Middlesex+Book+2+journal+4

__**Middlesex: Marriage on Ice**__

__7. Term or Theory: Greek vs American and Past vs Presen__t
 * 126, funeral preparations are a mixture of the two
 * 128 two flags on coffin
 * 134 cousins playing together...at first like Bythanios but then it changes because they are not isolated
 * 139 traveling to her job D says the city looks like Smyrna with people looking like refugees

__5. My Reactions__
 * Desdemona gets a job, but has to sacrifice her heritage and past because they are Turkish.
 * "Fezzes...The hats named for the city of Morocco where the blood-colored dye came from, and which (on the heads of soldiers) had chased my grandparents out of Turkey, staining the earth a dark maroon. Now here they were again in Detroit" (143-4).
 * Sister Wanda asks if the Greeks and Turks "got mixed up" hoping to be able to allow D to stay. D responds, "Again Desdemona hesitated. She thought about her children. She imagined coming home to them without any food. And then she swallowed hard. 'Everybody mixed. Turks, Greeks, same same'" (145). she sacrifices her past (like she did her silk worms and hair) for her present and future, and now for her family.
 * Lina's character development
 * reaction to her husband's death
 * is very pronounced with grief...so much so that it is not real, others (specifically the traditional Greeks) reactions' are funny as well
 * "Sourmelina's anguish at her husband's death far exceeded her affection for him in life" (127)
 * "In the best histrionic village style, S unleashed soaring arias in which she lamented the death of her husband and castigated him for dying. When she was finished with Zizmo she railed at God for taking him so soon, and bemoaned the fate of her new born daughter" (127)
 * "Everyone agreed that such a display of grief would guarantee Jimmy Zizmo's soul eternal peace" (127)
 * puts the wedding crown in the casket
 * then dresses in festive clothes as soon as the official mourning period is over
 * D, "what are you doing?...A widow wears black for the rest of her life."
 * Lina, "Forty days is enough" (129)
 * not an interested mother, gives D the dirty work and will take the baby when visitors come (133)
 * Lefty and Desdemona's changed relationship
 * 130 Lefty is lonely and jealous(?) of the new baby's attention
 * Lefty becomes an "I'm the man so I rule the house" type as punishment until...
 * "Desdemona saw her husband's face screwed up with a malice she'd never seen before. It was no longer Lefty's face, no longer that of her brother or her husband. It was the face of someone new, a stranger she was living with" (137)
 * I don't know if i blame Lefty or not, i think i pity him as well. one day he has a great relationship and the next he is being frozen out. i wonder if he would have reacted better if he had known D's worries. i like to think so, but then again its like a repeating cycle from when they are in smyrna and D still refuses him because she feels its wrong.

__Panaghia pg 134__ this is just a name of the Virgin Mary, to whom D prays that she will not have another child if her baby does not have a mutation. it is mostly used in orthodox christianity. i thought there was more but that was really it, i guess the main thing is that is shows that D is traditional and an orthodox christian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panagia

__Mavros__ This is merely a derogatory slur for African Americans that originated from greeks. I think that this is more of a commonly used phrase than a real slur, like the n word today for African Americans. Desdemona uses it often in this chapter, and i think others as well. I can see D being somewhat derogatory, but i don't picture her as a real, for lack of a better word, potty mouth, therefore i think it is a combination of slur and common phrase. the only definition i got was from urban dictionary, the others were people and such. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mavro