.
Milton is a profoundly ridiculous character, and there are many ways in which he is a poorer choice of husband in comparison to Michael. At the same time, Michael is not a perfect option either, as he is presented as being rather boring. In the end, Tessie appears to be attempting to suppress her natural inclination and make a sensible choice—something that has never worked out for the characters in the novel thus far.
Themes
