Call Me By Your Name

In Call Me By Your Name, Aciman explores the mutability of the past, present, and future. The narrative structure of the novel suggests that the relationship between the past and the present is malleable and shifts with age. The narrator is an older Elio looking back on his past, but what this older narrator reveals is that time and age don’t necessarily provide clarity on the past in the way that people would expect. This disruption of expectations is, according to Aciman, because people want to believe in a fallacy that the older we get, the more we understand about life. Aciman highlights that this isn’t wholly true.

Elio has the benefit of meticulous journals from his adolescence and a good memory, yet neither of these resources is enough to give the older Elio immediate answers about his summer with Oliver. Instead, his narrative digs through the past as though he is 17 years old again, attempting now to analyze rather than just live through the moment. The adult narrator version of Elio sees Elio’s adolescent confusion as indicative of passion, not youth. Because Elio hasn’t had a love like Oliver since then, the adult Elio is still confounded by the intensity of his feelings for Oliver. Elio looks back on his youth with affection despite the continued confusion; this reveals that age doesn’t have all the answers, but answers are not necessarily the point of reflection. Aciman demonstrates that life is meant to be full of mystery, and the idea that age and experience can solve these mysteries is a myth.

When Elio and Oliver meet again as adults, decades after their summer together in B., Elio and Oliver are both changed and the same. Their banter is the same, and Elio notes that Oliver is still trim and handsome. Elio looks physically different because of his beard, but because Elio was a teenager during their romance, it stands to reason that he had more aesthetic growth to do than Oliver. Still, these unchanging aspects highlight that people don’t fundamentally or drastically change the way our younger selves imagine. Rather than change at our core, it is more that the array of structures in our lives changes. For example, Oliver has settled down into family life, marrying a woman and having children. He continues to study within his job as a scholar. These new realities don’t negate Oliver’s past passions, but they do subdue his charm and his glamor. Elio is still intellectual, reserved, and self-conscious about his emotions for Oliver. Thus, not that much has changed. This lack of change implies that, given the chance, Oliver and Elio could fall in love again. It also reveals that in our youth, we picture our adult lives as drastically different than those of our parents, only to often repeat their cycles of settling and creating stability. But this type of life, the kind that seems in opposition to the Bohemian literary enthusiasts Oliver and Elio partied with in Rome, doesn’t have to be devoid of passion. Aciman demonstrates that no matter what hues adult life takes on, the structures of a seemingly boring life can have a whirlwind of passion hidden underneath. The issue of youth versus age in this novel is repeatedly perused, but as an adult, Elio is not that far away from the person he was in his youth, highlighting that anxieties about losing a piece of ourselves as we get older are not necessarily true.

But the issue with age is that, while we may not change, our relationships with the past can morph. Elio and Oliver discover that some of their memories of Rome are different. This doesn’t take away from either of their memories, but it does highlight the ways in which the past can become more open to interpretation as the years go on. Now that both Oliver and Elio can look back on their relationship with the distance of decades, they can project their adult selves onto those memories and understandings. They don’t change the past, but they do wonder about the ways their lives would have unfolded without that past. This hypothetical leaves room for an enormous amount of self-analysis that is ultimately meaningless because what happened happened, what is is. Aciman reveals that in looking at the past from the position of the present (or future), people are more patient and more forgiving of themselves but not fundamentally different.