Geryon’s Mother Character Analysis

The novel doesn’t offer many details about Geryon’s mother besides Geryon’s description of her in his autobiography as a “river that runs to the sea,” and the fact that she smokes cigarettes. Nevertheless, Geryon is close to his mother and finds her presence calming and protective. When Geryon is a little boy, he cherishes the Tuesday nights when Geryon’s father and brother leave for hockey practice, since he gets to spend the night with his mother. Despite their closeness, however, Geryon’s mother fails to notice that Geryon’s older brother is sexually abusing Geryon, nor does Geryon tell her about the abuse. This unspoken trauma seems to create distance between them, which only widens as Geryon approaches adolescence and begins spending all his time with Herakles, whom Geryon’s mother never meets. At the height of Geryon’s teenage rebelliousness, Geryon’s mother claims to “hardly know [Geryon] anymore.” Geryon retaliates against his mother’s accusations by continuing to rebel, eventually running off to Herakles’s hometown in Hades, a town on the other side of the island. Geryon’s actions infuriate his mother, but she forgives him when he returns home after his and Herakles’s breakup. She and Geryon make up and regain the closeness they had before Geryon started to drift away from her. They remain close into Geryon’s twenties, evidenced by Geryon’s weekly phone calls home and the postcards he sends his mother during his trip to Buenos Aires.