Middlesex

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Perhaps perverse, but it seems like Middlesex would be an excellent novel in which to study the [i]middle voice[i].

On a first reading, I intend to pull all the instances of "get" that I don't miss. Afterwards, though, it's clear that Book I has a very interesting number of "pathetic fallacies" or "paysage d'état d'âme", doors, eyes, fires, all with a sense of sentient purpose !


Occurences of get

Agentive subject

Narrative

  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 11 | We may get another boy
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 11 | Now my mother gets up from the so-called love seat.
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 11 | Now my father gets up to make his rounds, turning out light, locking doors.
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 13 | Now, in the church basement, she told Chapter Eleven to run off and play with the other children while she got a cup of coffee to restore herself.
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 14 | He was trying to fill a coffee cup, but once he got the tap open he couldn't get it closed.
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 17 | Awakened by my parents rushing off to the hospital, he'd gotten out of bed and gone downstairs to make himself a cup of coffee.
  • Book II § Matchmaking § 19 | (Her memoirs, which end shortly before her suicide, make unsatisfactory reading, and it was after finishing them years ago that I first got the idea to write my own.)
  • Book II § Matchmaking § 20 | I'm the final clause in a periodic sentence, and that sentence begins a long time ago, in another language, and you have to read it from the beginning to get to the end, which is my arrival.
  • Book II § Matchmaking § 20 | She </i>gets really fat</i> again. (narrator rewinds the tape through pregnancy)

Conversation

  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 15 | Did you get burned?
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 15 | He gets into everything.

Non-agentive subject / Passive Voice

  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 6 | In the spring of 1959 when discussions of my fertilization got under way, my mother couldn't foresee that women would soon be burning their brassieres by the thousand.
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 15 | Standing at the window, my brother wanted more than anything to believe in an American god who got resurrected on the right day