Moravia\/Agostino’s descriptions felt like both a blessing and a complete curse in this book. There were many beautiful descriptions of the sea and the town that painted a vivid picture, like the “rows of cabins painted in pastel colors”, the “crowded beach”, the “festive buzzing”, and the “sparkling sea…filled with bathers” (pg. 21). That being said, he also used this power for evil when describing the way he saw his mother. The page-long descriptions of the way he started to see his mother after beginning to hang out with the boys were, at times, nauseating to think about.<\/p>\n
One thing I noticed about this book was that Agostino always referred to his mother as ‘the mother’. I didn’t completely understand why he worded it like that,\u00a0 but after reflecting on it a bit more, it feels like an extension of the new, weird objectification of his mother that he began to feel after she met the young man.<\/p>\n
I know rationally that it’s maybe unreasonable to expect a 13-year-old boy to recognize the pain of losing a husband and be happy his mom is happy again. That being said, his complete lack of consideration for his dearly loved mother’s feelings about the whole situation was very frustrating.<\/p>\n
I almost pity Agostino. He made generally bad choices, but I think maybe some of the genuine feelings behind his actions were very understandable. He’s going through a time in his life when he’s “coming of age,” and is going through the awkward transition from childhood into adolescence. He’s learning about the new expectations that are a part of him that he never had to think about before when he was a child. On top of all of this, for a long time, he’s been the only one who had his mother, and suddenly having to share her is another uncomfortable new normal that he needs to adjust to.<\/p>\n
Sensing that he lost his close connection to his mother led him to feel lonely and seek out connections in new places, which is how he found the boys. However, he has lived a very different life from them and struggles to feel like he belongs with them. The new perspective they bring makes it so that he no longer feels at home with his mother or with the people that he used to play with. In a sense, he no longer feels that he completely belongs anywhere, which is an incredibly isolating feeling. This transition is a very painful and lonely experience, and the depression he feels is understandable. He handled this in a terrible and unhealthy way, and instead started to vilify his mother in his mind so that he could have someone to pin the blame on for his loneliness.<\/p>\n
I’m curious what your thoughts are on the expectations of transitioning from childhood to being a teenager. Do you have any memories of these expectations weighing heavily on you during the transition?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Moravia\/Agostino’s descriptions felt like both a blessing and a complete curse in this book. There were many beautiful descriptions of the sea and the town that painted a vivid picture, like the “rows of cabins painted in pastel colors”, the “crowded beach”, the “festive buzzing”, and the “sparkling sea…filled with bathers” (pg. 21). That being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107552,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[15,13,14],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moravia","tag-belonging","tag-depression","tag-loneliness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmstemilia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmstemilia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmstemilia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmstemilia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107552"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmstemilia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmstemilia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmstemilia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmstemilia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmstemilia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmstemilia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}