The color red symbolizes Geryon’s identity and the role creativity plays in constructing identity. In the introductory essay that precedes the main story, Carson (the author) writes that adjectives “are the latches of being,” meaning an adjective provide insight into the characteristics of the noun that it describes. Geryon feels that his redness is his defining feature, so the color red becomes synonymous with his identity and personal quest for self-affirmation. For example, one of Geryon’s first attempts at autobiography involves constructing a sculpture from a cigarette glued to a red tomato. Redness extends beyond Geryon’s self, too: he lives on an island called “The Red Place,” which is covered in “red dirt.” Volcanoes, one of his core interests, also evoke the color red. When Geryon thinks about redness, he consciously or unconsciously meditates on who he is. Conversely, colors that are not red point away from Geryon’s assumed sense of self. For example, when Herakles calls Geryon after their breakup to tell him about a “freedom” dream he had in which Geryon resurrects a drowned yellow bird, Geryon angrily thinks to himself, “he doesn’t know me at all! Yellow!”
Red Quotes in Autobiography of Red
Yellow? said Geryon and he was thinking Yellow! Yellow! Even in dreams
he doesn’t know me at all! Yellow!
It was not the fear of ridicule,
to which everyday life as a winged red person had accommodated Geryon early in life,
but this blank desertion of his own mind
that threw him into despair.
“…I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it.”
This is for Ancash, he calls to the earth diminishing below. This is a memory of our
beauty.
Red Symbol Timeline in Autobiography of Red
