Tag: Close Reading

Neurodiverse Recognition in Autobiography of Red

Psychology is an important topic in Autobiography of Red, even when it is not explicit nor centralized. Geryon grows up feeling different, illustrated by the dread of leaving home, vague injustice at school, and his red wings (Carson 36). He prefers imagery to words. In Geryon’s world, colors have influential connotations and his senses intermingle. Others perceive his emotions as morose or overly complex (looking at you, Herakles). As a child, he is derogatorily called stupid, only to later find his calling in philosophical thought. 

Something charming about Autobiography is the universality of Geryon’s story. He is embarrassed by desire and has an occasionally dry sense of humor; he struggles to belong but ultimately succeeds. Carson humanizes the monster of Greek mythology, and in doing so makes Geryon’s perspective resonate with neurodiverse individuals. It is done with that tinge of universality—Geryon can be read as expressing dyslexia, synesthesia, anxiety, or autism, to put labels on some topics a psychiatrist might tell him about in 2025. There are myriad interpretations and truths to Geryon’s mental landscape, and no interpretation is incorrect. Personally, I would like to posit that he is displaying obsessive-compulsive disorder.  

From the beginning of Autobiography, onwards, so much of Geryon’s behavior is familiar to me. His behavior aligns with some commonly understood OCD symptoms, such as his brain getting “jammed then restarted” when faced with odd numbers (Carson 91) and feeling the need to clean up after others (Carson 102). On a street in Buenos Aires, Geryon reads all the headlines of a newspaper—which could be curiosity in a foreign place or attention to detail, but we are reading it through an OCD lens (Carson 106). In the scene at the tango bar, Carson explicitly states, “Geryon had a bad thought” (101). From my point of view, ‘bad thoughts’ are evocative of intrusive thoughts, which typically feed obsessions and necessitate compulsions. A strong point of evidence is Geryon’s two instances of picking a scab, then his lip. He tries to hide his hands, but his mother notices and says, “Don’t pick at that […] leave it alone and let it heal” (Carson 30). Soon after, they are spending time together and she says, “Don’t pick your lip Geryon let it heal,” implying that this is a pattern (Carson 34). I cannot tell you how many times my mother has fondly batted my fingers away from my lips, so this instantly stood out to me. After all, skin-picking disorder is often classified as a subset of OCD. 

Then, the less commonly understood OCD symptoms Geryon displays. His loyalty to both justice and facts could be interpreted as a site of morality-based OCD. He has a rich inner world, which he prefers and cultivates compared to the outer world. His line “you can’t be alive and think about nothing” portrays his worldview as someone prone to overthinking (Carson 103).  

I would like to put this story in conversation with OCD experiences, but my chief conclusion is that Autobiography makes space for marginalized people through Geryon’s experiences with ostracization. He feels abnormal not only because of his wings but because of the way he is on the inside, too, and that is highly relatable. In the same way certain pages of the dictionary may be wrinkled and smudged, speaking to years of individuals with questions about their identities, Autobiography is a wrinkled and smudged book where I have searched for and found myself.  

Works Cited 

Carson, Anne. Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse. Vintage Contemporaries, 1999.  

Fama, Jeanne M. “What Is Skin Picking Disorder?” International OCD Foundation, International OCD Foundation, 29 Nov. 2022, https://iocdf.org/about-ocd/related-disorders/skin-picking-disorder/. 

“Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: When Unwanted Thoughts or Repetitive Behaviors Take Over.” National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2023, www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-when-unwanted-thoughts-or-repetitive-behaviors-take-over. 

Living through Trauma: Emotions and Imagery

“On relaxing she was overcome by the rage that seeped into her veins. At times like these she felt inflamed to the point of wanting to tear and scream into her father’s room, of screeching so piercingly that she disabled him, of punching him in his stomach over and over until he cried like a baby, admitted how loathesome he had been and begged hers and Asha’s forgiveness. But at such times her rage was usually muffled by a sudden injection of good sense. The success of an adventure like the one she was embarking upon depended on the control of all her faculties. Anger, hatred and even fear could very easily trip her up. Pohpoh worked on finding that perfect balance between being rigidly alert and dangerously relaxed” (Mootoo 143). 

