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
Geryon is now a self-professed “brokenheart.” He remembers his breakup every morning, and fresh waves of grief overwhelm him. He goes downstairs and looks for his dog before remembering they haven’t had a dog in years. It’s raining outside. Geryon stands before the sink and tries not to cry. He finds his camera and walks outside into the rainstorm. He takes a 15-minute exposure of a fly floating in a bucket of water. At the beginning of the exposure, the fly is alive, but it has drowned by the end. Geryon titles the photograph, “If He Sleep He Shall Do Well.”
The fly photograph is Geryon’s attempt to document and quantify mortality—to isolate and control the moment life becomes death. That Geryon photographs a fly, specifically, is a nod toward himself, since the novel repeatedly situates Geryon’s wings as a symbol for Geryon himself. Geryon’s misery is conveyed in the drowning of the fly, as it symbolizes how he’s drowning in misery after the breakup.
Themes
