be the smell of the soap.

wait. I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as onecomposes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.

cut when shewas two, in an envelope, white-blond. It got darker later

I've learned to do without a lot of things. If you have a lot of things, saidAunt Lydia, you get too attached to this material world and you forget aboutspiritual values. You must cultivate poverty of spirit. Blessed are the meek.

I wish to be totally clean, germless, withoutbacteria, like the surface of the moon.

She's just crazy, Luke said.I thought it was an isolated incident, at the time

There are some differences, he said. He was fond of saying that, asif I was trying to prove there weren't. But mostly he said it when my motherwas there. He liked to tease her.

I step into the water, lie down, let it hold me. The water is soft as hands

Idon't want to look at something that determines me so completely.

I am poked and prodded. The fingerretreats, enters otherwise, withdraws."Nothing wrong with you," the doctor says, as if to himself.

Then the voice, very soft, close to my head: that's him, bulging the sheet.

Why am I frightened? I've crossed no boundaries, I've given no trust, taken norisk, all is safe. It's the choice that terrifies me. A way out, a salvation.

There's more than one meaning to it

honey?" He calls me honey

threw the magazine into the flames. It riffled open in the wind of itsburning; big flakes of paper came loose, sailed into the air, still on fire, partsof women's bodies,

Somewhere good

step sideways outof my own time. Out of time. Though this is time, nor am I out of it.But the night is my time out.

But if it's a story, even in my head.I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself.There's always someone else.Even when there is no one

It isn't a story I'm telling.It's also a story I'm telling, in my head; as I go along.

It she wants to, my mother said; she had a way of talking about me toothers as if I couldn't hear.

I turned away from her, sulking, towards the ducks, but the fire drewme back

as long as I amquiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still.

by informants

It makes another mouth, a small red one,like the mouths painted with thick brushes by kindergarten children

he heads are the headsof snowmen, with the coal eyes and the carrot noses fallen out. The heads aremelting

It makes the men like dolls on which the faces have notyet been painted; like scarecrows,

fiddled with

Men'sSalvagings

ys the interpreter. I can imagine it, the

To be seen — to be seen — is to be — her voicetrembled — penetrated.

Notthe eyes. I know better than to look the interpreter in the face. Most of theinterpreters are Eyes, or so it's said

He asks, are you happy

we are secret, forbidden, we excite them

freedom

They look around, bright-eyed, cocking theirheads to one side like robins, their very cheerfulness aggressive

Not here and now.

Not here and now.

Not many things are plastic, anymore.

I can see only a little of her forehead,and the pinkish tip of her nose

Now that she's the carrier of life, she is closer to death,and needs special security.

She's a flag on a hilltop, showing us what can still be done: we toocan be saved.

Milkand Honey.

They wore blouseswith buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the wordundone. These women could be undone; or not

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom toand freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you arebeing given freedom from. Don't underrate it

Women were not protected then

hese women are notdivided into functions. They have to do everything; if they can. Sometimesthere is a woman all in black, a widow. There used to be more of them, butthey seem to be diminishing. You don't see the Commanders' Wives on thesidewalks. Only in cars

e would have a garden, swings for the Children

TheRepublic of Gilead, said Aunt Lydia, knows no bounds. Gilead is within you

Doubled, I walk the street

AGuardian detailed to the Commander does the heavy digging; theCommander's Wife directs, pointing with her stick

mells fishy,they used to say; or, I smell a rat. Misfit as odor. Despite myself, I think ofhow he might smell. Not fish or decaying rat; tanned skin, moist in the sun,filmed with smoke. I sigh, inhaling.

