I want to connect two passages where Geryon talks about a cage and a tank, relating the ideas of being trapped and being in captivity. In the first passage, Geryon responds to his brother\u2019s question: \u201cwhat\u2019s your favorite weapon? Cage, said Geryon from behind his knees. \/ Cage? said his brother. \/ You idiot a cage isn\u2019t a weapon. It has to do something to be a weapon. \/ Has to destroy the enemy\u201d (Carson 33). Considering his brother\u2019s insult and immediate dismissal of his response, it is no wonder Geryon feels trapped\u2014in fact, he uses his knees as a physical barrier between himself and his brother. At first, I interpreted Geryon\u2019s response, \u201ccage,\u201d to reflect how he feels trapped in his life, unable to escape his brother\u2019s sexual and verbal abuse even in a space that is supposed to be safe (his own home). However, he was asked about his \u201cfavorite\u201d weapon, which indicates that his response could be something he likes. For this reason, I wonder if he also sees the cage as a form of protection; as much as a cage keeps someone confined, it also keeps others from getting in. Maybe to him, the cage is a psychological space where he can escape his brother and aspects of his life that leave him feeling confused, hurt, or alone. What his brother misses, though, is that a cage does in fact \u201cdo something,\u201d and it can \u201cdestroy the enemy.\u201d It may not impose immediate physical violence like other weapons, but it works psychologically, causing someone to feel isolated and powerless. Moreover, confinement in a cage over an extended period would also be physically painful. So, for someone so young, Geryon picked an incredibly damaging weapon. Because Geryon has wings, the concept of a caged bird comes to mind as well. So even if the cage protects him on some level, it also confines him in a space he feels he does not belong\u2014it grounds him so he cannot fly or escape.<\/p>\n
In the second passage, the singer during the \u201cTango\u201d chapter tells Geryon that beluga whales think about nothing when they are trapped in a tank: \u201cBut I look in their eyes and I see them thinking. \/ Nonsense. It is yourself you see\u2014it\u2019s guilt. \/ Guilt? Why would I be guilty about whales? Not my fault they\u2019re in a tank. \/ Exactly. So why are you guilty\u2014whose \/ tank are you in?\u201d (Carson 103). Like with his brother, the singer immediately dismisses Geryon\u2019s comment and tries to \u201ccorrect\u201d him, implying that Geryon must feel an affinity with the whales because he too feels trapped in a tank that he did not put himself in. While a tank is like a cage, I think the intentions behind them are different. Where a cage is often associated with punishment or confinement, a tank usually refers to some kind of display, or playing a role for someone\/something else (e.g. whales in a tank for people to observe). So, Geryon at first sees his life as a cage that he built around himself (and events\/people in his life likely participated in creating that cage more indirectly), but then Herakles\u2019s influence places him in a tank over which he has no control. In a sense, he is forced into captivity, in more ways than one: the literal sense of being trapped, but also the emotional sense of being enchanted by or attached to Herakles. Either way, he is captivated by and expected to play the role of the unattached lover for Herakles. <\/p>\n
Because we have been talking about perspective and partiality in class, I wonder if the cage and the tank are the same idea from different perspectives. Geryon feels a sense of agency as he navigates his life and his attachment to Herakles, but others see him as trapped in a relationship with an emotionally unavailable partner. That the singer labels Geryon\u2019s feeling as \u201cguilt\u201d and not loneliness, or frustration at being misunderstood and denied agency, demonstrates that 1) Geryon may see himself as the problem, rather than Herakles leading him on or traumatic experiences impacting how he interacts with the world, and 2) others also see Geryon as the problem or the \u201cother,\u201d rather than recognizing their role in isolating him. Both, in turn, contribute to him seeing himself as a little red monster nobody understands. Moreover, because his perception of reality is real to him, it is thus real to the reader as well, as we experience the world through him. So, in a sense, he literally is our eyewitness, showing us the world from the perspective of the \u201cother.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I want to connect two passages where Geryon talks about a cage and a tank, relating the ideas of being trapped and being in captivity. In the first passage, Geryon responds to his brother\u2019s question: \u201cwhat\u2019s your favorite weapon? Cage, said Geryon from behind his knees. \/ Cage? said his brother. \/ You idiot a … Continue reading Geryon: A Little Red Monster in a Cage<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4990,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169404],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2022-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4990"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}