A METACOGNITIVE READING REPORT ON

ANDRE ACIMAN’S

“CALL ME BY YOUR NAME”

Submitted to:

DR. ILYN R. FAMINIAL

Professor

Submitted by:

DULCE AURA C. NAPOLES

2021.08.08
 CONCEPTS

Andre Aciman’s debut novel “Call Me By Your Name” is classified as

contemporary gay romance literature, which centers on sexuality and obsessive love.

The novel won the 2008 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. It depicts gay romantic

affairs and emotional complexity. The author’s background in American and Italian

culture proves an influence in the novel’s plot and themes. This critically acclaimed gay

fiction has a film adaptation, also award-winning.

For the purpose of this paper, the following concepts taken from the novel are

highlighted:

Plot

The novel is told through the first person point of view of Elio who reminisces his

relationship with Oliver. first-person narration, recounting his memories of Oliver and

their subsequent relationship. The novel begins with his first memories of Oliver: Oliver's

typical farewell, "Later!", which Elio finds strange, cold, and indifferent. In his first few

weeks at the villa, Oliver charms and befriends the residents and neighbors of the villa.

Elio, who is introverted and shy, reflects on the beginning of his infatuation with Oliver,

analyzing all of Oliver's words and mannerisms as he secretly pines for a more intimate

relationship with Oliver. The desire that Elio feels for Oliver is at once overwhelming and

sublime, a feeling stronger than any he has felt before, but he finds himself unable to

express his feelings or talk about them with anyone, for fear of shame and rejection.

Oliver's apparent coldness and indifference pain Elio, who labors to conceal his feelings

from Oliver with affected silence and indifference on his part. Elio and Oliver find
common interests in literature, music, philosophy, and exercise; a friendship blooms

between them. Elio admires Oliver's confidence and self-possessed attitude, taking note

of how "okay" he seems with many things in his life, including criticism, his vices, his

relationships, and his identity as a Jewish man. The latter makes a strong impression on

Elio, whose family is also Jewish but who makes a point of keeping quiet about it in a

majority Catholic country. Oliver's confidence on this matter emboldens Elio and makes

him feel that Oliver could be his soulmate. In the days leading up to Elio's confession of

his attraction, Oliver begins seeing a neighbor of Elio's named Chiara. The two share a

number of 'citte': dates, crushes, and mini-infatuations. Elio reflects on his attraction to

both Oliver and Chiara and looks for signs that their relationship is sexual, both to his

excitement and frustration. When he attempts to talk to Oliver about Chiara, seemingly

in favor of their relationship and trying to set them up, Oliver shuts him down, declaring

later that he is not interested in her. At the same time, Elio's parents beg him to spend

more time with friends and enjoy his youth; trying to get his mind off of his desire for

Oliver, he begins spending time with a girl his age, Marzia. Elio and Marzia's dates are

sexual but not romantic, and Marzia keeps a wary emotional distance from Elio, seeing

through his niceties to know that he is not actually interested in her. On a trip to the

nearby town of B., Elio alludes to his desire for Oliver, and Oliver tells him that they

shouldn't talk about such things. Elio invites him to his secret solitary spot where he

comes to read, the same spot where Monet used to paint. Oliver kisses Elio to appease

his desire, but he wishes not to go any further for fear of doing anything that would

make them feel ashamed. Elio has a hard time reading Oliver's intentions, but Oliver

conceals his own desire for Elio out of shyness and fear of getting his own emotions
entangled. The following weeks are witness to much silence and avoidance between

the pair, until Elio decides to break their silence. Oliver invites him to his room at

midnight and the two make love, after which Oliver holds Elio's gaze and asks him to

call him by his name. After their night together, Elio feels confusion and frustration,

unsure where his relationship with Oliver stands or where it is going, but Oliver warms

up to him and a romance blossoms. As Oliver's fellowship comes to an end, he and Elio

take a trip to Rome where Oliver will spend his last three days in Italy. There, they

spend a romantic vacation, spending one night with a group of revelers at a book-

release party. The celebrated poet makes a speech about the nature of desire as a

universal human experience. Elio becomes too intoxicated and vomits in a square;

Oliver helps him recuperate, and they sing Neapolitan songs with strangers on a street.

