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Chapter 38
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, Herakles, Ancash, and Ancash’s mother reach Huaraz. The elevation is high enough to give a person an erratic heartbeat. They check into Hotel Turistico. The following day, they drink a local recipe for coffee made with cow’s blood. Geryon peers around the dining room and observes that they are the only guests. Ancash explains that tourists are too afraid to come to Peru anymore. Afterward, they leave the hotel to explore the town. Vendors line the streets to sell all kinds of goods, from calculators to socks to tombstones. Ancash and Ancash’s mother speak Quechua to each other or Spanish to Herakles. Geryon feels left out but decides that the photographs he’s managed to take are worth it. He reflects on how “A volcano is not a mountain like others. Raising a camera to one’s face has effects / no one can calculate in advance.”
This passage underscores photography’s significance to Geryon as a mode of communication and expression he can use when conventional language fails him. Geryon’s remark about the volcano not being “a mountain like others” implicitly compares himself (the typical subject of his autobiographical photographs) to the volcano. They are both unlike others: the volcano erupts, has a hidden inner world that can erupt when it’s not regularly expelled. Geryon’s comparison of himself to the volcano implies that the self-affirmation he desires lies in understanding or meditating on volcanoes.
Themes
