Volcano  Symbol Analysis

Volcanoes symbolize the ambiguity between the “inside” world and the “outside” world, and Geryon’s struggle to navigate this liminal space. One of Geryon’s central struggles throughout the novel is how to express his inner thoughts and develop meaningful, intimate relationships with others. After suffering abuse at the hands of his older brother, Geryon turns inward, rarely confiding his true thoughts and desires with others. Geryon explicitly compares “the cracks and fissures of his inner life” to the “lateral fissures called fire lips” of volcanoes. Unlike a “healthy volcano,” however, which periodically purges itself of its inner “pressure,” Geryon cannot regulate the expulsion of his “inner life.” Volcanoes fascinate Geryon because he longs to master the divide between inside and outside and learn how to project his inner turmoil outward so that he can use it to express himself to others rather than alienate himself from them. Geryon also associates volcanoes with his passionate but tumultuous relationship with Herakles, since it was Herakles’s grandmother’s photograph of a volcanic eruption, “Red Patience,” that first attracted him to volcanoes. On the same visit to Herakles’s hometown of Hades when Herakles first saw the photograph, Geryon, Herakles, and Herakles’ grandmother visited the volcano that was the subject of her photograph, as well. Geryon is also struck by Herakles’s grandmother’s story about Lava Man, the sole survivor of the 1923 volcanic eruption. Although Lava Man suffered severe burns, his residual scars symbolize the melding of his “inside” and “outside” worlds, something Geryon desperately longs to achieve in himself.