Elio's memory of kissing Oliver on the square becomes his favorite memory of Oliver for

the rest of his life. Oliver returns to the United States and Elio returns to his villa. Before

departing, Oliver leaves Elio his billowy blue shirt as a memento. They promise to stay

in contact; over the phone, Oliver tells Elio that he, too, took a memento from his room:

a postcard depicting Monet's berm. Elio's father reveals to him that he knew about the

affair and that he approves. He tells Elio that what he had with Oliver was a special, rare

occurrence, something he himself never found in his life. The next year, Oliver marries a

woman and goes on to father two children. In the years that follow, Elio continues to

reflect on his experience with Oliver and sees it as a fulcrum around which the other

romantic experiences in his life revolve. In vague terms, he mentions that he had many

relationships after Oliver, but none as memorable and life-defining as Oliver. Elio and

Oliver cross paths again at a New England college where Oliver teaches, his boys now
teenagers; they share drinks and reminisce. Years after that—twenty years after the

events of his summer with Elio, and after the death of Elio's father—Oliver has an

overnight stay at the villa en route to another Italian city. Elio walks Oliver through the

villa and they reminisce about his father. Oliver tells Elio that he is just like him—that he

"remembers everything." Elio concludes the novel by wishing to tell Oliver that when he

boards his taxi the following morning, if he truly is like him, he should hold his gaze and

call him by his name just as he did on their first night together.

Obsessive Love

The theme of obsessive love drives much of the plot of the novel and lies at the

heart of Elio's development as a character. Elio becomes obsessed with Oliver's body,

mannerisms, and relationships. He frequently fantasizes about and longs for physical

intimacy with Oliver, shown in his dreams and in his incessant thoughts of Oliver, which

he struggles to conceal from Oliver and the other residents of the villa.

Such love is shown to take control of a person's thoughts and leave a permanent

imprint on the lover's memory once the love is consummated. It is a force greater than

oneself, pulling the lover toward their object of desire inextricably. Elio's obsession

evolves from infatuation to romantic love to a love that ultimately punctuates his life

story and goes on to influence his perception of love forevermore.

Friendship
 In the relationship between Elio and Oliver, friendship is just as important as their

passion and sexual desire. Elio desires not only physical intimacy, but also friendship

with Oliver, and Oliver reciprocates these feelings. Together, they find a partner with

which to talk about anything: literature, philosophy, music, and work.

The theme of friendship also appears in Oliver's close friendship with Vimini, the

10-year-old leukemic genius. Though Elio cannot understand why the two become so

close, it seems to him more natural and beautiful than his own friendship with Oliver.

Additionally, Elio's relationship with Marzia explores the line between friendship and

sexual intimacy.

Elio's parents insist that Elio spend more time with friends, and much of the novel

explores Elio's process of understanding "why others are so important," as his parents

put it.

Time

Time in the novel is both merciless and eternal, something that both happens to

the characters and passes through them. At times, Aciman's prose evokes a feeling of

timelessness, and later in Elio's life, his memories of his summer with Oliver possess a

timeless quality to them. Memories of the summer blur into one another and the languid

routine pastimes at the villa paint large swaths of time with the same brushstroke.

Moments that punctuate the summer, such as the episode at Monet's berm, take on this
timeless quality as well: they live on in Elio's memory, in Oliver's postcard, and—in a

meta-literary sense—in the text itself, forever accessible.

Knowledge of Oliver's limited time at the villa looms over the entire novel. While

Elio knows that his time with Oliver is limited, mention of the approaching departure

date is seemingly overlooked in favor of a timeless tone, while time continues to pass

and challenge Elio's ability to be with Oliver—merciless and eternal at once.

Sexuality

Both Oliver and Elio feel sexual attraction to both men and women. Elio's

coming-of-age story is as much a discovery of life-defining love as it is a discovery of his

sexuality. As the novel progresses—as his relationship with Oliver deepens and he

gains insight into the human nature of desire—he recovers memories of his

adolescence in which his attraction towards men begins to manifest.

The novel is remarkable for its treatment of bisexuality in the way that it portrays

desire and love as something that transcends sexual preference. Sexual desire is

something which several characters in the book experience and ruminate on, but the

book portrays this as a unifying quality of the human experience, making no distinction

between hetero- or homosexuality.

