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Chapter 14
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’s wings rub painfully against each other. He fashions a makeshift brace out of a wooden plank he finds in the basement. Herakles notices his dismal mood and asks if he’s okay. Geryon fakes a smile and says he’s fine. They make plans to drive to the volcano tomorrow so Geryon can take pictures. Geryon pulls his jacket over his head, covering his face. Herakles asks him what’s wrong once more, but Geryon only says he “sometimes need[s] a little privacy.”
Geryon uses a brace to pin down his wings, underscoring how ashamed of them he is: he would rather suffer physical wounds to than internalize the monstrous part of his identity. Geryon seems to resist the notion of a static, fixed notion of reality because that would mean he is essentially, irreparably monstrous by virtue of his wings and incapable of becoming anything else. When Geryon tells Herakles he “sometimes need[s] a little privacy,” he is enacting a wall between the two of them, cutting off Herakles’s view of his internalized shame.
Themes
