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
This photograph depicts Herakles’s naked back. When they used to make love, Geryon would touch each bone on Herakles’s back. After they have sex this time, Geryon starts to cry. He wants to tell Herakles that he used to love him, but now he doesn’t know him, but he remains silent. Geryon talks about how people are “apart […] in time together,” but Herakles cuts him off. “Can’t you ever just fuck and not think,” he asks Geryon. Herakles leaves the room. When he returns, he notes how today is just like old times, with Herakles “laughing and [Geryon] crying.”
The way Geryon would touch each bone in Herakles’s back mirrors the way Ancash touched Geryon’s wings on the roof in Lima. Geryon cries because he realizes that he has been turning to love and recognition from a person who has always been unwilling to give him the emotional nourishment and honesty he needs. Herakles’s cruel condemnation of Geryon not being able to separate sex from his thoughts and emotions is what led to their initial breakup, and it remains a point of contention that prevents them from growing close as adults. Herakles’s remark about their sexual encounter being like old times reaffirms that Herakles has never offered to provide Geryon with the intimacy he desires—Geryon is simply projecting his desire to be loved onto Herakles, hoping he will love him back.
Themes
