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Chapter 9
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 are parked on the side of the highway. Geryon says he should go home soon. Herakles talks about being the kind of person “who will never be satisfied,” and Geryon recognizes that Herakles is trying to talk about sex with this remark. Geryon is 14 to Herakles’s 16. Once, Herakles argued that sex is how you get close to someone. Geryon asks Herakles if he thinks about sex every day. The question offends Herakles, who considers it an “accusation.” He suddenly turns on the car and turns back onto the road to drive Geryon home. They don’t touch.
This passage shows that Geryon and Herakles’s relationship isn’t quite as blissful as it had first seemed. The relationship fulfills a different purpose for Herakles, who is primarily interested in sex and has a cavalier attitude about it. His stern response to Geryon’s question, which he deems an “accusation,” implies that Herakles knows that Geryon is less open to casual sex and is perhaps judgmental—consciously or unconsciously—of Herakles’s casual attitude. There’s irony here, too, since Herakles claims to use sex to get closer to others, yet the topic of sex drives a wedge between himself and Geryon.
Themes
