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Chapter 11
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 wakes up. It’s the middle of the night, and the air is hot. He lies still in bed and imagines what it would be like to be a woman waiting alone in the dark as a rapist walks toward her, ascending the stairs “slow as lava.” Geryon enters the consciousness of the woman and wonders if the rapist is listening to her, too.
This surreal scene features Geryon assuming an imperiled woman’s consciousness. The scene further humanizes Geryon, rendering him a person capable of sympathizing with other people’s suffering. It’s also a nod to classical mythology. In Greek mythology, Zeus rapes Herakles’s mother, Alcmene. He does so by shapeshifting to assume the form of Alcmene’s husband, Amphitryon, who is away for a military task. Carson’s retelling of the myth is abstracted and modernized, but this passage nonetheless grounds the story in its classical roots. It’s unclear, though, if this is actually happening, or if Geryon is only dreaming.
Themes
