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 packing. He’s now 22 and living on the mainland. Geryon’s mother calls to express her worries about this upcoming trip to Buenos Aires. He picks up the phone and talks to her, promising to be careful and call her when he arrives. He tells her not to smoke so much.
One may now look back and regard Herakles’s grandmother’s stories about Argentina as foreshadowing Geryon’s later trip to Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. This indicates that Geryon’s relationship with Herakles continues to influence his decisions well after the breakup. Geryon’s advice that his mother shouldn’t smoke so much demonstrates his simultaneous desire for closeness and inability to connect with her. He wants to tell her he cares about her but remains unable to articulate this sentiment with language. As a compromise, he tells her not to smoke so much in a gesture that nods toward caring without explicitly revealing itself as such.
Themes