This paragraph is incredibly evocative, beginning and ending with “relax” in some form despite being filled with volatility and pain. It explores how Pohpoh copes with the abuse she is enduring. Especially as she takes on the role of mother for her younger sister, she is learning to be wise, mature, and “alert” as a survival tactic and a trauma response. This continues into her adulthood and the relationship she forms with her younger self; Part Two states “her body remembered” despite the years Mala has lived without her father (Mootoo 175).  

The gradual rise of anger in Part Two is fascinating. As it becomes clear to readers that Pohpoh is the same woman who will later be accused of killing her father, more prose is dedicated to Pohpoh’s flashes of anger and resentment. Her desire to “[screech] so piercingly that she disabled him” calls to mind a Banshee. These supernatural creatures in Irish folklore are said to wail the night of a family member’s death—a wail which only the doomed person can hear (Britannica). Given Mootoo’s openness about being born in Ireland, and Cereus’ multiple references to the “Shivering Northern Wetlands,” it is plausible that this allusion was intentional (Mootoo 191).  

Next in the passage, Pohpoh daydreams about punching her father, which reminded me of a younger media connection. I would put that sentence—and Pohpoh’s story—in conversation with the Front Bottoms song “Father,” which begins with the lyrics, “I have this dream that I am hitting my dad with a baseball bat, and he is screaming and crying for help / and maybe halfway through, it has more to do with me killing him than it ever did protecting myself” (YouTube). This song also references rape as a mechanism of colonialism, violence, and gender stratification; what I will focus on is emotion, and how Pohpoh processes her feelings in Cereus. To me, the novel seems informed by psychological academia. Pohpoh feels guilt for “betraying” her father despite doing nothing wrong (Mootoo 212). Even Asha says in a letter that Pohpoh worries about her father in a way that seems counterintuitive to the untrained eye (Mootoo 244). These complex expressions of shame, rage, and fear are characterized well for a young girl growing up in a house of abuse. It is no wonder to me that this book resonates with survivors on a large scale. 

Gratifyingly, Cereus gives Pohpoh the time to feel horrible and angry and sad, but it also gives Mala the time to feel proud and victorious. I was elated by her sass when she told the constable about “a daughter’s duty” (Mootoo 182). Mala in the present is repeatedly described as defiant, in possession of “an insistence of her own” (Mootoo 182). She built her own life with a lush garden where no one dares to bother her. Mala is living with mental health issues and psychological pain which linger throughout the novel, but on the last page of the book she “[trembles] with joy” (Mootoo 249). She won, and her triumph is shared with Otto and Tyler.  

Works Cited 

“Banshee.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, inc., www.britannica.com/topic/banshee. Accessed 2 Apr. 2025.  

Mootoo, Shani. Cereus Blooms at Night. Grove Press, 1996. 

The Front Bottoms. “Father.” YouTube, 14 June 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOXJZ9nh9Mw. 

The Trefoil Knot: An Important Analogy in Written on the Body

So far, I’ve been really astounded by the analogies that the narrator in Written on the Body makes about love. Each comparison seems to be a way to justify their current situation through a different lens. In this post I will be focusing on the paragraph on page 87 where the narrator talks about knots, and the larger implications that this analogy has on how the narrator views their relationship with Louise.

When the narrator claims that “the interesting thing about a knot is its formal complexity. Even the simplest pedigree knot, the trefoil, with its three roughly symmetrical lobes, has mathematical as well as artistic beauty” (87), I don’t think they are purely talking about the knot itself. Here, the narrator states three important things: 1) knots are complex, 2) a specific knot (the trefoil, pictured at the top of the post) has three lobes, and 3) the trefoil is beautiful. With the knowledge that they later bring this talk of knots back around to their relationship with Louise (see page 88), I don’t think it’s as much of a stretch to consider that this paragraph about knots relates back to the narrator’s love life. At this moment in time, the narrator considers their relationship with Louise to be much like the trefoil knot – complex and 3-sided (because Elgin is still in the picture at this point), but ultimately beautiful.

It is interesting that they continue by saying, “the challenge of the knot lies in the rules of its surprises. Knots can change but they must be well-behaved. An informal knot is a messy knot” (87 – 88). For the challenge of the knot, the narrator seems to think that the same occurs for relationships; it’s the surprises and how they are dealt with that “make or break” them (i.e. Louise telling Elgin that she’s been having an affair with the narrator and how they deal with that situation). Then there’s the word choice of “well-behaved” that really sticks out to me, I think this combined with the informal = messy bit is meant to say that much as a knot must be sturdy and held together tightly, so must a relationship if the people wish to stay together.

