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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Book 2: Henry Ford’s English-Language Melting Pot
Explanation and Analysis:
Middlesex is primarily set in Greece, Detroit, and Berlin, focusing on what connects the three locations. Eugenides often utilizes distinct imagery to connect these place settings to the novel's broader themes. Take the following example from Chapter 5, in which Cal/lie imagines Detroit as being "made of wheels":
Judge Woodward envisioned the new Detroit as an urban Arcadia of interlocking hexagons. [...] This dream never quite came to be. Planning is for the world’s great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency. Since 1818, the city had spread out along the river, warehouse by warehouse, factory by factory. Judge Woodward’s wheels had been squashed, bisected, pressed into the usual rectangles.
In this passage, Detroit resembles that which it produces and embodies that which it creates. Detroit produces cars and resembles their wheels.
Notably, for convenience's sake, Detroit's "wheel" construction eventually disintegrates, giving way to "squashed, bisected" rectangle infrastructure. This imagery mirrors the stories of the many immigrants who inhabit the Motor City, forced to compress themselves into hyper-specific boxes for the sake of convenience and the comfort of native-born Americans. Both Detroit and its immigrants must conform or be rejected, and make the choice to conform.
Related Themes:
