Call Me By Your Name

In Part 2, Elio broaches his desire with Oliver. Through innuendo, Elio confesses his attraction to Oliver. It doesn’t take Oliver by surprise that Elio is sexually interested in him, and the quickness with which Oliver picks up on Elio’s subliminal messaging demonstrates that Oliver is aware of his own sexuality around Elio as well. Despite the indirectness of the conversation, it is a major moment of character development for Elio. Elio has been agonized by his desire for Oliver and has flirted with telling him, wondering if confessing to an attraction so profound is inevitable. It takes courage to tell somebody that you’re deeply attracted to them, especially if you are unsure if that person feels the same way about you. For Elio, who is 17 years old and feeling self-conscious in comparison with Oliver, this challenge is even more difficult. Yet he conquers his fears of potential rejection and embarrassment and bridges the gap between himself and Oliver. This provides some relief because it gives Oliver the responsibility or power to reciprocate or reject, thereby making a partnership between them regardless of whether that partnership will manifest itself in sex. It also leads to their first kiss at Monet’s berm.

The kiss is anti-climactic but crucial to both character and plot development. Now that they’ve kissed, Elio knows that Oliver is attracted to him as well, though the question remains whether Oliver is attracted to Elio enough to take that attraction further than a chaste kiss. The kiss is important because it also makes room for Oliver to reveal some of his own issues and anxieties regarding a sexual relationship with Elio. Oliver may have some internalized anti-gay bias because he refers to going further than kissing as something that they would be ashamed of. Then again, the age difference could also be a concern for Oliver. What’s more, because Oliver is older than Elio and more experienced than him, his hesitation also speaks to Oliver’s capacity to get deeply involved with Elio. He alludes to times in the past when he went too far with someone, implying that his desire for Elio is so great that he worries that starting anything with him will similarly result in some emotional trouble. Oliver understands that sex can complicate the nature of a friendship or an individual’s feelings about themselves selves, which is not a lesson Elio has yet learned. Still, Aciman foreshadows that Elio will inevitably learn this lesson with Oliver because of the way Aciman’s adult narrative voice recalls the summer of his youth with longing, confusion, and passion. Because Aciman tells this story from Elio’s perspective, the lack of clarity around Oliver’s worries allows the reader to feel the same confusion and desire to see multiple viewpoints that Elio experienced as a 17-year-old.

In Part 2, there are several important moments in which symbols speak to a larger message. Elio has a nosebleed at dinner when Oliver touches his foot to Elio’s. This visceral reaction to Oliver’s touch is a manifestation of Elio’s desire for Oliver as uncontrollable. Because the imagery of blood coming out of Elio’s nose parallels the sexual imagery of a man having an orgasm, the nosebleed symbolizes Elio’s unsatisfied desires. The nosebleed is also such an extreme bodily reaction to Oliver that it demonstrates Elio’s desire as so chaotic and obsessive that his body is in a mode of overreaction and out of sync. Another symbol is the ghost of Percy Shelley’s death. Percy Bysshe Shelley was an iconic Victorian poet who died in 1822 in Italy during a shipwreck. His wife, the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, had dealt with so much loss already, including many instances of loved ones dying by suicide, that the story of Percy Shelley’s death takes on its own morbid romanticism. Elio and Oliver believe that the retrieval of Shelley’s body happened within their proximity. Shelley’s story is a doomed one; he died young and left a complicated web of problems behind for Mary Shelley. In love and life, Shelley wreaked havoc until his untimely death. Such a story connotes a foreboding tone for the romance between Elio and Oliver, although Mary Shelley’s constant devotion to her husband implies a more loyal and loving frenzy between Elio and Oliver. These two interpretations–two extremes–convey that Love is Both Risky and Wonderful. Another literary symbol is the gift of Armance, a French romance novel by Stendhal. This novel tells the story of a love doomed by insecurity, a tale of warning for Elio and his own insecurities in love.

The act of giving books as gifts is also a symbolic gesture. Marzia recognizes the gesture as romantic, even though Elio doesn’t necessarily care about being romantic with her. Therefore, if Marzia can see that there is something romantic, even erotic, in someone like Elio giving a book as a gift, then certainly Oliver does as well. For a reader like Elio, giving the gift of a book is intimate because he cares so deeply about books and the worlds they contain. Sharing a book with someone is like sharing a metaphorically sacred space. This implies an overture of romance or eroticism because it is not a gift that Elio would give to just anybody. His inscription for Oliver is one of the many instances of Characterizations of Language in the novel; here, Elio writes in code, transcribing the secret, shared language of love and passion developing between him and Oliver.

In Part 2, Elio’s dreams take on a new, fervent pitch. He starts conflating real life with dream life because his lived experiences with Oliver take on new meaning and add stress to his waking and sleeping hours. In Elio’s dreams, which become more sexual, Oliver interacts with Elio in a type of call-and-response. Elio attempts to replicate this in real life when he quotes Oliver’s dream words to Oliver in the real world. For Elio, the line between dreaming and reality has become blurred, if not nearly nonexistent, since falling in love with Oliver. This emphasizes the chaotic nature of Elio’s love and his desperation to see life become more like his imagination and fantasies. The call-and-response is also in itself an intimacy. As though speaking with one voice, the call-and-response element of the sexual dreams implies that Oliver and Elio are of one body, one voice, one mind, and one personhood. This is a romantic concept that points to emotions, not just sexual desire.

Lastly, Aciman uses Marzia’s point-of-view to characterize Elio the way others see him: as a hider. The idea that readers are hiders takes on a metacognitive tone because Aciman, a writer, says this of readers to his own readers in a novel. This moment makes both Elio and the reader question the validity of Marzia’s observations. What’s more, it makes Elio and the reader ask if this is a problem. Elio is a hider by nature, manifested in his love for reading, but that doesn’t necessarily have broader implications. Elio likes privacy and is introverted, but that doesn’t keep him separated from the world, though in times of external stress such as falling in love with Oliver, reading becomes an escape. But Marzia’s observation is also a reminder or a warning to Elio that if Marzia sees this quality in him, then others might as well, such as Oliver. Being a hider can be off-putting because it shows people that you are reserved and cut off from their company. In a way, Marzia inadvertently advises Elio to be more outgoing, which helps him win over Oliver’s intimate trust.