Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel Middlesex is one full of interesting and somewhat unique themes. There is no question as to why the work has gone so far as to win a Pulitzer Prize: it follows a pattern that has proven successful for thousands of years....

Although the past has chronologically been removed from present time, “the past is never dead and buried. In fact it’s not even past,” said William Faulkner. The theme of time is a common expression in American literature, as is seen in The...

In The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides has the narrators describe seemingly average daily occurrences as extraordinary, exhibiting the search for something more significant in their uniform, designed-to-be-perfect lives. Through the narrators’...

The 1970s in the U.S. was a pivotal time in politics and social change. Second wave feminism was characterized by the sexual liberation of women. As women began to become familiar with their sexual identities there was also the desire for them to...

We can’t know how another person feels. Perhaps, in an age of “empathy workshops,” this is a disappointment, but on a deeper level of human behavior it is probably both simultaneously a relief and a tragedy. "Thank heavens," some may say, "that we...

The dramatic comedy The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides, is a controversial novel that revolves around the suicide of the Lisbon daughters. These five young ladies seek to end their lives as they lived them: together. With traces of...