Autobiography Of Red

As Carson notes in the novel's introductory sections, adjectives, like colors, "are the latches of being" (4). They define a thing or being as possessing a certain quality, but, for Geryon, this definition can also be a reduction. Colors so dominate Geryon's thinking that as a child, he undertakes a science project about "the noise that colors make" (84). Three colors take precedent in Geryon's world: red, black, and white. Red is both the color of Geryon's skin and the color of the blood in his body. Geryon spends his childhood on an island with "red dirt" (23) and a "red assault of grass" (23). Red comes to represent Geryon's conception of 'inside': passion, intensity, hate. Black stands in as "a mantle of silence" (48), as in the basalt rocks left behind and "silenced" (63), or the curated silence of a photograph. Later, in adulthood, Geryon experiences a "soiled white Saturday morning" (120) at Ancash mother's home in Lima, Peru. This whiteness has a "waiting" (122) energy and drives Geryon into a state of boredom.