Heraclitus and Pre-Socratic Philosophy

 The novel makes recurrent mention of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus,

whose writing Oliver is studying at the villa. Oliver's own academic expertise is pre-

Socratic philosophy, a matter which the family initially finds surprising when they decide

to select him as the annual fellow because pre-Socratic philosophy is a rather niche

academic subject.

The term 'Pre-Socratics' refers to a number of ancient Greek philosophers

predating or contemporary with Socrates of Athens, one of the founders of the western

philosophical tradition. Heraclitus, one of the more famous pre-Socratics, lived around

the 6th - 5th centuries BCE in Ephesus, then part of the Persian empire. He is

renowned for his insistence on change being the fundamental essence of the universe

(one of the earliest explorations of the philosophical concept of 'becoming') and stark

commitment to a unity of opposites in the world, stating that "the path up and down are

one and the same."

Judaism

Elio's mother calls her family "Jews of discretion." While they neither hide nor

repress their religious identity in an overwhelmingly Catholic country, they make a point

of not outright showing it. Elio grows up insecure about his Jewish identity. When Elio

discovers that Oliver wears a Star of David necklace and makes no point of hiding it—

even showing it boldly on his chest with his top shirt buttons unbuttoned—he realizes

the possibility of being more at ease with this identity. Elio and Oliver also share several

moments discussing Paul Celan, the 20th-century Jewish German-language poet.

André Aciman's own Jewish background—particularly his experience growing up in a

Jewish family in Egypt as a religious minority—influences much of the novel.

Silence

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Aciman states he "couldn’t write silence...what I

do is chisel a statue down to its finest, most elusive details." From Oliver's curt farewell,

Later!, to Oliver's inability to confess his feelings, those things left unsaid are just as

important in the novel as those outright stated. The first half of the novel sees Oliver and

Elio exchange concealed flirtatiousness and affection, and even when Elio finally

confesses his attraction, he does so indirectly by admitting that there is "something he

doesn't know," alluding to Oliver's sexuality and his own feelings toward Elio. Instead of

asking Oliver verbally when Elio decides to ask for sexual intimacy, he does so in the

form of a note, and even then he avoids the matter directly, stating, "Can't bear the

silence. I need to speak to you." Though the love between Elio and Oliver is evident and

bold, the words "I love you" are entirely absent from the novel. The pair seems to

communicate through silence, indirect reference, and by reading each other's subtle

gestures more than they do through explicit mention of their desires.

This moving yet not maudlin tale feels like a dream that veers toward a nightmare but closes as a
wake-up call for the two main characters. The boy and the man are both outsiders living in their own
altered reality. For Robin, it is a pretend world where he is no different from other children and not a
"loser." For Don, it is disease and dependence on others along with frequent visits to his past.

Memory and imagination have important roles in the story. They are poised to oppose each other -
fact versus fiction - but where is the line that divides an accurate recollection of the past from self-
delusion, wishful thinking, or sugar-coated remembrances? In their own way, both memory and
imagination offer a means of escape, a place of possible comfort. There are no neurological or
psychological constraints that mandate all memories must be more truthful, more correct than
imagination. 

Parenthood, hope, heroism, identity, fear, and kindness are additional concepts explored in this
 Makikita sa akda ang pagkakaroon ng
story.

“favoristism” sa mga estudyante kagaya na

lamang kay Armando na pinaboran ng kanyang
mga guro na hindi bigyan ng mababang
marka dahil siya’y pogi at ang ama niya ay
isang doktor. Nailahad sa akda na mayroong
naganap na pag-uusap ang mga guro tungkol sa
paghahatol nila ng marka sa kanilang mga
estudyante at nailahad sa akda ang
pagkakaroon ng diskriminasyon kay Minyong
na isang
cultural minority dahil dito ibinagsak
nila si Minyong at dahil baka rin
magbilin ng
masamang larawan sa kanilang paaralan ang
kanyang pagiging bobo. Makikita rin sa akda
ang pagdadamayan nina Jojo sa pamamagitan
ng pag-iinom nila naipahayag ni Jojo ang
kanyang saloobin. At naipakita sa wakas ng
akda ang pagiging matapang ni Jojo na
natutong
ipaglaban ang kanyang
INSIGHTS
 For me, the book was something of a slow starter, though that might be attributed

to the fact that I was reading it sporadically to begin with; a couple of pages here, a

chapter there. For as soon as I sat down without my phone, laptop, or to-do list as a

distraction, I was immediately engrossed with Aciman’s heady tale of a restless summer

romance.

