Alberto Moravia’s Agostino explored important themes upon coming of age, in particular within sexuality. A few pages in after starting this book, I instantly found some connections between this book and a movie I recently watched called “The Lost Daughter”. This movie also takes place during summer vacation, about a mother who was absent towards her children and does not fully understand their feelings and emotions. Agostino consistently refers to this absent and inattentive trait his mother seems to have toward him and also compares it to a situation he had with his cousin on page eight. He was dancing with his cousin at a ball and when he thought she was happy to dance with him again, she was instead was going to dance with another man. This abandonment he seems to oftentimes experience leads him to feel out of place in most situations, as he never really seems to feel fully understood by anyone. He continually gets upset at other people’s tendencies to treat him like a kid even though he clearly still is one, as he has trouble expressing what he really wants to say and can’t seem to stand up for himself. He also comes to realize just how many things he was unaware of through the boys that he meets at Vespucci beach.
A clear and glaring theme in this book was Agostino’s increasingly uncomfortable feelings towards his mother. Freud’s Oedipus complex is unquestionably present here, as through his sexual awakening he also develops a weird, disconcerting attraction towards his mother and he resents this throughout the book. He tries to hide from this uneasy feeling by spending time with the lower class boys and Saro. His naiveness becomes an amusement for them and he evidently feels awful when hanging out with them. The boys tell him all about what he doesn’t know about sexuality, but they do so in a crude way, often relating it back to his mother, which makes him resent his feelings even more.
“He couldn’t say why he wanted so much to stop loving his mother, why he hated her love. Perhaps it was his resentment at being deceived and at having believed her to be so different from what she really was. Perhaps since he couldn’t love her without difficulty and insult, he preferred not to love her at all and to see her instead as merely a woman.”
Agostino’s attempt to see his mother as ‘merely a woman’ produces more confusing feelings for him as he comes to terms with his sexual awakening. By no longer trying to see his mother as merely his mother but instead only a woman, he begins to garner inappropriate sexual feelings towards her and this is also evident in his bitterness with her relationship with the young man. He questions, “What was the use of seeing things clearly if the only thing clarity brought was a new and deeper darkness?”
But my own question is: Why was Agostino repeatedly coming back to hang out with the boys and Saro even though he also felt uncomfortable around them? Though he initially did so to escape from his mother, why did he not rather find another way to spend his time away from her?
patricio robles
February 6, 2022 — 10:17 pm
It’s an interesting question, Lilian. Despite the bullying, he comes back again and again. It is clear that although he feels frustrated, he is also attracted to the group of boys. In the gang, there seem to be those answers that begin to appear in his mixed feelings, even without fully understanding them. This gang perhaps symbolizes the world revealing itself as brutal when innocence is lost.
lilian taypin
February 7, 2022 — 3:03 pm
Thanks for the response Patricio! It is definitely easy to question this attraction Agostino has with the boys, but you are right in that they kind of help guide him through his persistence to grow up. The symbol of the gang you mentioned also reminds me of the realization Agostino had:
“Agostino’s sense of oppression and silent pain was made more bitter and unbearable by the fresh wind on the sea and the maginificent blazing of the sunset over the violent waters. He found it utterly unjust that on such a sea, beneath such a sky, a boat like theirs should be so full of spite, cruelty, and malicious corruption.”
patricio robles
February 7, 2022 — 1:14 pm
I am interested in the quote you choose: “What was the use of seeing things clearly if the only thing clarity brought was a new and deeper darkness?”
I wonder what you think of the effect this new knowledge has on Agostino?
Regarding your first question, I think there is a feeling of attraction and repulsion toward the gang. Still, the fascination he has with them may be that they represent a model of masculinity (even brutal) that has been missing in his life.
lilian taypin
February 7, 2022 — 2:56 pm
Hi Patricio,
I was particularly drawn to that quote as it signified the tough liminal stage one usually has to go through upon coming of age. I think the effect this new knowledge has on Agostino is that he might become more fearful of expanding what he knows as this might lead him to discover more things he doesn’t like.