How Orlando Changed

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People don’t really change, or do they? The answer to that question depends on the definition of “really.” The books Orlando by Virginia Woolf and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides investigate how much people change over the course of time, if humans “really” change or not. Orlando by Virginia Woolf is a fictional biography in about someone named Orlando and how Orlando changes over the span of over three hundred years. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is about the young intersex man named Cal and his journey which traces back to his grandmother’s generation. Orlando’s life is filled with romances, adventures into the unknown, and self discovery, and so is Cal’s. Both Orlando, by Virginia Woolf, and Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, focus on change. …show more content…

One Saturday, Orlando, after the night that his first love had left him and after a disgraced dismissal from the royal court, “failed to rise at his usual hour…he did not wake, take food, or show any sign of life for seven whole days. On the seventh day he woke…but what was strange was that… he appeared to have an imperfect collection of his past life” (50). Orlando appears to be dead, but is reborn seven days later with a much more sound mind and with his negative memories erased from his mind. This rebirth allows him to focus on himself, which rekindles his love of poetry which he had as a young boy which then leads to a journey of self discovery. The world changes around him as he’s stuck in a coma-like trance, and then he goes out to search for himself. Meanwhile, in Middlesex, Desdemona begins to work at a temple, and through an air vent she begins listening to the voice of an Islamic preacher whose name is “Minister Fard,” but whose face she doesn’t get to see until he reveals himself to her. Once he does, she processes the familiar face, and grows angry with the man she sees in front of him. She shouts at him and he

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