Agostino by Alberto Moravia

 Reading Agostino by Alberto Moravia, I expected a very light-hearted read, but, it was anything but that. "Agostino" follows a journey of a young boy named Agostino on a summer vacation at a beach resort. The story revolves around him uncovering his subconscious desires, sexual frustation and how he tackles these challenges that he faces. 

If I were to describe what Agostino was on the beginning of the novel, it would be a mama's boy. He was infatuated with his mother's love and expected to be showered by it all the time until she met a young man. When most of his mother's attention was taken up by the young man, Agostino felt left out and  frustrated. That led him to meet a gang of teenagers playing on the beach. This was the first time Agostino was exposed to a new world and that feeling of curiosity of the unknown made him try venture and forge relationships with these boys. However, those boys openly made remarks about his mother's appearance, and the actions that she probably did with her fling. This made Agostino more uncomfortable and started to see his mother in a different light. He started to notice his mothers womanly features and started to create these sexual imagery of his mother. 

At this point of the read, I was mostly perplexed and disturbed about how much it is just borderline freudianism. How he was creeping and stalking his mother's movements, sexualizing her body felt very odd to me. I realized while reading it as well that his feelings may be swayed due to the older boys influence, but, I felt like his descriptions of his own mother gave me in a very uncomfortable read. Sure, I could empathize with his newfound sense of curiosity trying to forge relationships with the boys and the idea of "growing up" but i could not empathize how he could imagine his own mother in such a way.

Finally, about Agostino on the boat ride with Saro, it felt odd that the boys just made fun and teased him about doing so. It felt like they knew something that they should've told Agostino about. In my eyes, Saro was my least favorite characters because of his actions. It felt like he was trying to make moves on underaged children. 

Discussion Question:How do the boys' discussions about Pina reflect the complexities of adolescent curiosity and exploration of adult relationships?

Comments

  1. Daniel OrizagaFebruary 6, 2024 at 9:23 PM

    Something that is very well stated in the novel is that in this opening to the "outside" world we have to follow Agostino's own perspective. The narrator, by being focused on that character, transforms his perceptions as we progress with him. That murky and disturbing world has always been there, we just didn't perceive it... and now we are dragged into it.

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  2. MarcusFebruary 8, 2024 at 1:00 PM

    As someone who is only partly acquainted with Freud's work, I didn't realize the connection between the novel and the Oedipus complex. Answering your question, I think that their curiosity kind of gets amplified because of each other, in the case of Agostino, he only gets curious meeting the gang.

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