Throughout Autobiography of Red, italics is used to signify dialogue, instead of traditional quotation marks. As such, it is not always clear when one character has finished speaking and another has begun, or if a line was spoken by the same character as a line directly before it, as there is nothing to indicate the end of one person’s thought with another’s (and sometimes they are even on the same line without a paragraph break!). Most of the time in the novel, a reader can infer the speaker by the surrounding text, either by blatancy (“Geryon said” etc.) or from context and content, but other times, lines are juxtaposed in a way that indicate a change in speaker without providing a clear moment of shifting characters, or without indicating who is speaking which part. This can especially be seen in chapter XXI, “MEMORY BURNS,” which is predominantly written in italicized dialogue, with very few clear indications of a speaker.
The chapter starts with Geryon and Herakles bickering about permanence, in regard to photography (Geryon’s passion) and then stars (interesting to note that Herakles/Hercules has a constellation named after him), and it becomes unclear about who is speaking, as there are 9 lines written only in italics, followed by another 7 with just one line of setting in between. Here, it does not matter so much who is saying what, but the message is still clear: Geryon and Herakles have different understandings of lasting and endurance, foreshadowing their inevitable and eventual split. By doing this, Carson allows for a reader to understand the fundamental differences between the two boys that do not allow for their relationship to last, without putting a name to either argument so the reader cannot “choose a side,” but instead focus on the innate lack of understanding and trust between them.