An Essay on Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red

Anne Carson's novel, Autobiography of Red, demonstrates that things must be viewed from different angles in order to truly gauge their worth and their meaning. The color red throughout the novel could easily symbolize what contemporary readers would recognize as a representation of Hell, a place we traveled with Dante and Virgil earlier this semester. As Geryon has a clearly defined inside and a separately defined outside, he could be considered a fraud and upon his early death, immediately placed in Dante's infamous Inferno. Geryon, the character, might also consider his life to represent his own personal Hell as he spends so much time humiliated, alone, and without a clear sense of being. But enough of that! Beyond this academic thesis-style introduction, we can still appreciate this work's literary value, but instead, we will focus on the symbiotic relationships between the human and the monster, the mortal and the immortal, the beautiful and the ugly.

If you ask a man if a woman is beautiful, he will most likely respond concisely giving answers such as "yes," "no," or "she's a little on the big side, but she's pretty enough". In blatant contrast, if you ask a woman if another woman is beautiful, she will most likely launch into a vast array of responses ranging from said woman's physical characteristics to personality flaws to cooking skills. As a young woman, I am also of the opinion that "beauty" is a term that should go well beyond physical distinctions in order to encompass an individual in his or her entirety.

Just as "beauty" shall be defined - for our purposes - by both the inner and outer qualities of a person, so shall both humanity and monstrosity be examined beyond outward physical attributes. All of that said, let us put these ideas in conversation with Geryon, the main character of Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, and the intense symbolism found throughout this complicated work, which manages a delicate balance between contemporary literature and ancient mythology.

As a youth, Geryon began his autobiography on the same day that he found and hid a piece of an old war helmet. In this autobiographical account, Geryon coincidentally "set down all inside things particularly his own heroism…He coolly omitted all outside things" (29). The old war helmet that Geryon found was likely dirty and ugly on the outside, though it's past must have held the tragedies of war and the secrets of the head upon which it sat. Likewise, Geryon is portrayed as being unattractive, stupid and weird to the outside world, yet the inside of his mind is revealed as being strangely brilliant, artistic and thoughtful. This brief glimpse into the first day of Geryon's writing first reveals the difference between inner and outer beauty. As our pages turn and Geryon grows older, the continuing theme of contrast - particularly through the lens of inside and outside - prevail.

Many examples of contrast troll this book disguised as sandwiches, photographs, volcanoes, colors, monstrosities, and human relationships. While it would be utterly impossible - in this confined space - to give each contrasting instance its deserved consideration, I will briefly touch on several quotations from the book, which demonstrate these contrasting relationships. At a certain point in adulthood, Geryon says to himself, "I am a philosopher of sandwiches…Things good on the inside" (97). On point as usual, sandwiches can be seen from several vantage points including - surprise! - the inside and the outside. While a person might show a particular liking towards the bread or roll on the outside, a different person might be far more interested in the type of meat or cheese selected for the inside. Geryon points out that as a philosopher of sandwiches, he would be fascinated to engage in a conversation about the ins and outs of sandwiches. Shortly after declaring himself a philosopher, he encounters his brother making elaborate bologna sandwiches with diagonally cut bread and two different condiments; this meeting clearly presents itself as an opportunity to discuss sandwiches. Yet instead, Geryon finds himself - as he often does - quickly brushed off, left to clean up another person's mess, and feeling the heat of his own unfulfilled intentions.

Additionally, the significance of volcanoes is way too extreme to be absent from this discussion. Early on, Geryon characterizes his mother as red and his father as gold. Later, he discusses the lava of a volcano saying, "Color and fluidity vary with its temperature from dark red and hard…to brilliant yellow and completely fluid" (48). Again and again throughout the story, we are forced to recognize Geryon's tendency - consciously and unconsciously - to compare and contrast through the image of the volcano. In possibly the most poignant moment of the story, Geryon travels to South America and reconnects with his old lover, Herakles, who is traveling with another man and recording the sounds of volcanoes.

It is through the fictional Herakles that Carson creates the most obvious contrast of all, playing with the relationship between contemporary fiction and ancient Greek myth. In mythology, Hercules is the immortal son of Zeus and Geryon is the monster; yet in this fictional account, Hercules becomes the monster while Geryon rises to immortality. The fictional Herakles spends the story living on the edge, playing with other people's emotions, and behaving selfishly and obnoxiously; thus, he becomes an inhumane monster through his personality and accompanying behavior. Meanwhile, Carson's Geryon records even the minutest details of life through the lens of his camera, thereby achieving what he realizes to be a form of immortality.

The novel begins with this quote, "the only secret people keep is immortality," from a poem by Emily Dickinson. Towards the end, we discover that Geryon - despite the perceived flaws his appearance brings - has quietly discovered that the only way to remain immortal is to capture a life on camera. He learns this lesson around the middle of the story when he takes a picture that "shows a fly floating in a pail of water- drowned but with a strange agitation of light around the wings. Geryon used a fifteen-minute exposure. When he first opened the shutter the fly seemed to be still alive" (71). Thus, even though the fly had drowned and was dead, the picture portrayed the fly as being almost alive and somehow immortal. At the close of the story, Geryon secures his own immortality in producing a self-portrait. We are again reminded, "the only secret people keep is immortality."