Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Autobiography of Red, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Creativity
Communication and Mystery
Time
Self and World
Summary
Analysis
Appendix B contains the aforementioned “Palinode” Stesichoros wrote in response to being blinded for slandering Helen. In it, the poet lists that all the things he claimed Helen had done in his poem had not actually happened.
Carson’s decision to include a fragment of Stesichoros’s “Palinode” is typical of her writing, which combines different genres together in a hybrid collage of prose, verse, fiction, nonfiction, and essay.
Themes