He has a cigarette stuck in the cornerof his mouth, which shows that he too has something he can trade on theblack market

We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semi-darkness wecould stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren't looking, and touch eachother's hands across space. We learned to lip-read, our heads flat on the beds,turned sideways, watching each other's mouths. In this way we exchangednames, from bed to bed:

There must have been achandelier, once. They've removed anything you could tie a rope to

he truth is thatshe is my spy, as I am hers. If either of us slips through the net because ofsomething that happens on one of our daily walks, the other will beaccountable

answer, the accepted respon

"Blessed be the fruit," she says to me, the accepted greeting among us."May the Lord open,"

"The war is going well, I hear," she says."Praise be," I reply."We've been sent good weather.""Which I receive with joy."

"Praise be," I say. I don't ask her how she knows, "

with short little steps like a trainedpig's, on its hind legs

She reaches me and we peer at each other's faces, looking downthe white tunnels of cloth that enclose us. She is the right one.

I can hardly believe theAngels have a need for such scarves; anyway, the ones made by theCommander's Wife are too elaborate. She doesn't bother with the cross-and-star pattern used by many of the other Wives, it's not a challenge. Fir treesmarch across the ends of her scarves, or eagles, or stiff humanoid figures, boyand girl, boy and girl. They aren't scarves for grown men but for children

Even now that there is no real money anymore, there's still a blackmarket. There's always a black market, there's always something that can beexchanged. She then was a woman who might bend the rules. But what did Ihave, to trade?

which must once have been fine and was stillfinely kept, the fingernail at the end of the knuckly finger filed to a gentlecurving point

and I felt as if a protective arm were being withdrawn.

She doesn't speak to me, unless she can't avoid it

But I envy the Commander's Wife her knitting. It's good to havesmall goals that can be easily attained.What does she envy me?

Many of the Wives havesuch gardens, it's something for them to order and maintain and care for

She wanted me to feelthat I could not come into the house unless she said so. There is push andshove, these days, over such toeholds

oid it. I am a reproach to her;and a necessity.

march across the ends of her scarves, or eagles, or stiff humanoid figures, boyand girl, boy and girl

This garden

verything except the wings around my face is red: the color of blood, whichdefines us.

s in a nunnery too, there

Luke told me that. He saidthere was no corresponding word that meant to behave like a sister. Sororize

Or I would help Rita make the bread, sinking my hands into that softresistant warmth which is so much like flesh. I hunger to touch something,other than cloth or wood. I hunger to commit the act of touch.

they say. If I hadn'tof got my tubes tied, it could of been me, say I was ten years younger. It's notthat bad. It's not what you'd call hard work.

With the Unwomen, and starve to death and Lord knows what all? saidCora. Catch you

and I intend tolast.

Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?

I can smell the polish.

likethe place in a face where the eye has been taken out.

balcony ran around the room, for the spectators,and I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent scent ofsweat, shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume fromthe watching girls,

palimpsest of unheard sound

would havebeen held there

he floor was ofvarnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it, for the games

There was old sex in the room

I stared back with theall-knowing, I-dare-you-to-kiss-me gaze of someone who both challengesand flees with one and the same gesture

Amor ch’a null’amato amar perdona.

’d commit the ultimateindignity, and with this indignity show him that the shame was all his, notmine, that I had come with truth and human kindness in my heart and that Iwas leaving it on his sheets now to remind him how he’d said no to a youngman’s plea for fellowship.

When I looked at my dessert plate and saw the chocolate cakespeckled with raspberry juice, it seemed to me that someone was pouringmore and more red sauce than usual, and that the sauce seemed to becoming from the ceiling above my head until it suddenly hit me that it wasstreaming from my nose. I gasped, and quickly crumpled my napkin andbrought it to my nose, holding my head as far back as I could.

indicating, allthe while, that this was being done in the spirit of fun and games, because itwas his way of pulling the rug out from under the lunch drudges sittingright across from us, but also telling me that this had nothing to do withothers and would remain strictly between us, because it was about us, butthat I shouldn’t read into it more than there was.

wanted his tongue inmy mouth and mine in his—because all we had become, after all theseweeks and all the strife and all the fits and starts that ushered a chill drafteach time, was just two wet tongues flailing away in each other’s mouths

And I did not wantwords, small talk, big talk, bike talk, book talk, any of it. Just the sun, thegrass, the occasional sea breeze, and the smell of his body fresh from hischest, from his neck and his armpits. Just take me and molt me and turn meinside out, till, like a character in Ovid, I become one with your lust, that’swhat I wanted. Give me a blindfold, hold my hand, and don’t ask me tothink—will you do that for me?

