{"id":84,"date":"2026-01-30T04:41:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T11:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/?p=84"},"modified":"2026-01-30T12:33:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T19:33:23","slug":"agostino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/2026\/01\/30\/agostino\/","title":{"rendered":"Agostino…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Honestly, I don’t know how I feel. From the first few pages alone, I wasn’t exactly… thrilled. Discomfort while reading this was inevitable to me. That said, I flew through it pretty quickly. Moravia’s imagery was nice, even when it was unsettling. I was just unsure of how to feel about everything.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the start, Agostino’s relationship with his mother is intense. She is his world and he seems to take comfort in seeing her as dignified and almost untouchable. Early on, he describes her body as something “shrouded in a mystery to which he owed the greatest veneration” (5), which shows how fragile this bond is. When the young man joins them, that stability collapses. Agostino’s jealously cracks through, and he experiences her interest in someone else as a form of betrayal. He feels as though she had been waiting to abandon him, as if all their time together had only been “for lack of better company” (7). After this introduction, I felt uninterested in a way that’s hard to dress up: I simply just did not care.<\/span><\/p>\n

From there on, Agostino’s discomfort only deepens (and so did mine!). He starts to gravitate towards the group of boys and Saro (do not get me started on him), even though he is also uncomfortable around them. Their vulgarity and cruelty repel him, but he also finds them fascinating. The humiliation he experiences becomes a form of education. At one point, he realizes that the “humiliation and repulsion of the daily outings had almost become his reason for living” (14). At this point I felt detached from the story. <\/span><\/p>\n

Class also came into discussion. Agostino is aware of his wealth even if he doesn’t fully understand it. The boys don’t let him forget that. Their resentment is tied both to Agostino’s privilege and his innocence. When Agostino tries to distance himself from his background, it doesn’t really help. By that point he has already lost his sense of belonging. As it’s said, he realizes he has “lost his former pleasures without managing to acquire any new ones” (74). It’s as if he has been pushed out of childhood without being welcomed into anything else… just out of place no matter where he is. <\/span><\/p>\n

By the end, nothing’s resolved. That might be the point. I don’t know. Agostino doesn’t gain clarity or comfort, only a heavier awareness of things that he isn’t equipped to deal with yet. Moravia may be less interested in showing growth than in capturing that discomfort of being pushed out of childhood without any clear place to land. I guess I can understand that, but nothing struck me or resonated with me whatsoever. So I finished the book feeling rather disturbed and kind of checked out. I just don’t care for the Oedipal-like nature at all. <\/span>Did I like this? Not really! Sorry Moravia.<\/p>\n

Discussion Question:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Did you find the lack of resolution at the end frustrating, or does it make it feel more realistic or relatable?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Honestly, I don’t know how I feel. From the first few pages alone, I wasn’t exactly… thrilled. Discomfort while reading this was inevitable to me. That said, I flew through it pretty quickly. Moravia’s imagery was nice, even when it was unsettling. I was just unsure of how to feel about everything.\u00a0 At the start, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107352,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[19,18,20],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moravia","tag-class","tag-lust","tag-sexuality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/emwrmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}