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Chapter 13
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 finds the photograph Herakles’s grandmother took of the 1923 eruption “disturbing,” though he doesn’t know why. She had labeled the photograph “Red Patience.” The photo is a 15-minute exposure that captured the ash and lava as it rolled down the volcano and eviscerated everything in its path. Geryon doesn’t know why he’s so fascinated by the photo, as it’s not particularly well-composed. He muses aloud about capturing a 15-minute exposure of a man in jail as the lava reaches his cell window. Herakles’s grandmother tells Geryon he is “confusing subject and object.”
The title “Red Patience” gestures toward the relationship between photography, time, and control. Herakles’s grandmother’s 15-minute exposure (a layered photograph that condenses 15 minutes into a single frame) photograph gives the illusion of a slowed-down eruption. It’s as though using the camera lens as a mediator gives her the power to manipulate time. When she suggests that Geryon is “confusing subject and object” in asking about the man in jail, she’s pointing out that while Geryon is proposing that he’d like to photograph the man as his subject, what he’s really interested in is the process by which life becomes death.
Themes