, but because I was not so sure our kiss hadconvinced me of anything about myself

But passion allows us to hide more, and at thatmoment on Monet’s berm, if I wished to hide everything about me in thiskiss, I was also desperate to forget the kiss by losing myself in it.

“Going on?” I fumbled by way of a question. “Nothing.” I thoughtabout it some more. “Nothing,” I repeated, as if what I was vaguelybeginning to get a hint of was so amorphous that it could just as easily beshoved away by my repeated “nothing” and thereby fill the unbearable gapsof silence. “Nothing.”

Now, in the silence of the moment, I stared back, not to defy him,or to show I wasn’t shy any longer, but to surrender, to tell him this is who Iam, this is who you are, this is what I want, there is nothing but truthbetween us now, and where there’s truth there are no barriers,

“I’m not wise at all. I told you, I know nothing. I know books, and Iknow how to string words together—it doesn’t mean I know how to speakabout the things that matter most to me.”

This time I looked out to the sea and, with a vague and weary tone thatwas my last diversion, my last cover, my last getaway, said, “Yes, I knowwhat I’m saying and you’re not mistaking any of it. I’m just not very goodat speaking. But you’re welcome never to speak to me again.

“What things that matter?”Was he being disingenuous?“You know what things. By now you of all people should know.”Silence.“Why are you telling me all this?”“Because I thought you should know.”“Because you thought I should know.” He repeated my words slowly,trying to take in their full meaning, all the while sorting them out,

This was probably the firsttime in my life that I spoke to an adult without planning some of what I wasgoing to say. I was too nervous to plan anything

Did I want to be like him? Did I want to be him? Or did I just want tohave him? Or are “being” and “having” thoroughly inaccurate verbs in thetwisted skein of desire, where having someone’s body to touch and beingthat someone we’re longing to touch are one and the same, just oppositebanks on a river that passes from us to them, back to us and over to themagain in this perpetual circuit where the chambers of the heart, like thetrapdoors of desire, and the wormholes of time, and the false-bottomeddrawer we call identity share a beguiling logic according to which theshortest distance between real life and the life unlived, between who we areand what we want, is a twisted staircase designed with the impish cruelty ofM. C. Escher. When had they separated us, you and me, Oliver?

B - BD = |AB||BD\cos(x - mZ ABD)

here |BD| is unknown,

h are the target coordinates for the end of the arm, point

lengths of the segments of the arm.

The target coordinates of the end of the arm, which is noted as point D, are (x,y).

ll three segmentsof the arm move along one single plane, which means that we can use a 2D vectors forrepresentation. Let p

ce simple geometry does not provide an easy solution to the research question, hispaper will use linear algebra and trigonometry to answer it.

ccording to Freud, condensation and displacement are thetwo fundamental principles that determine the activity of theunconscious. They are at work in all the formations of the un-conscious (the symptom, slips of the tongue, etc.), though Freuddescribed them chiefly in relation to dreams. Condensation refersto the fact that one simple dream image can represent severalassociative chains at the same time. So, for example, it oftenhappens that a certain figure in a dream turns out on closeranalysis to represent several persons. I dream about my brother,but in the course of the analysis it turns

What is at stake here is not so much the question of whether themembers of the tribe do or do not know that there can be no preg-nancy without coitus, but rather that of whether there exists inthe symbolic system a signifier that expresses the idea that the onewith whom the woman has coitus is also the father of the childthat she bears.

self-sufficient, pre-given referent. Both the Freudian andthe Lacanian unconscious, as it were, put external reality outof play.