Good Dog/Feral Dog (Written on the Body)

“I phoned a friend whose advice was to play the sailor and run a wife in every port. If I told Jacqueline I’d ruin everything and for what? If I told Jacqueline I’d hurt her beyond healing and did I have that right? Probably I had nothing more than dog-fever for two weeks and I could get it out of my system and come home to my kennel. 

Good sense. Common sense. Good dog.”  

Written on the Body, pg. 40 

On the surface, this passage is a segment of the narrator’s deliberation. They consider the cons of telling Jacqueline the truth about their affair. On a deeper level, this passage reveals how the narrator views themself; it also carries notes of societal normativity.  

The syntax of this passage holds contrast: it begins with long, unbroken sentences, questioning in tone. This is the narrator’s pure stream of consciousness. It then transitions into clipped part-sentences which shut down the narrator’s earlier ruminations. After all, there is no need to worry about the ethical implications of being honest with Jacqueline if they ‘get it out of their system’ and move on (40).  

The narrator says that they have “dog-fever” and need to return home to a “kennel,” which conjures imagery of a crate or cage that might be too small for the dog (40). Something constraining. This is not the last time the narrator refers to themself in dog-like terms. On page 56, the narrator explicitly thinks, “I want to snarl like the dog I am,” and on page 91 they are “dog-dumb.” Interesting, then, that the narrator draws comparisons between themself and a cat later in the book, stating that they take it in “the way Louise had taken me” and then referring to themself and the cat in tandem (109). Whether cat or dog, the narrator thinks of themself in terms of a household pet. Feral and dangerous, protective, mistreated, loyal—all at once.  

This metaphor is a building block of a broader theme: rejecting normativity and hegemony. The narrator lives in a society which values faithful, heterosexual marriage, and the narrator adopts this obsession, questioning how one can be happy in such a system. The movement from “good sense” to “common sense” to “good dog” shows that the three are interconnected. Common sense, which is made up of common norms and beliefs, equates to good beliefs. Morality is tangibly attached to these practices. If the narrator adopts these beliefs and stops their affair, they will be a good dog, trained by society to be a docile household pet.  

Thus, the narrator’s struggle with norms and their internal debate is influenced by how they perceive themself. The choices are 1) ‘playing the sailor,’ being honest with Jacqueline, and ‘ruining everything,’ versus 2) moving through the affair and then conforming. Readers know that the narrator is honest and chooses not to play it safe. This is a decision followed by violence from both the narrator and Jacqueline, which is quite telling. Although the narrator is a contradictory character, they repeatedly grapple with their own dark side (akin to an angry dog) and whether they are worth saving (akin to a stray cat).  

What to do if nobody speaks your language?

As we have established in class, Geryon is an outcast. A little red winged monster, in a world full of humans who neither see the world the way he sees it, nor understand his way of seeing it. Humans have a tendency to try to categorize everything, and not fitting into any category or being categorized as an outcast does something with a person. It leaves them isolated and lonely, robbing them of the “home” one can find in community. The same happens to Geryon, who is not only isolated but also seems to lack a common language in which he could articulate himself, advocate for himself and make himself heard. Because of his different way of trying to communicate, which is not being understood by others, he is repeatedly called stupid. How “estranged” his attempts of articulating himself must seem to himself can also be seen by the way how he heard himself speak (“Geryon heard Geryon say”) (p. 39).

Language and identity as well as power are closely intertwined with each other, as we have experienced in various class readings such as Brokeback Mountain or Eli Clare. Therefore, by not having a language to articulate himself in and be understood, Geryon is both isolated and left powerless. I think that he realizes this already at his young age, and that both the process of creating his autobiography as well as his interest in photography are (desperate) attempts to be understood. He is trying to switch to other means of communication, where words and oral communication have failed him.

