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Chapter 20
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 and Herakles return from the video store in the midst of an argument. Geryon claims to be disturbed by photography, and Herakles claims Geryon doesn’t know what photography is. He argues, “Photography is a way of playing with perceptual relationships.” They shift their focus to the stars. Herakles tells Geryon the stars aren’t all really there—that some were extinguished years ago. Geryon doesn’t believe this, but Herakles argues that it’s a fact. They make their way to the back porch and sit far apart. Herakles refuses to drop the argument. When a man touches a star with his bare hands and suffers only a “memory burn,” he’ll believe Herakles’s claim.
Herakles’s argument about what photography is exactly why photography bothers Geryon: because it “play[s] with perceptual relationships,” manipulating time and space, just as “Red Patience” does. Geryon is uncomfortable with concepts of truth he can’t measure or quantify. In the same vein, the idea that stars he can physically see might not exist anymore exacerbates his feeling of powerlessness because it means he can’t trust his eyes to tell him anything about the world with any degree of certainty. His comment about “memory burn” also points out that Herakles’s theoretical, abstract logic is less important than practical logic. If a star burns you—even if it doesn’t technically exist anymore—the burn is still real.
Themes
Herakles’s grandmother comes outside and tells the boys a story about going to the 1936 St. Croix Olympics to photograph skiers. Herakles goes inside. Geryon and Herakles’s grandmother talk about her other photograph, “Red Patience.” She’s upset it’s hanging in the kitchen, where it is too dark to appreciate. Herakles asks about the lava at the bottom of the photograph, and she explains that the “little red drops” are her signature. They consider the photograph some more, noting how disturbing it is.
Herakles’s grandmother’s comment about the “little red drops” being her signature interweaves art and disaster. In considering the lava to be her signature, she’s indicating that she values aesthetic significance over the actual destructive consequences the volcano wrought. These scene also reinforces the anxiety Geryon just expressed in his argument with Herakles, in which he argued that photography’s ability to manipulate time and distance disturbs him. As much as Geryon fears powerlessness, he’s equally disturbed by the power to alter realty, to transform violence and destruction into an ordered, composed, and controlled frame.
Themes
Herakles’s grandmother quotes Yeats, “Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.” Geryon says Yeats was actually talking about politics, but Herakles’s grandmother claims he was talking about a volcano. They talk about the silence of photographs. Herakles returns, and Geryon tells him his grandmother was teaching him about silence. Herakles leads his grandmother upstairs to go to sleep.
Herakles’s grandmother’s remark is a quote from a Yeats poem, “Lapis Lazuli.” One of the central themes of the poem is how art transforms “all that dread” into beautiful, affirming experiences. This is why the photograph is disturbing: because while photography might seem like a form of documentary, it is actually just as capable of manipulating time, distances, and reality to present reality according to the artist’s demands. This is essentially the argument that Geryon and Herakles were having earlier. This discussion between Geryon and Herakles’s grandmother shows that Geryon’s disturbance at photography is a consequence of his knowledge of what it is and what it can do, not that he misunderstands it. It reflects his ongoing unease with time and distance.
Themes