Moreover, the fact that a signifier only receives meaningfrom a complex network of signitive references immediatelyimplies, for Lacan, that the meaning of a signifier changes ac-cording to the context in which it is taken up.

In other words, they signify primarily on thebasis of their difference from other signifiers and not, for ex-ample, by referring to a non-linguistic reality.

he reality in which we carry on our exis-tence must, on the contrary, be understood in a pregnant senseas the effect of the order of signifiers.

t is not the expression of a previ-ously given order.

language and the thing about which itspeaks

Lacan’s terms, these distinctions come to us from the order ofsignifiers, and they must therefore be understood as an activelystructuring principle.

we will never find anything morethan gradual differences. Yet we are not a bit “man” and a bit“woman” (or vice versa), but either “man” or “woman”—we areone or the other. This absolute difference does not exist in (lived)reality, which knows only gradual distinctions.

hat clearly cannot bedirectly derived from the facts of experience.

it is a question of whether there is a signifier inthe symbolic system that articulates this connection.

For Freud, this means that language does notyet function as language in the proper sense here: the uncon-scious does not know language, and nor therefore does it knowthe test of reality.

he connection between trompe andtromper arises simply on the basis of the material similarity be-tween the words. If the dream thus employs language t

Lacan connects the unconscious with language. How can thesetwo insights—that the unconscious is of the order of language,and that it is also bodily and sexual—be reconciled with eachother?

Freud’s insight that the unconscious is fundamentally sexualimplies that the content of the unconscious points to nothingother than our bodily existence.

According toLacan, then, neither psychoanalytic orthodoxy nor academicpsychology recognizes a difference in principle between knowl-edge (psychic life) and the truth by which it is driven onward(the reality to which psychic life must adapt itself)

According to Lacan, the absolute knowledgethat is thus attained is like a symbolic system that expresses theessential structures of reality in its entirety. This final state can-not be described as anything other than perfect self-conscious-ness.

e intrinsically interwoven insuch a manner that knowledge will constantly incorporate thetruth that disturbs it, until both are absorbed into each withoutremainder.

Truth and knowledgeare not related to each other externally here,

“unhappy consciousness,

hought with the infinity of negation. In this way the skeptic re-alizes that of which stoicism was only the concept, for true free-dom of thought is never realized in an impotent apposition ofthought and reality, but in the effective negation of the succes-sive particular determinations with which consciousness is con-fronted.

every figure of consciousness is followedand replaced by a new figure of consciousness, until eventuallyabsolute knowledge is attained. Every figure of consciousness issooner or later confronted with its own incompleteness and in-ternal contradictions.

Thus the stoics, for example, believed in a purely internal free-dom that is in no respect related to external reality. The interior-ity of consciousness and the external determination of reality arehere thought, as it were, independently of each other. However,this is an untenable position,

ave they in fact shakenthe self-conception of the subject as fundamentally as Freudwould have it? Thus has Darwinism, for example, really freedhumanity from its belief that it holds a central position in real-ity? How could it, when Darwin places man at the top of theevolutionary pyramid?)

y Freud’s reckoning, psy-choanalysis is the third in this series of wounds. No matter howmuch Darwin forced humanity to fundamentally recast its viewsof its origins, this did not stop it from believing that it coincideswith itself as self-consciousness. The Freudian revolution putsan end to this naive belief. For Freud teaches us that man “isnot master in his own house.” The subject is not to be under-stood as essentially self-consciousness; instead, it is deliveredover to unconscious forces that elude its grasp.

o that the hidden “logos” ofwhich they are the expression can be brought to light. ForLacan, moreover, the fact that the unconscious “logos” at workin those experiences can be brought to light by way of languageimmediately implies that the unconscious, too, also belongs tothe order of language in one way or another.

us properties and functions it studies, without pausing evenfor a moment to consider the scientific validity of this assump-tion.

acandevelops a vision in which man appears as a being of desirethat is fundamentally maladapted.

something external to it, something that takes it up in a dy-namic that is originally alien to it.