The day after he got abused by his brother for the first time, he started working on his autobiography, where he “set down all inside things particularly his own heroism” (p. 29). Since nobody else believed in him, it was on him to believe in himself and his heroism. Additionally, it is important to have a place to offload/ outsource some of the heavy “inside things” we carry around with us. If we have no other person who understands us, we need other measures, for instance an autobiography. Especially heartbreaking is at what a young age Geryon seems to have learned (or had to learn!) this, since he started his autobiography as a sculpture, not knowing how to write yet.

The other measure of communication Geryon tries after words fail him is his camera. The first time the camera is mentioned is after he met Heracles, when his mother is trying to have a conversation with him about Heracles. He is adjusting the focus of the camera and does not (verbally) answer because “he had recently relinquished speech” (p. 40). While before Geryon had trouble communicating and being understood, his troubles seem to have worsened, and he does not speak anymore. Instead, he is zooming in on the throat and mouth of his mother while she is talking to him. This can clearly be connected to language, since the throat and mouth are the two primary speech producing organs that are visible “from the outside”. It seems as if he is trying to desperately make sense of language and find access to the language everyone around him but himself seems to speak.

I think that his autobiography and the use of his camera are two attempts of Geryon to find his language or, rather, to adapt and convert himself to another language frequency, so that other people around him can understand him and he can finally experience some of the comfort and community that a shared language can bring.

Stones and Heat

The metaphor of stones and heat recurs throughout the chapter “Stones in my pockets, stones in my heart” by Eli Clare. He talks about how not aligning with the identity he was “stamped” with as well as the damage and violence that resulted from the ableist, homo- and transphobic perceptions of others that did not match his internal sense of self stole his body from him, leaving him with the stones in his heart and his pocket as the only home he had left. Throughout the chapter, he repeatedly asks “how do I write not about the stones, but about the heat itself”.

I would argue that, in order to reach and write about the heat and go beneath the skin, we cannot ignore the stones but have to face and embrace them. The stones, resulting from the abuse and violence based on the marginalized aspects of identity function like a mask or a protective shell to assure Clare’s survival, they are a refuge home for him since his body was stolen from him. I think that to get back to the “heat”, i.e., to the passion and true, raw self, lying beneath the stones, we have to carefully dismantle and work through the stones and the pain that is stored in them. That is because by confronting them, we can change the narrative and reclaim power about our own story as well as reclaiming our own identity and multi-facetity of our identity.

Many people who belong to a marginalized group encounter their identity being reduced to that one aspect of experienced violence when in fact we all consist of countless aspects resulting in complex, multifaceted identities. The process of “facing” and “observing” the stones helps us to overcome the idea that violence is the definer of our identity, that our identity equals our experienced abuse, like we talked in class.

I tried to combine the description of being queer feeling like a loss of home in Clare’s “Losing home” with his proposal in “the mountain” that our body as a home has to be understood as not singular and as something that can be reclaimed, and connect these two to the liberating view of “queer” being able to represent possibilities, as Sedgwick proposes in her text “Queer and Now”. Thereby, it becomes visible how reclaiming our queerness and embracing our stones can help us overcome the feeling of loss of home and help us to “climb” the stones we have to deal with in life, so that ultimately we are able to reach the heat again that is lying beneath the surface of our skin.

the Piranesi nightmare

“Reason. I was caught in a Piranesi nightmare. The logical paths the proper steps led nowhere. My mind took me up tortuous staircases that opened into doors that opened into nothing.” (p.92)

The following text passage stroke me as very interesting when I read it, especially the mention of the “Piranesi nightmare”. There is a novel called Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, published in 2020, that I read last summer. It is set in a parallel world that is one endless house with an infinite number of staircases, halls and big rooms full of statues. The novel deals with various topics, among them being lost and finding oneself. After finishing the novel I did some research on Piranesi and found out that the novel was referring to the Italian Artist G. B. Piranesi, who, among other things, has produced a series with 16 prints called “Imaginary Prisons” in the 18th Century. It is also interesting, that WOTB is a lot older than Clarke’s novel Piranesi, which raises the question how Piranesi might shape newer interpretations of the mention of “Piranesi nightmare” in WOTB.

