In Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson uses wordplay, specifically double meanings, to complicate her subject matter and provide varying expectations and interpretations to the reader. For example, in a poem describing a moment when Geryon’s wings are lashing out and he tries to hide himself away from the world, Carson titles the chapter “XV: Pair.” The title references both Geryon’s ‘pair of wings’ and the couple themselves: “They watched each other, / this odd pair” (53). Titles are a way to introduce the poem and establish what to expect. Carson’s intentional chapter title words/phrases often come with many connotations, suggesting many topics the poem could explore. When we see a one-worded title like “Pair,” often the immediate reaction is to fill in the phrase: is it a pair of socks? A pair of people? What type of pair? This strategy of getting the reader to anticipate something and then either follow through or denying those expectations is a brilliant strategy.
Carson also uses words that have two definitions itself to present two different ways to interpret the text. For example, in the chapter title “XIX: From the Archaic to the Fast Self,” the word ‘archaic’ has two different definitions: it means ‘very old’ but it also is a word used to describe the period of Greek art and culture from the 7th to 6th century BCE. During this chapter, Geryon describes himself as “a man in transition” (60). This transition, one can assume from the title, is from his ‘old’ self to a newer, ‘fast self.’ Interestingly, the choice to use the word “archaic” calls back to Geryon’s mythological past and role in Greek art of that time period, of which a few pieces still survive today. This transition in his identity calls back to the old him, but whether that is referencing the Greek version of him or this modern one in Carson’s novel is up to the reader’s interpretation.
The ambiguity of the titles also force the reader to consider the complexity of words and their meanings. As discussed in class, language and the meaning we assign to it is slippery, and sometimes the word itself isn’t enough to encompass what we mean. I think Carson does an interesting thing in her novel when she tries to capture how our language can mean a variety of things, and sometimes that vagueness is confusing. For Geryon, words have always been a struggle: “Geryon always / had this trouble: a word like each, / when he stared at it, would disassemble itself into separate letters and go. / A space for its meaning remained there but blank […] What does each mean?” (26). Yet again, Carson uses a word (each) with a double meaning to imply two interpretations of his question — what does the literal word “each” mean?, and what does each word mean in general? The text points towards the former being the ‘correct’ interpretation since he is discussing that specific word, but the point remains that there is an ambiguity here, an open space to interpret the words in another way. The lack of punctuation, specifically quotations around the word ‘each,’ creates a more open-ended sentence and text. Carson specially worded this phrase and chose this word to make room for those double meanings and leave the reader thinking.