The story follows seventeen-year-old Elio and his father’s American house guest

Oliver during a hot and heady six weeks at the family’s cliffside Italian villa. When Elio

and Oliver develop an unlikely friendship it soon develops into a love affair, made all the

more intense due to the balmy Italian and very beautiful landscape that acts as a

backdrop to their developing feelings. As the story progresses, their relationship

intensifies, but alas the impending summer sojourn coming to an end presses upon

them.

INSIGHTS

Fear for the kids who will stumble upon this movie, along with the multitude of

similar material that already exists, and think that the predatory and manipulative

relationship portrayed in it is, as the critics have been describing it, a “sexy, passionate

summer romance”.

Call Me By Your Name” is a film about the “forbidden” romance between a

closeted seventeen year old boy and a twenty-four year old man. Based on the book of

the same name, the movie portrays a relationship in which the older adult clearly knows

that what he’s doing is wrong, yet he still starts a romantic and sexual relationship with a
high-school aged teenager. The story ends with Oliver (the older man) married to a

woman while Elio (the younger man, who was a teenager at the time of their “affair”) is

still heavily affected by their relationship a decade and a half later.

It doesn’t seem, from his interviews, that André Aciman intended to write the

story of a predatory adult manipulating a kid, but that’s the story told. The fact that the

author of the book is a straight man only complicates any possible analysis, and raises

the question of if, maybe, the choice to portray a teenager “falling” for a man seven year

older was caused by the prejudiced idea that LGBTQ people are predatory; or by

straight men’s own tendency to prey on inexperienced teenagers and see nothing

wrong with it.

Aciman says in an interview: “Those seven years, they do matter. The person

you are at 17 and the person you are even at 16: totally different; and from 17 to 24

there’s a substantial difference. And I like that difference. You do need a relationship in

which one has all the experience with life, and the other is just beginning to discover

what life is.”

The people involved in the film see no fault in the narrative either, and Armie

Hammer said in an interview that “nothing about the relationship was predatory”. The

movie isn’t a cautionary tale about adults manipulating closeted teenagers, but it should

be.

For context: The actor who portrays Elio, 21 years old Timothée Chalamet, is

working in a Woody Allen movie. Actor Armie Hammer declined to comment on the rape
accusations against Nate Parker, but he did state in a recent interview that working with

convicted rapists is “a grey area

The discussion around “Call Me By Your Name” is a conflicting one. The movie

both perpetuates (even if it doesn’t want to) the idea that gay men prey on young kids,

while it also normalizes and romanticizes relationships between adult men and

teenagers. And, while the first instinct is to say “hey, no, LGBTQ people aren’t

inherently predatory”, the overwhelmingly positive response (even from LGBTQ circles!)

makes us wonder if it isn’t even more important to say “yeah, some LGBTQ people are

predatory, and we have to protect young LGBTQ kids”.

The fact is that, though of course we aren’t born predators trying to turn the

innocent straight youth gay, or trick the heterosexuals into sleeping with us; there are

predators in our spaces, often protected by the idea that, because a space is LGBTQ, it

will be safe.

I’d hoped that the response to “Call Me By Your Name” would be of swift

condemnation (akin to the quick response to allegations of PWR BTTM member Ben

Hopkins being an abuser, or the major outrage every time a show has killed a sapphic

character in the last couple of years) or, at the very least, the start of a sincere

discussion of how often isolated and closeted kids find themselves in unsafe situations

when attempting to explore their sexuality. Instead, not only is the response

overwhelmingly positive but, what’s worse, all criticisms are being shut down with either

accusations of homophobia or defenses of abuse.

 “Call Me By Your Name” isn’t okay because “Pretty Little Liars” has a victim

marry her abuser or because Woody Allen keeps making movies where men in their

forties fall for nineteen-years-old girls. Abuse culture is abuse culture, and these

portrayals of abuse (including the warped and romanticized image of “Lolita” that has

spread through pop culture despite the original novel being a horror story about an

abuser and his prey) are all equally wrong, whether they depict heterosexual people or

gay people as abusers.

