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 wakes in the middle of the night and feels panicked. He observes the empty street from his hotel room window. He imagines the lava that flows miles below the street and wonders when someone “become[s] unreal.” He also thinks about Heidegger’s thoughts on moods, how humanity would see themselves as interconnected with the world were it not for moods. Geryon weeps.
Geryon’s fixation on the lava that flows beneath the city reflects an anxiety about the conflict between outer public life and hidden inner life. He’s gesturing toward his own unease with his unpredictable, shifting moods and anxieties. When he wonders when someone “become[s] unreal,” he’s wondering how out of touch with one’s moods one has to be to lose their sense of self.
Themes
Geryon leaves his hotel room and heads toward the harbor. He hears voices coming from a tango club called Caminito and wanders inside. Red kitchen tables line the borders of the bar. An old, frail trio of musicians play music as though they are one person. Geryon is disappointed when a tango singer comes on stage and disrupts their music. She sings a tango song, which Geryon doesn’t particularly like.
The tango bar is rife with imagery and symbolism that evokes the classic Greek mythology on which Autobiography of Red is based. Caminito is Spanish for “narrow lane,” which perhaps evokes the River Styx, the passageway to Hades (the underworld). Likewise, the dimly lit tango bar evokes Hades, the god of the mythological underworld by the same name. The three musicians playing as one is likely an allusion to Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the gates of the underworld, and that Herakles slayed for his 12th labor (two labors after the 10th labor, in which he slayed Geryon in classical mythology.) The musicians resonate with Geryon, perhaps because, in the classical tradition, they are all Herakles’s victims.
Themes
Geryon falls asleep. When he wakes, the bar is empty, and the lights are off. The tango singer is sweeping the floor and walks toward him. Geryon realizes he has woken with an erection and isn’t wearing any pants, and he hurries to cover himself. The woman sits down next to him and lights a cigarette. He tries to lie about liking the music, but the woman shrugs it off.
Geryon’s inability to stay awake or leave the tango bar also aligns the bar with Hades, which entraps people. It’s unclear if Geryon’s pantlessness actually happens, but given the ease with which he slips in and out of consciousness at the bar, it plausible that it’s a dream that reflects his unconscious social anxieties and fear of ostracization and loneliness.
Themes
Geryon suddenly remembers a school dance. He'd been sweating through his brother's sports jacket and not danced with anyone. When he returned home, his brother was making bologna sandwiches in the kitchen and asked if he'd done any dope at the dance. As he carried his sandwiches out of the kitchen, he told Geryon the sports jacket looked good on him. Geryon stayed behind and cleaned up his brother's mess in the kitchen.
Geryon and his brother seem to want to be close to each other: they exchange affectionate gestures, such as Geryon’s brother lending him the sports jacket and complimenting him, and Geryon cleaning up his brother’s mess in the kitchen. Yet Geryon remains unable to directly convey his desire for connection and intimacy—he has to go about it in these roundabout, disguised ways.
Themes
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Geryon returns to the present. He’s still sitting across from the tango singer and asks her if she thinks about beluga whales in captivity and what she thinks they think about in there. When she replies, “nothing,” Geryon retorts that it’s impossible to be alive and think of nothing. The woman says Geryon is just seeing his own guilt when he projects thoughts onto the whales. She tells him she’s a psychoanalyst. The tango singer looks at Geryon for a few moments and asks, “Who can a monster blame for being red?” When Geryon doesn’t hear her, she doesn’t repeat her question, instead suggesting it’s time he leaves.
Geryon’s’ fixation on the whales underscores his anxieties about captivity. The tango singer’s accusation that his sympathy for the whales is simply a projection of his own guilt for keeping them in captivity might point to Geryon’s misplaced guilt about his monstrosity. Just as Geryon isn’t directly response for whales in captivity, nor is he responsible for his monstrosity or redness. He blames himself for the way he is because he doesn’t know who else to blame. He also feels insecure about his inability to meld his inner world with his outer world. He fears that, like the whales, his silence may be interpreted as evidence of a “nothing,” forgettable inner life.
Themes
