Passage #2 From Novel The bedroom grows still.

Inside my mother, a billion sperm swim upstream, males in the lead. They carry not only instructions about eye color, height, nose shape, enzyme production, microphage resistance, but a story, too. Against a black background they swim, a long white silken thread spinning itself out. The thread began on a day two hundred and fifty years ago, when the biology gods, for their own amusement, monkeyed with a gene on a babys fifth chromosome. That baby passed the mutation on to her son, who passed it on to his two daughters, who passed it on to three of their children (my great-great-greats, etc.), until finally it ended up in the bodies of my grandparents. Hitching a ride, the gene descended a mountain and left a village behind. It got trapped in a burning city and escaped, speaking bad French. Crossing the ocean, it faked a romance, circled a ships deck, and made love in a lifeboat. It had its braids cut off. It took a train to Detroit and moved into a house on Hurlbut; it consulted dream books and opened an underground speakeasy; it got a job at Temple No. 1 . . . And then the gene moved on again, into new bodies . . . It joined the Boy Scouts and painted its toenails red; it played Begin the Beguine out the back window; it went off to war and stayed at home, watching newsreels; it took an entrance exam; posed like the movie magazines; received a death sentence and made a deal with St. Christopher; it dated a future priest and broke off an engagement; it was saved by a bosuns chair . . . always moving ahead, rushing along, only a few more curves left in the track now, Annapolis and a submarine chaser . . . until the biology gods knew this was their time, this was what theyd been waiting for, and as a spoon swung and a yia yia worried, my destiny fell into place . . . On March 20, 1954, Chapter Eleven arrived and the biology gods shook their heads, nope, sorry . . . But there was still time, everything was in place, the roller coaster was in free fall and there was no stopping it now, my father was seeing visions of little girls and my mother was praying to a Christ Pantocrator she didnt entirely believe in, until finallyright this minute!on Greek Easter, 1959, its about to happen. The gene is about to meet its twin. As sperm meets egg, I feel a jolt. Theres a loud sound, a sonic boom as my world cracks. I feel myself shift, already losing bits of my prenatal omniscience, tumbling toward the blank slate of personhood. (With the shred of allknowingness I have left, I see my grandfather, Lefty Stephanides, on the night of my birth nine months from now, turning a demitasse cup upside down on a saucer. I see his coffee grounds forming a sign as pain explodes in his temple and he topples to the floor.) Again the sperm rams my capsule; and I realize I cant put it off any longer. The lease on my terrific little apartment is finally up and Im being evicted. So I raise one fist (male-typically) and begin to beat on the walls of my eggshell until it cracks. Then, slippery as a yolk, I dive headfirst into the world (Eugenides 210-211)

Analysis of Close Reading As book three, of Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex, ends, a summary is given to define Calliopes first birth. She narrates her grandparents immigration to America, their subsequent incest, her parents marriage and her own birth as a journey that a sperm had to take in order to meet an egg. She describes this biological journey with important events that caused her creation within a linear chronology, and ends by describing her eviction from her mothers egg. And with that, Eugenides defines hybridity. This passage illustrates the mixture of two ideas to create identity with thematic messages: immigration and integration of Greek and American cultures, gender identity (i.e. masculinity and femininity as a hermaphrodite), biology versus environmental influences, familial and social interaction (i.e. incestuous relationships and societal traditions for non-related personas), choice and fate (e.g. mythological context), and linear and circular chronology. Hybridity is even illustrated in the narrative structure of the novel, having been cut into four parts, with four separate generations of family being described within each. Hybridity, within Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex, destructs societal normality to form a bildungsroman and family saga. Calliope creates herself as an inevitable outcome of connected events from when her grandparents decided to marry from her parents (second cousins) marriage. She narrates the chronology for two generations, within two books, before describing her own birth. And even within the first paragraph of describing herself, she initiates personal struggles due to hybridity within the intersexuality of her male fist beating upon the egg that she had leased. Calliope introduces her female self within a biological metaphor herself as the evicted leaser, the egg as her apartment. This illustrates underlying bleak tones as Calliope leaves the comfort of her egg to be thrown into the world and its societal constraints. Her narration of her familys lives was told in thirdperson, but Calliopes voice, speckled with imagery, metaphors, and humorous quips, provide her implied emotions towards her familys choices. Although, it does not state of her own life, Calliopes development is still seen as her voice manifests her reluctant acceptance of her existence, as she still does not know who is she, despite her knowing what she is. This voice then embodies the bildungsroman as the actual chronology depicts the hybridity that caused Calliopes growth. With this segmented writing style, Eugenides provides a unique coming-of-age story to highlight the hardships of identity within a socially restricting environment. Word Count: 399