I see a reoccurring pattern in my chosen quote from WOTB, parts that can be grouped together, namely “Piranesi nightmare”, “steps leading nowhere” and “tortuous staircases opening into doors into nothing’”. All these parts have parallels to the novel Piranesi, where Piranesi, the main protagonist lives in this endless house with infinite rooms and staircases, leading to more rooms, but ultimately to “nothing”. They also resemble a labyrinth, a term that can also be associated with the artist Piranesi. The narrator feels lost in his own mind. This can also be connected to the very first word of the paragraph, “Reason”. It is interesting that the first sentence of the paragraph is just one word. Reason is a powerful word and can both mean an individual reason to do something as well as a greater, more general meaning and question of reason, almost philosophical as in “why do we do things in the way that we do them and why do we decide what we decide”.

What I am really trying to say here is that I think these lines are showing us how overthinking and analyzing can make us feel lost because we try to find a logical explanation for everything, when in reality, not every question has an answer. Reason gives us seemingly comfort, but actually it’s a nightmare, desperately trying to find an explanation for everything, thinking in complicated ways to make sense into things that aren’t supposed to make sense, just to frustratingly end up in “nothing” at the end. If we free ourselves from the urge to bring sense into everything, we free ourselves from this nightmare of a labyrinth, and thereby bring sense into it. The sense is that not everything can be explained with sense. Maybe the nameless narrator of WOTB also feel imprisoned by reason and his own mind.

This pattern of urge toward reason or explanation can also be seen in other parts of the novel, for example is the narrator trying to fight Louise’s cancer with reason, learning as much as they can about it. In the end though, cancer still does not completely make sense, since there often is no logical explanation as to when and why it develops in the body.

Alison in Drag

What Alison Bechdel and her father have in common goes beyond genetics. They share a common sexuality and confusion over their gender expression. Alison explains this confusion over her gender expression several times in the novel, once even begging her brothers to call her Albert instead of Alison in the cab of a tractor, “As the man showed us around, it seemed imperative that he not know I was a girl.” (113). Alison is acutely aware from a young age that this man objectifies women and that perhaps it was not safe to identify as one in his presence. Likewise, her father tells her he wanted to be a girl, recalling not only the time he dressed in a woman’s bathing suit in college (120) but also how he dressed in girl’s clothes as a child. (221). This scene is where both of them admit to having done drag and made love to people of the same gender is the closest to a mutual coming-out that they share. Face to face, this interaction is awkward, with Alison constantly looking wide-eyed and straight-ahead, communicating that she was uncomfortable during this conversation, yet intrigued by its openness.

When Alison first finds the photo of her father in the woman’s bathing suit, she assumes it is a fraternity prank as the singer from The Magnetic Fields bemoans, “I’ll never see that girl again, he did it as a gag, I’ll pine away forevermore for Andrew in drag.” in the song “Andrew in drag”. The lead singer of The Magnetic Fields, Stephin Merritt, sings about how he’ll only love Andrew in drag and how he is not attracted to other men or women, just Andrew in drag. Alison and her father never discuss being attracted to someone in drag or how much their sexualities have in common, but both reveal they have dressed in drag and wanted to be another gender, hypothetically so their sexual desires would feel more “normal”. Stephin Merritt identifies himself as male in the song but unlike Alison’s father, he is proud of his sexuality and this gives him the confidence to sing about it so openly.

 

Video for “Andrew in Drag” by The Magnetic Fields. Warning: video contains brief nudity and homophobic slurs.

What Makes Us Human

“I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders; and when attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.” (43)

In this passage of The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll reflects back on his decision to attempt to split his evil side from himself. He expresses his regret and that his, at first seemingly great idea, backfired and, in the end, made him more miserable than before. What I find interesting is that he expresses his coming to that knowledge not as a learning process that he made, but that something/someone made him come to that conclusion. It makes me wonder if he feels that he turning into Mr. Hyde was, for the most part, his destiny. The way he expresses himself in this passage, from a letter to Mr. Utterson to explain himself after his death, sounds like a warning. A warning to mankind never to try to repeat his doings. The second time he uses the word ‘made’ in his sentence, Dr. Jekyll also acknowledges, that he has failed in his attempt to cast off the “doom and burthen” (43) of his life. Though it seems as if it had worked in the beginning, he soon finds that he has rather enforced his evilness and given it the power to take over his ’good’ side. It is a metaphor of the importance for a balanced scale of good and evil. Having both of these sides in us, and keeping them in balance, is what makes us human and we cannot survive without them.