Autobiography of Red

by

Anne Carson

Communication and Mystery Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Identity and Creativity Theme Icon
Communication and Mystery Theme Icon
Time Theme Icon
Self and World Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Autobiography of Red, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Communication and Mystery Theme Icon

Many of the tragedies of Geryon’s life revolve around misunderstandings and failures to connect with others. When Geryon is a young child, his older brother sexually abuses him, threatening him if he says anything to their mother. Because of this forced inability to communicate to Geryon’s mother and his mother’s failure to listen for signs of abuse, Geryon’s brother is allowed to continue this abusive behavior. The trauma of this experience, in turn, instills in Geryon a mistrust of others and an unwillingness to express his feelings. When Geryon meets Herakles, a charismatic, confident older boy, he falls deeply in love with him. However, he keeps his authentic feelings for Herakles hidden, and their short-lived relationship comes to be defined by the things they leave unsaid and the things they fail to hear in each other. When Geryon ruminates on the relationship years later upon unexpectedly reuniting with Herakles, he realizes that they had never really known each other: he had never known what Herakles was thinking, and “What Geryon was thinking Herakles never asked.” The novel suggests that failures of communication are central to the human condition, as people are fundamentally separate from one other, unable to experience the same consciousness. But while separate consciousnesses can lead to feelings of misunderstanding and alienation, they also instill a drive to be understood, which ultimately imbues life with meaning. Geryon comes across this idea in a philosophy book he reads in a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The book speaks of never being able to tell what the color red means to another person, framing this conundrum as a “mystery,” without which a person would “go mad.” The “mystery” of separate consciousness necessitates a quest for self-expression that draws people to each other in an effort to communicate and narrow the distance between them.

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Communication and Mystery Quotes in Autobiography of Red

Below you will find the important quotes in Autobiography of Red related to the theme of Communication and Mystery.
Red Meat: What Difference Did Stesichoros Make? Quotes

Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.

Related Characters: Geryon, Stesichoros
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Once she said the meaning
it would stay.

Related Characters: Geryon, Geryon’s Mother, Geryon’s Brother, Geryon’s Grandmother
Page Number: 26
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Up against another human being one’s own procedures take on definition.

Related Characters: Geryon, Herakles, Geryon’s Mother
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:

“How does distance look?” is a simple direct question. It extends from a spaceless
within to the edge
of what can be loved.

Related Characters: Geryon, Herakles, Geryon’s Mother
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

What if you took a fifteen-minute exposure of a man in jail, let’s say the lava
has just reached his window?
he asked. I think you are confusing subject and object, she said.
Very likely, said Geryon.

Related Characters: Geryon (speaker), Herakles’s Grandmother (speaker), Herakles
Related Symbols: Volcano 
Page Number: 51
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

All your designs are about captivity, it depresses me.

Related Characters: Herakles (speaker), Geryon
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

I am a drop of gold he would say
I am molten matter returned from the core of earth to tell you interior things

Related Characters: Herakles’s Grandmother (speaker), Lava Man (speaker), Geryon, Ancash
Related Symbols: Wings , Volcano 
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.

Related Characters: Geryon, Herakles
Page Number: 60
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

How do you think it feels
growing up in a house full
of empty fruit bowls? His voice was high.
His eyes met hers and they began
to laugh. They laughed
until tears ran down. Then they sat quiet. Drifted back
to opposite walls.

Related Characters: Geryon (speaker), Herakles, Geryon’s Mother, Geryon’s Brother
Page Number: 68-69
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

Geryon’s life entered a numb time, caught between the tongue and the taste.

Related Characters: Geryon, Herakles, Geryon’s Brother
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:

Yellow? said Geryon and he was thinking Yellow! Yellow! Even in dreams
he doesn’t know me at all! Yellow!

Related Characters: Geryon (speaker), Herakles
Related Symbols: Red, Wings
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.

Related Characters: Geryon
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

There is no person without a world.

Related Characters: Geryon, Geryon’s Brother
Page Number: 82
Explanation and Analysis:

It was not the fear of ridicule,
to which everyday life as a winged red person had accommodated Geryon early in life,
but this blank desertion of his own mind
that threw him into despair.

Related Characters: Geryon
Related Symbols: Red, Wings
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 29 Quotes

[…] Time isn’t made of anything. It is an abstraction.
Just a meaning that we
impose upon motion.

Related Characters: The Yellowbeard (speaker), Geryon
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

It is
because of her I began to notice moments of death. Children make you see distances.

Related Characters: Lazer (speaker), Geryon, Herakles’s Grandmother
Related Symbols: Volcano 
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

You can’t be alive and think about nothing.

Related Characters: Geryon (speaker), Tango Singer
Page Number: 103
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

“…I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it.”

Related Characters: Geryon, Ancash
Related Symbols: Wings , Red
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

I’m a master of monsters aren’t I?

Related Characters: Herakles (speaker), Geryon, Ancash
Related Symbols: Wings
Page Number: 129
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

What Geryon was thinking Herakles never asked. In the space between them
developed a dangerous cloud.

Related Characters: Geryon, Herakles, Ancash, Ancash’s Mother
Related Symbols: Volcano 
Page Number: 132
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 39 Quotes

A volcano is not a mountain like others. Raising a camera to one’s face has effects
no one can calculate in advance.

Related Characters: Geryon, Herakles, Ancash, Ancash’s Mother
Related Symbols: Volcano 
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 45 Quotes

There is one thing I want from you.
Tell me.
Want to see you use those wings.

Related Characters: Geryon (speaker), Ancash (speaker), Herakles
Related Symbols: Wings , Volcano 
Page Number: 144
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 46 Quotes

This is for Ancash, he calls to the earth diminishing below. This is a memory of our
beauty.

Related Characters: Geryon (speaker), Herakles, Ancash
Related Symbols: Red, Wings , Volcano 
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 47 Quotes

We are amazing beings,
Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire.
And now time is rushing towards them
where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces, night at their back.

Related Characters: Geryon (speaker), Herakles, Ancash, Stesichoros
Related Symbols: Wings , Volcano 
Page Number: 146
Explanation and Analysis: