Freud has this RMST course in a chokehold

I have no words. In starting this book, I did not expect the book to pan out in the way that it had. There are so many aspects of the book that sent shivers of disgust through my body, yet also evoked a sense of pity and understanding for Agostino’s coming of age. One instance is the mixed role of Saro, being a parental figure, yet also someone who takes advantage of the fact that these boys have no role model and has weird relations with Homs. I felt horrified when Agostino kept shifting between this lens even after he was framed for having sex with Saro, for example, in this scene where they were eating watermelons on the boat:

…Saro split it with his sailor’s knife and cut it into thick slices that he distributed to the gang paternally. (p. 66)

This not only reveals the vulnerability of these boys, but also the false sense of power they believe they have. These boys feel that they have control; that their violence, jokes, suffering, and malice are what have made them men, but what they all share in common is their ignorance. They are still not men, but they have been forced to become one because of their low social status. In forming a masochistic relationship with these boys, Agostino too has had his eyes forced open on the reality of his mother’s womanhood as he says:

He thought he would gladly die, so infected did he feel by their impurity and so ruined. (p. 66)

His innocence and renewed relationship with his mother is something that also unnerved me. It’s interesting because Moravia’s way of describing Agostino’s mother has not changed since the first time she is introduced; she is still romanticised in Agostino’s head, and her body remains the centre of attention (her body is something that is repeated a lot in this book):

He would dive into the mother’s wake and feel as if even the cold compact water conserved traces of the passage of that beloved body. (p. 4)

However, the way Agostino’s perspective shifts from admiration to sexualisation was horrifying because there is a sense of unrestrained desire or experimentalism that even he is disgusted by:

Agostino felt as if she were provoking and pursuing him with her maternal immodesty… All of these gestures, which had once seemed so natural to Agostino, now seemed to take on meaning and become an almost visible part of a larger, more dangerous reality, dividing his spirit between curiosity and pain. (p. 69)

I think that it is unusual, but still one way that a young boy copes and makes an understanding of sex and autonomy, which is what I took from the book. It is the disgusting physical and mental shift that occurs in a boy when they learn that their mothers also had to have sex to create them; that their mothers are not innocent, but a woman of their own. Do yall think this is a common occurance?

The content was not something I enjoyed, but the emotions that it relayed were visceral, and for that, I commend the writing as it kept me hook and made me uncomfortable (still. this is a meh for me). I’m putting a picture of where I want to vacation next to distract me from this book lmao