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 are going away together on a weekend trip to Pomerania. Cal picks her up in a Mercedes. He feels excited about her presence and their growing intimacy, but during the trip they sleep in separate rooms. Meanwhile, back in Callie’s childhood, it is the summer after Milton banned her from speaking to Marius. Milton is terrified that the diner is going to fail. He spends his days lying on the patio and letting his beard grow out. Lefty tries to encourage him, but after the stoke Milton has begun to perceive his father as weak. At the diner, Milton continues to have the same cheery exterior, but this masks his true feelings.
This passage explores the particular pressures that are placed on men, and the difficulties of living up to a masculine ideal. Milton obviously feels enormous pressure to provide for his family and maintain (or increase) the diner’s prosperity. Moreover, he also places emotional pressure on himself to appear resilient and optimistic. This is harmful, and leaves him feeling alienated.
Themes
Milton and Tessie’s bedroom is “furnished entirely in Early American reproductions,” and Milton sleeps with a gun from his military days under his pillow. The gun is loaded, and the safety is off. During the summer, the city of Detroit is “bracing for race riots.” One night, a group of young black sex workers stand on Twelfth Street. They notice police arresting black men, but instead of fleeing, they fight back, soon joined by others. The riot has begun. At 6:23 a.m., Jimmy Fioretos calls the Stephanides house and frantically tells Callie to put Milton on the phone, because “the coloreds are rioting.” Milton leaps out of bed, taking his gun with him.
The novel only provides hints about the conditions that lead to the 1967 Detroit Riot. The black community of Detroit face widespread discrimination, police brutality, de facto segregation, and cyclical poverty. In the midst of a national moment in which black Americans are energized to fight back, the black population of Detroit sends the message that they have finally had enough.
Themes
Driving to the diner in his half-dressed state, Milton sees children throwing bricks through storefronts. He drives straight into the smoke billowing from the fires. Back at home, Tessie takes the children into the attic along with a suitcase full of food. Distraught over the news footage of the riots on TV, Desdemona claims that this is just like what happened in Smyrna. Before the riot, the white people who lived in Callie’s neighborhood had the belief that they could accept the presence of their black neighbors as long as they behaved in a way that was “normal.” Out of the whole Stephanides family, Aunt Zo is the only one who expresses sympathy for the looters during the riot.
As this passage explains, race relations have long been tense in Detroit due to the racism of white people like the Stephanides family, who tend not to own up to their own prejudice but instead dress it up as a desire for “decency” and “civility.” In reality, of course, discriminating against a group of people and then demanding politeness from them isn’t reasonable—it is deeply oppressive.
Themes
Lefty, Desdemona, Tessie, and the children spend three days in the attic, not bathing or brushing their teeth, consumed by the TV news. They hear nothing from Milton. Terrified for her father, Callie realizes that no one else in her family is going to save him, and thus decides to take on the mission herself. She crosses herself “in the Orthodox fashion,” sneaks out of the attic, and gets on her bike. On seeing a military tank, she is initially frightened and considers turning around, but then decides to follow it.
Callie’s heroic but naïve decision to rescue her father could be read as prefiguring her later transition to a male gender identity, as her act is arguably stereotypically male in the brave, protective sense. On the other hand, such an interpretation could be seen as reinforcing the gender binary that the novel seeks to critique.
Themes
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Milton is crouched under the cash register at the Zebra Room, holding a ham sandwich and trying desperately to stay awake. He hasn’t slept since he got there, and desperately needs to use the bathroom but won’t let himself. By some miracle, while all the other businesses in the area have been looted, the diner hasn’t. Milton hears the doorknob of the diner rattle and walks toward it, shouting, “I’ve got a gun!” However, he then realizes that he is not holding his gun at all, but the ham sandwich. The person at the door is Morrison, who lives across the street. Morrison is surprised to see Milton there, noting it’s not safe for white people to be in the area. He then asks if he could buy some cigarettes.
In a fashion so stereotypically American that it is tragicomic, Milton’s desperation to guard his property suggests he values it more than his own life. Of course, this is not because the Zebra Room has very high monetary value (as Cal has just explained, it was actually losing money). Rather, the Zebra Room is a manifestation of Milton’s own pride and dignity. If he lost it, it would be an affront to his masculinity.
Themes
While Milton passes the cigarettes and matches through the door’s mailbox, he gestures toward the riot and asks, “What’s the matter with you people?” Morrison replies, “The matter with us […] is you.” After hearing these words, Milton starts repeating them in a mock black accent. The phrase becomes a kind of “mantra” through which he expresses his various bigoted views. Meanwhile, back in the riot, Callie struggles to navigate her way through the city. She is surrounded by the terrifying violence of a “real battle,” something that in hindsight Cal views as “The Second American Revolution.” Milton watches in horror as soldiers shoot at Morrison, who is lighting a cigarette in his living room, and kill him instantly.
In this passage, Cal leaves a deliberate amount of ambiguity regarding whether the epic battle scenes Callie perceives are due to the exaggerations of her own childish perception, or whether this is actually what happened. The fact that at the time, the 1967 Detroit Riot constituted the largest uprising in the U.S. since the Civil War indicates that Callie was not exaggerating, and that Cal is right to think of this as “The Second American Revolution.”
Themes
Callie has finally made it to the Zebra Room and is happy to see that it hasn’t burned down. However, just at that moment, she sees a figure throw a Molotov cocktail through the window of the diner, shouting, “Opa, motherfucker!” Just as Milton grabs the fire extinguisher in a desperate attempt to put out the flames, it suddenly occurs to him that he has triply insured the diner, and that letting it burn down will lead to a huge payout. He runs out to his car, where he finally spots Callie, who says she is there to help him. He hugs her, and she cries at the sight of the burning restaurant. They drive home together. Cal reiterates that while the events of those days are referred to only as a riot, he maintains that what he witnessed was a “guerrilla uprising.”
“Opa!” is the exclamation common among Greek waiters. By shouting this while throwing the Molotov cocktail at the diner, the rioter in question expresses some level of anti-Greek xenophobia. Of course, due to the significant privilege Greek people held in comparison to black residents of Detroit, this anti-Greek prejudice comes out as rather mild in comparison to the problem of anti-black racism.
Themes
