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 is approaching the moment at which the truth of his intersex condition reveals itself. Back in the summer of 1974, Callie reassures both Tessie and herself with her fake periods. With the vacation to Turkey out of the way, she is able to join the Object’s family in Petoskey. Milton is consumed by the Watergate Scandal, as well as the ongoing situation in Cyprus. His friends accuse the U.S. of “betraying the Greeks,” but Milton insists that the U.S. has the right to act in its own interests. Eventually he exclaims, “To hell with the Greeks.” The other men are horrified and leave in a storm of fury. They don’t come back.
Just as Lefty and Desdemona performed a fake courtship onboard the ship that brought them to the U.S. in order to assuage their own concerns about their incestuous relationship, so does Callie now calm herself through her fake periods. Both examples show that it is easier than it might appear to believe one’s own delusions.
Themes
Only Father Mike, Aunt Zo, and their children remain. Tessie is angry with Milton, and a fight erupts between the two of them. Father Mike goes to comfort Tessie, who is crying, and holds her hand. Aunt Zo comes out with alcohol, telling Mike to avert his eyes. The following Friday, Mr. Object drives Callie to Petoskey, drinking canned Smirnoff cocktails on the way. Mrs. Object, Jerome, and the Obscure Object are already there—as is Rex Reese, whose parents also have a house in the area. Jerome is delighted that the cancellation of Callie’s vacation means she can be in his film.
In this passage, a surprising similarity emerges between the two families, which both turn out to be somewhat dysfunctional in their own right. It’s clear that although the Object family embodies the stereotypical American Dream from the outside, behind closed doors they also engage in problematic behavior like drunk driving.
Themes
Downstairs, Rex is telling a story about his friends throwing up from drinking—“It was like the Niagara Falls of puke”—while the Obscure Object giggles enthusiastically. When she sees Callie, she greets her mildly. Rex suggests that they grab some beers and go to the cabin in the woods. In a moment alone with the Object, Callie accuses her of wanting Rex to “molest” her. The Object replies that Jerome wants to molest Callie, then asks Callie to check her breath. Callie decides to seek revenge against the Object by imitating her and flirting with Jerome. Walking through the woods to the cabin, they have to go through a swamp. When they finally arrive, they find that the cabin is locked.
It is striking that Callie uses a criminal (and also rather clinical) word to describe what she accuses the Object of wanting to do to her. Of course, this is a product of Callie’s jealousy, and her feeling that Rex’s interest in the Object is a violation. At the same time, it is also arguably a product of a social world in which teenage girls do not have a solid framework to articulate their own sexuality and desires.
Themes
Rex and Jerome disappear behind the cabin. There is a crash, and Rex emerges through the door, dangling a mouse in front of the Object, who screams and grabs ahold of Callie. Callie suggests that they go back to the house, and for a moment the Object considers it. However, when Rex calls her into the house, she follows. Jerome is staring at Callie, entranced. Although she doesn’t return his feelings, she goes down to sit beside him. The four of them share a joint. It is Callie’s first time smoking weed, and Rex explains that she has to hold the smoke in her lungs. Then Rex and the Object do a “shotgun”: Callie watches closely as they blow smoke in each other’s mouths.
Here Callie has another rather typical teenage experience: engaging in drug use and flirtation in a situation that she doesn’t quite want to be in due to peer pressure and a desire to fit in. Again, it becomes clear how little control teenage girls are expected to have over their own actions and desires. The boys decide for the Object and Callie, and the girls simply comply with what has been chosen for them.
Themes
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After, Jerome and Callie shotgun as well. Rex whispers something to the Obscure Object, then kisses her. Callie pretends not to see. She and Jerome talk about how high they are and what they can see. Like the Oracle of Delphi, Callie is a teenage virgin breathing in hallucinogens. She begins to feel strange, and suddenly finds that Jerome is kissing her. She is overwhelmed by the sensation. In the background, she can hear the Object laughing, and with one eye watches Rex taking off her shirt. Jerome is rubbing against Callie, but she is no longer in her body. She is experiencing ecstasy, not in the sense of euphoria, but its original meaning: a kind of displacement. Callie leaves her own body and enters the body of Rex.
This passage is crucial, because it is the first moment in which Callie actively pictures herself inhabiting the body of a boy. Crucially, this is not because she necessarily feels more like a boy, but rather because it is Rex’s male body that allows him to hook up with the Obscure Object. In this sense, Callie’s gender identity is driven more by her sexual orientation than other factors (at least at this point in her life).
Themes
While on one hand telling Jerome not to touch her breasts (in case he feels the tissues she stuffed in her bra), Callie experiences herself touching the Obscure Object’s breasts as Rex is doing. Just as Callie is becoming aware of how drunk she is, she realizes that Jerome is penetrating her. She experiences a searing pain, and gasps. She and Jerome look at each other, and simultaneously have the same realization that Callie is “not a girl but something in between.” Jerome pulls away and falls off the bed. Callie suddenly feels horrified by the certainty that Jerome is going to tell Rex her secret. For a brief moment, she considers stealing the Object’s parents’ car and fleeing to Canada. However, she then sees that Jerome is smiling. He is delighted to have “gone all the way.”
The fact that Callie and Jerome have such wildly different interpretations of what happens between them here is remarkable. Callie has an intense dissociative episode, projecting herself into Rex’s body so that she experiences the pleasure of having sex with the Object at the same time as the painful awkwardness of her sexual encounter with Jerome. Jerome, meanwhile, does not even seem to register this encounter as negative. He sees Callie as something to be conquered, not a person with whom to share intimacy and pleasure.
Themes
