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Chapter 12
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 wakes up and hears the sound of Herakles’s family talking downstairs. He walks downstairs and approaches the back porch. He sees Herakles sleepily lying on the grass. Meanwhile, Geryon can see Herakles’s grandmother eating toast and talking about her brother’s death. Herakles mutters, “Now we are inserting sap of the queen of the night you will feel a pinch then a black flow.” A red butterfly drifts through the air, attached to a black one. Geryon remarks how the red butterfly is helping the black one, but Herakles corrects him, using coarse language as he insists that the butterflies are mating. Herakles’s grandmother scolds him. Herakles smiles at Geryon and asks if Geryon would like to see a volcano.
“Somnabula,” the title of this chapter, refers to sleepwalking, suggesting that Geryon’s dream from last night may have actually happened, or that he at least sleepwalked into Herakles’s mother’s room. Geryon and Herakles’s contrasting interpretations of the relationship between the red and black butterflies reflect their differing attitudes about their own relationship. Geryon sees himself in the red butterfly and interprets his tagging along with Herakles as interpersonally and emotionally enriching. In contrast, Herakles sees the butterflies as engaged in a sex act because he’s mainly interested in physical satisfaction.
Themes
