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 sits in his hotel room and thinks about “the cracks and fissures of his inner life,” comparing them to a blocked volcanic vent causing lateral fissures. He doesn’t want to become someone too fixated on their woes. He redirects his attention toward the book he’s reading, Philosophic Problems, reading about how different people will never know how the other sees the color red. He reads on, and the book states that “to deny the existence of red is to deny the existence of mystery,” which could make someone go crazy.
In ruminating on “the cracks and fissures of his inner life,” Geryon directly likens the separation between the inside and outside world—between the self and the social, public world—as Earth’s crust, which acts as a barrier between the surface and the lava that flows beneath. Just as a blocked volcanic vent causes lateral fissures, a person unable to expel their inner life and project it to the outside world will explode and destruct. The book Geryon reads about redness obviously resonates on a personal level. Besides this, it also gives him a new perspective from which to consider the fact that other people are fundamentally unknowable, and that we can never fully express our inner life to others. The book makes the point that it’s better to live in mystery and accept it than to deny its existence outright. Perhaps Geryon’s quest for fixed, stable truth is misguided—he may need to learn to accept mystery and the impossibility of finding real, definitive truth.
Themes
Geryon puts his book down and heads outside. It’s Saturday night, and the streets of Buenos Aires are bustling. He walks to a bookshop and heads to the English books section. He picks up a self-help book called Oblivion the Price of Sanity? The book explains how depression “is one of the unknown modes of being,” since it’s like a world without a self.
Whereas the other book emphasized the importance of the outside world in knowing the self, this self-help book emphasizes the necessity of the self to understand the world. It’s a reciprocal relationship where one cannot thrive without the other. “Modes of being” also references Autobiography of Red’s opening essay, where Carson talks about how adjectives create ways of being.
Themes
Geryon hears a kissing sound behind him and looks up from his reading. Outside, a workman makes a kissing sound with his mouth each time a bird swoops down in front of him. Geryon thinks the kissing makes the bird happy. On his way out of the bookshop, he bumps into a man. He looks up to apologize and sees that the man is Herakles.
The man and the bird recall the dream Herakles had about Geryon resurrecting then bird. This directly foreshadows Geryon’s unexpected reunion with Herakles, which, apparently, is the first time he’s seen him since the breakup.
Themes
