{"id":2812,"date":"2025-04-16T15:53:06","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T19:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2812"},"modified":"2025-04-16T15:53:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T19:53:06","slug":"seeing-red-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2025\/04\/16\/seeing-red-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Red (or not…)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love the use of color in this book. Often, Carson does not use colors beyond what we think of in the rainbow today (minus indigo) as well as white, black, and I believe pink. But, importantly, she does not use shades of these colors to describe specific variants. I like that because there is such a large emphasis on color, especially red. There are those who can see red and those who cannot (not literally, of course). But I do believe it is important to note that Herakles does not often say red, if at all. Which is ironic considering Geryon loves him. A few pages before Ancash sees Geryon\u2019s wings, we get this point where Herakles \u2013 and I swear he jumps out of nowhere in each scene \u2013 interrupts a conversation and talks about the parrots in the house. He says, \u201cYes she has a room full of parrots at the front of the house. \/ Must be fifty birds in there. \/ Purple green orange blue yellow it\u2019s like an explosion\u201d<\/em> (Carson 123). He literally lists every single color except for red. In my opinion, this signals his inability to change. This sentence would be less odd if 1) he did not mention 5\/6 colors of the rainbow and 2) he did not mention parrots. Personally, when I think of parrots, I think of those red ones with blue and yellow feathers often seen with pirates. There are many different species of parrots, but it is clear that the lack of red in Herakles\u2019s words was intentional. Although, he was not talking about Geryon, it becomes evident that Herakles doesn\u2019t know what red means in the metaphorical sense, which is thus portrayed by his lack of physically acknowledging its existence. Back when they were kids, in his dream, Herakles thought of Geryon as yellow. This dissonance between who Geryon actually is and what Herakles sees is evident through these colorful words. Ironically, Herakles is bad at \u201creading\u201d people. It seems he either does not care or is willfully ignorant about the feelings of others. He never seems to connect with anyone. On the other hand, the conversations between Ancash \u2013 who actually says and sees red \u2013 and Geryon are more emotional and trusting than the conversations including Herakles. In fact, Herakles often interrupts the conversations between Geryon and Ancash. Interestingly, Geryon says \u201cIn the photograph the face of \/ Herakles is white,\u201d noticing the line break emphasizes \u201cHerakles is white\u201d (144). Other things described as white in Autobiography of Red<\/em> include Lima and specific days while Geryon is there. There is this gloomy, almost upsetting, use of white as a verb. White is like the absence of color. The absence of red. An inability to see. In the end, it all demonstrates Herakles\u2019s lack of change and inability to actually see people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love the use of color in this book. Often, Carson does not use colors beyond what we think of in the rainbow today (minus indigo) as well as white, black, and I believe pink. But, importantly, she does not use shades of these colors to describe specific variants. I like that because there is … Continue reading Seeing Red (or not…)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5606,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-class-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812","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\/5606"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}