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 finally learns how to write. His mother’s friend, Maria, gives him a notebook from Japan. Geryon writes “Autobiography” on the cover. He titles the first page “Total Facts Known About Geryon” and lists everything he knows about himself: he is a red monster who lives on the Red Place, an island in the Atlantic. His mother is “a river that runs to the sea the Red Joy River,” and his father is “gold.” He has six hands, six feet, and has wings. He has “strange red cattle.” One day, Herakles gets jealous of the cattle and kills Geryon for them. He asks himself why Herakles killed him and comes up with three possibilities: 1, he is “just violent”; 2, it was his 10th Labor; and 3, he believed “Geryon was Death otherwise he could live forever.” Lastly, Geryon writes that Herakles killed Geryon’s little red dog.
Geryon’s “Total Facts Known About Geryon” list references Carson’s translation of Stesichoros’s Geryoneis. The list fulfills a similar function in Carson’s retelling of Stesichoros’s poem underscores how centrally redness factors into Geryon’s identity and challenges logical, conventional understandings of time by suggesting that Geryon predicts his ultimate slaying (in the original myth) by Herakles. Geryon’s list also eschews fixed, static meaning for subjective interpretation and uncertainty, as evidenced by his multiple explanations for his slaying. Herakles’s reasons for killing Geryon range from senselessly cruel (“just violent”) to superstitious (he thought “Geryon was Death otherwise he could live forever.”)
Themes
At a parent-teacher conference that Geryon attends with his mother, the teacher asks Geryon’s mother where he gets his ideas and if he ever writes happy endings. Geryon adds to his autobiography a new ending: “All over the world the beautiful red breezes went on blowing hand / in hand.”
Geryon’s new ending also comes from Carson’s translation of Geryoneis. The ending is ambiguous but hopeful, gesturing toward the continuing forward motion of time that persists after death. Geryon tries to make peace with time, something that usually troubles him. Geryon’s rather poetic addendum, in which he describes how “All over the world the beautiful red breezes went on blowing hand / in hand,” demonstrates his tenancy to see himself—his inner world—as separate from the outside world. Because he regards his inside world and the outside world as distinct, he knows the latter will continue living after he dies.
Themes