Sure, toxic relationships are a common theme in fiction, and “Lolita” is a staple of

literature because it so hauntingly portrays the mentality of an abuser. If “Call Me By

Your Name” intended to be (like the original novel by Vladimir Nabokov) an

introspection into the mind of a predator, or even a portrayal of the trauma that dating

adults causes teenagers (like the dreadful, but accurate “Abzurdah”), there wouldn’t be

a problem with it. And, just like we criticize heterosexual romances for normalizing and

romanticizing abuse, we should be able to apply this same criteria to gay media.

But the most worrisome part of this argument isn’t the discussion over whether

we can ever portray LGBTQ people as abusive (and how these narratives should be

framed) but the argument that there is no abuse at all, and because a seventeen year

old teenager is legally able to consent within the context of the film, there is nothing

wrong with them sleeping with an adult in their mid-twenties. And what’s genuinely, truly

scary, is that it’s not teenagers who don’t know better making these arguments, but

actual adults in their twenties (and even older). There are people outing themselves as

potential predators as a defense of this movie, and the majority of the Internet doesn’t

seem to care one bit.

 Maybe the most controversial part of the “it’s legal and so it’s okay” argument is

the fact that age of consent laws are often frail and even illogical constructs. In Italy,

where the story of “Call Me By Your Name” is set, the age of consent is fourteen. In the

United States, where Oliver is from, the age of consent ranges from sixteen to eighteen.

Some countries have an age of consent as low as twelve and, up until a handful of

years ago, the age of consent in the United Kingdom was sixteen for heterosexual

couples and twenty-one for gay couples.

What’s important to remember is that the law is not the end-all-be-all of morality,

and that something being legal (like gay panic laws, the Industrial Prison Complex, or

forced genital mutilation) or illegal (like existing as a gay person, abortion, or consenting

adults practicing sex work) doesn’t magically make it right or wrong.

(Most of us) understand that, though they are both under the age of consent and

it’s not directly punishable by law in most places, a twelve year old and a sixteen year

old should not be having sex. There is an understanding that, no matter how smart or

mature or physically developed a twelve year old is, there are certain vital stages of

growth that separate them from a sixteen year old. Because of these stages of

development it’s that consent, majority, responsibility and accountability are given to

people in stages, allowing them certain rights and obligations as they grow older, with

eighteen-to-twenty-one being the range where most countries consider a person fully

mature. But, while it’s generally understood that the stage between twelve and sixteen

years of age creates a kind of boundary, the abuse culture that we live in makes it so

the lines get blurrier as teenagers get older, leaving vulnerable young people to be

manipulated by adults with little to no consequences.

 Always, in these discussions, we end up bringing up the anecdotal evidence.

People will argue that their parents met when their mom was a teenager and their dad

was in his mid-twenties “and yet they’re happily married!”, or think of a fling they had as

a teenager themselves with an adult person that didn’t affect them much. What the

overwhelming majority of anecdotal evidence actually proves is that most people who

dated an older adult in the fifteen-to-nineteen stage experienced some kind of abuse.

Even though a lot of these people can’t actually recognize it as abuse until it’s been

pointed to them as such, it still is.

Young people dating older adults, particularly young people still in high-school,

are still developing emotionally, sexually, and intellectually; and they don’t have the

social and economic position that an older adult might have. They are more susceptible

to manipulation, likely to have their boundaries trespassed and their consent forced; and

at-risk youth are the most prone to be targeted by predatory adults.

LGBTQ kids are particularly endangered, especially closeted youth. Though not

every LGBTQ teenager will find themselves isolated and without resources, it’s still a

common experience, and one that can be exploited. When a more experienced adult

presents themselves as the one source of wisdom and hope in an otherwise

unwelcoming surrounding, and asking for counsel or help might mean outing

themselves, the chances of LGBTQ teens ending in abusive relationships without even

being aware that they are being taken advantage of are huge.

QUESTIONS

#1 Why is the novel entitled “Call Me By Your Name”?

#2 How does the novel treat the concepts of shame, desire, and sexuality?

#3 Why are the names of the Italian towns written with a single letter only?