The Autobiography of Red Essay Questions

How does Anne Carson use references to Greek mythology in Autobiography of Red?

The “proemium” or preface to Autobiography of Red is a short essay meditating on the influence of classical Greek poet Stesichoros during his lifetime and for the poets that followed. Carson discusses Stesichoros’ Geryoneis (“The Geryon Matter”), which first told the story of Herakles and Geryon’s encounter from Geryon’s perspective. This shift in perspective may well have sparked Carson’s interest in Geryon’s story, out of which Autobiography of Red emerged. Balancing fidelity and poetic license in her translation of the Geryoneis fragments in “Red Meat: Fragments of Stesichoros,” Carson creates a pool of poetic language shared between herself and Stesichoros from which the modern myth of Geryon in Autobiography of Red emerges. The ancient myth of Herakles and Geryon as shaped by Stesichoros is the nucleus of this work, even as Carson casts a wide net for literary and historical references.

How does Geryon progress as a character through the text?

In the beginning, Geryon is a young boy with red wings and an innocent and empathic spirit. He studies what causes other people’s happiness, and stops to imagine the life of every stone on the walk to school (23). But his innocence is ruptured early on by his brother’s abuse, and his earnest, uncomplicated love for his mother is complicated by her failure to protect Geryon from his brother. He grows up into a moody teenager with low self-esteem who thinks himself monstrous, and just wants to be loved and understood. At sixteen, he falls in love with Herakles, and learns about the transformative power of love, as well as its limitations. When Herakles breaks his heart, he succumbs for a time to numbness. Though Geryon suffers his loneliness and is continually disappointed by the distance between people, he retains much of that innocent and empathic spirit from his early youth. He continues to study what makes people happy, closely observing the relationships between things and people. A major arc of Geryon’s story is from denying himself freedom (in order to feel loved) to embracing himself, accepting the wings that supposedly make him monstrous, and taking flight.

What difference did Stesichoros make?

When Carson first asks us this question, in the section “Red Meat: What Difference Did Stesichoros Make?” she tells us that Stesichoros “made adjectives,” and in doing so “released being.” Before Stesichoros, the epics of Homer employed adjectives in established ways where blood is always “black,” death is always “bad,” and so on, affixing specific adjectives always to the same nouns. Stesichoros unlatched those adjectives from those nouns in order to invent new kinds of descriptions. A child was “bruiseless,” an insomniac “outside the joy.” It is with this inventive, discerning spirit that helps us perceive the world anew that Stesichoros told Geryon’s story in his Geryoneis. Because Stesichoros told an old story in a new way—because he saw the same thing differently—he inspired the explosive imagination of Carson’s Autobiography of Red, which expands the tradition of telling Geryon’s story in a new way, with new adjectives and modes of storytelling.

How do the volcano poems of Emily Dickinson relate to Autobiography of Red?

Emily Dickinson’s poem No. 1748 about a “reticent volcano” is used as the epigraph to Autobiography of Red: A Romance, and her poem “On My Volcano Grows the Grass” is discussed between Herakles and Geryon on page 108. Herakles brings up the poem in the context of the documentary he and Ancash are making about Emily Dickinson and volcanoes. Geryon says he likes that poem, especially for the way she refuses to rhyme “sod” and “God.” Poem No. 1748 introduces themes of time and voice. The volcano is immortal and silent; people try to pry the secrets of its life and death from it, but are “admonished by her buckled lips.” This reticent volcano is much like Geryon: he is reticent, introverted, misunderstood; he is also potentially immortal, and in his autobiography he writes that Herakles killed him because he “got the idea that Geryon was Death otherwise he could live forever” (37). Likewise, the volcano in “On My Volcano Grows the Grass” is red, solitary, erotically charged, and refuses to “disclose” its secrets. The volcanoes imagined by Dickinson share a great number of physical and psychological traits with the Geryon of Carson’s imagination.

What is the relationship between Geryon and hunger?

Geryon is often ravenously hungry in this book, and usually there isn’t enough food available to him. The empty fruit bowl of his childhood home is a signifier of neglect; his appetite for love and affection was never satisfied. Geryon thinks himself monstrous, and his constant hunger represents his felt lack of control over himself and his life. He can bind his wings to a back brace and disguise them in his coat, but he can’t prevent himself from being hungry. His hunger is always for more than food: at times it is an erotic hunger, as well as a hunger for companionship. Geryon finds his hunger “humiliating,” and his arousal even more so (118). He feels his appetites are too strong; they are signs of weakness that preclude his lovability. On the flip side, the scene of happiness in Buenos Aires at the dinner table with the philosophers satiates two hungers at once: for food and for friendship.