{"id":20,"date":"2024-02-07T00:54:33","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T07:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/?p=20"},"modified":"2024-02-07T00:54:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T07:54:33","slug":"agostino-a-murky-sense-of-impurity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/2024\/02\/07\/agostino-a-murky-sense-of-impurity\/","title":{"rendered":"Agostino: A Murky Sense of Impurity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Moravia’s novel Agostino honestly did not go in the direction I thought it was leading towards. From reading the very first few pages I thought it would be about family dynamics and his relationship with his mother. While even as I read some hints of whats to come with his strange perceptions of his mother, I thought that I was looking too much into his thoughts making crude assumptions. Then after he met Berto I thought ok perhaps this book is about stepping out of your comfort zone and exploring new horizons. I did not think this book would be about the transition from adolescence and coming to terms with feelings of unease related to brimming feelings. All things considered I did really enjoy this book and I appreciated how it brought about important themes, especially from a boys point of view, which is usually not written about as often as a girls. I really like the authors style of writing in describing Agostino’s feelings and could feel his explanations resonating with creating a picture of Agostino’s inner feelings. Such as “he cried softly so as to not disturb the painful workings of memory” and “it had been his fate to fall from the summit of an allusion and crash to the ground aching and bruised”. While Agostino’s character was often times very annoying, through him I also realised how ridiculous overthinking is, but that was more so in the start of the novel before it took a turn. I also wonder if anyone else was disappointed by Saro’s character. Perhaps I was naive but I thought he would have an interesting story and be a role model for the gang of boys, but instead he was vulgar and disgusting. Once his true character came out, Agostino’s description of Saro as a toad could not be more accurate. On top of that while I understand the mother may be dealing with her own grief as a widow, I didn’t like her character and how she treated Agostino. I was not impressed with her lack of care and thought she lacked that sense of paternal instinct to be attentive in changes of her child. I also think it was interesting on how the author highlighted that Agostino never really knew what he wanted. Did he want the man to ask her mother out or not? Did he want to be friends with the boys or not? And the list goes on, I think this uncertainty highlights that he is still figuring out growing out of adolescence and that his journey has just begun. My question for everyone is how did you feel about the shift in the story, were you surprised?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Moravia’s novel Agostino honestly did not go in the direction I thought it was leading towards. From reading the very first few pages I thought it would be about family dynamics and his relationship with his mother. While even as I read some hints of whats to come with his strange perceptions of his mother, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99636,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,9],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agostino","tag-moravia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99636"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/nazblogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}