I had a lot of emotions and thoughts while reading Agostino by Alberto Moravia, to say the least. Firstly, based on the short description of the book on the RMST website alone, I don’t think I would have ever picked this book on my own volition. However, I am quite glad I picked this book, it had a lot of important and interesting themes. Even though there were certain parts that felt slightly uncomfortable to read, by the time I reached the end of the book, I believe that Moravia intended to make the readers feel uncomfortable, likewise to Agostino himself.

First and foremost, I think Agostino unfortunately, is a very lonely and confused young boy. The first few pages of the book where the narrator is describing a serene moment in Agostino’s life, where he is enjoying a beautiful summer boat ride in Italy, with his beautiful mother. This is very misleading and I was uncertain as to where conflict would begin to arise in Agostino’s life. Then, one day when the young man approaches Agostino’s mother and begins to slowly court her, we see instantly Agostino’s world has been completely turned upside down. He feels rage, exclusion, despair from this other man’s presence. This is where one of Agostino’s most important aspects is first highlighted, his loneliness. I can sympathize with the fact it may be uncomfortable to see your mother with a man who is not your father, but his despair is also rooted in the fact that he has no one else to spend his time with, which is quite sad. To attempt to solve his loneliness, he tries to becomes friends with a boy named Berto that is nearby his cabin when he is walking back. Berto, is verbally abusive and malicious to Agostino instantly. For a person who is not desperate for companionship, being told “we only let our friends play” after asking to join in on their game is usually enough of a signal for someone to walk away. For Agostino, he instead interpretted this as: what more can I offer to be accepted? This made me think about how Agostino likely felt very displaced and cast aside by the presence of his mother’s new companion and how he could not bear to belong to anyone or anything.

The rest of the time spent with the boys goes pretty similarly to their initial meeting, with Agostino always being the brunt of the jokes. A central event that turned Agostino from a lonely child to a confused lonely child was when the boys began to joke about his mother’s sexual relations with the man from the boat. This caused Agostino to spiral internally. Despite the fact that Agostino was aware his mother was a beautiful woman, he had never considered her beauty in the context of being a woman to desire and not a mother to look for when needing care and support. Agostino’s deep confusion led to him turning to Tortima to help him likely lose his virginity to another woman to essentially cure himself of his impure thoughts of his mother. He ends up getting scammed for money and nothing was truly resolved. This makes perfect sense because sexual confusion and loneliness are sometimes the first major problems young teens or adolescents will face and rarely are these problems solved over night, or even in the span of a summer.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do you think he especially hated Homs, even though all the boys antagonized him?
2. When Agostino took the boy and his father out for a boat ride and lied to them about his background, do you think he felt any guilt behind this?