Previous
Chapter 21
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 returns home on a bus. He spent most of the trip in tears. When he arrives, Geryon’s mother is sitting at the kitchen table, smoking silently before the fruit bowl. “Nice shirt,” she tells him, referencing his red t-shirt that bears the word “TENDER” in white script. He tells her Herakles gave it to him. Feeling himself speak the name sends a wave of pain rushing over him. He sits down at the table with his mother and asks her why the fruit bowl is always empty. “How do you think it feels growing up in a house full of empty fruit bowls,” he asks her angrily. They stare at each other and begin to laugh until they cry. Then, they change the subject to catch up on various things, such as laundry and Geryon’s brother’s drug use. Eventually, Geryon goes upstairs to go to bed.
Geryon’s question symbolically points to the distance that his developed between himself and his mother, and his mother’s inability to provide him with the emotional nourishment he needed in adolescence. For the first time, we witness Geryon attempting to express to his mother how her inability to protect him from his brother’s abuse harmed him and stunted his growth. While on the one hand this scene is a positive development in Geryon and his mother’s relationship, indicating that they might be able to repair the damage the years have done to their relationship, the brevity of their moment of connection also underscores how temporary and fleeting genuine human intimacy is—how rare it is to speak and be heard and understood by another. Mystery and ignorance of others is the default state. The external world is ever separate from the self.
Themes
