49 pages • 1 hour read
Anne CarsonAutobiography Of Red
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Color
As Carson notes in the novel's introductory sections, adjectives, like colors, "are the latches of being" (4). They define a thing or being as possessing a certain quality, but, for Geryon, this definition can also be a reduction. Colors so dominate Geryon's thinking that as a child, he undertakes a science project about "the noise that colors make" (84). Three colors take precedent in Geryon's world: red, black, and white. Red is both the color of Geryon's skin and the color of the blood in his body. Geryon spends his childhood on an island with "red dirt" (23) and a "red assault of grass" (23). Red comes to represent Geryon's conception of 'inside': passion, intensity, hate. Black stands in as "a mantle of silence" (48), as in the basalt rocks left behind and "silenced" (63), or the curated silence of a photograph. Later, in adulthood, Geryon experiences a "soiled white Saturday morning" (120) at Ancash mother's home in Lima, Peru. This whiteness has a "waiting" (122) energy and drives Geryon into a state of boredom.
Photography and Sight
The novel begins with the legend of Stesichoros being stricken blind for writing a slanderous poem about Helen of Troy. He regains his sight when he writes a "palinode" (15), or an ode that says "the opposite of what you said before" (15). When Geryon first sees Herakles, it is "one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness" (39). The two men experience a totality of vision, each completely entranced by the other. As a teenager, Geryon begins to use photography as entries in his autobiography, often taking self-portraits using the long-exposure technique introduced to him by Herakles' grandmother.
Volcanoes
Geryon finds a parallel between "the cracks and fissures of his inner life" (105) and the "lateral fissures called fire lips" (105) in volcanoes. Geryon doesn't want his 'insides' to become so pressurized and held back that they explode sideways, like red lava. He wants to become "a healthy volcano" (105) that understands "the uses of pressure" (105). Herakles first introduces volcanoes to Geryon on their drive to Hades, Herakles' hometown on the island. He tells Geryon about the active volcano on Hades and how his grandmother took a photograph of its last explosion, in 1925. He also tells Geryon about Lava Man, the sole survivor. Lava Man represents a joining of the 'inside' and 'outside' forces with which Geryon grapples. Having survived the volcano eruption inside the jail, Lava Man's burned skin turns to pumice and his insides become "volcano blood" (59).
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By Anne Carson