It illustrates, in a strikingmanner, the ontological dualism that can, without a doubt, beconsidered the basic assumption of Lacanian psychoanalysis.°This ontological dualism is related to the fact that Lacan thinksof language and the body as originally external to each other.

highlights the universality of anxiety

However,they are both skirting around the ambivalence of language to commu-nicate,

Fear, thereby, acts a fulcrum tonegotiate his identity in context of his relationships.

Which implies thatmuch of the novel is about what is left unsaid than what is said; forexample, in “Monet’s Berm” Oliver says “Don’t ever say you didn’tknow” and Elio admits “His words made no sense. But I knew exactlywhat they meant” (Aciman 150).

The subjectivity in ‘meaning’ acts as an antece-dent to the creation of space for the same sex lover.

The novel, in its very premise introduces us to the idea of sub-jectivity in ‘meaning.’

The quotation of Elio’s language usage here—as well as the repetition, inversion, and changes inemphasis—places focus structurally on the actual words to represent the implications of thisutterance (the implications being that Elio desires Oliver).

This physical expression lacks fulfillment because it does notchange the world around it: Elio did not have sex with Oliver, just his clothing. The narrativecontinues, and so this physical act fails to function as a true and fulfilling confession.

This passage conflates Elio’s desire with the physical body. By connecting ejaculation with therevealing of his secret, Elio grounds his desire in the physical action of his body. With thismetaphor linking speaking and masturbating, he attempts to convince himself that the confessionhas been completed, resulting in a physical act.

objectifies Oliver through the figures of an apricot and a peach, overlappingroles of consumption and sexual desire take place.

He has to accept thatOliver is not a static concept but an individual that is, at all times, constructing and re-constructing himself in new environments, new places and with new people. The Oliver heknew in Italy cannot possibly exist forever but just as Elio feared for Oliver to change when hearrived in B., he is still scared of seeing that change manifested in a new Oliver; it is an Oliverhe might have never known in the first place

When they first engage in sexual intercourse, Oliver proposes: “Call me by your nameand I’ll call you by mine” (134). This exchange of name identity is supposed to symbolize theirunity. Yet, based on what has been discussed before, it is questionable how they can extendtheir identity like that if neither of them knows who they are or hide parts of themselves fromeach other so that a complete picture of neither “Elio” nor “Oliver” is available. T

Oliver is not, or at least not only, the cool, unbothered muvi star while Elio isnot as wise and knowledgeable as Oliver would think him

Apart from showing their true selvesand actively talking and positioning themselves in the relationship and where it should go, bothalso fail to have the confidence to challenge their pre-existing positions as only platonic friendsamong their heterosexist society.

heir relationship is vague asit is situated between the positions of friends and lovers. It exists on a metalevel, alwayshanging in the air but also never fully named, never fully realized.

In the case of their relationship it would position them, brand them, as gay men.As an American in the 1980s, Oliver is aware of the consequences this brings. It could costhim his academic career and estrange him from his family and friends in the US

Oliver knows that speaking things aloud makes themreal and definitive

lio describes these abilities to read people as an“amazing gift” and focuses on how they intuit things in a similar manner (22), so that he cantell himself that they have one more aspect in common

Now, this is also an instance where it is clear that Oliver is positioning himself differentlyto what Elio is used to with him in private. Oliver is the character that seems the mostambiguous in the novel, also because Elio tries to make sense of him and is repeatedly notsucceeding.

This shows an awareness of the fact that people can change when they interact with differentpeople in different situations, but it also exemplifies how Elio tries to hold on to one versionof Oliver that is most likely unstable.

if what he saw was correct, and they wereengaging with each other rather physically and intimately, it also speaks of a supposedcontradiction between Oliver’s behavior and his intentions.

Later on, he engages with a girl, Marzia, himself butthroughout the novel she is more of a means to engage in talk about it with Oliver, distracthimself from him, and fantasize about him through her. To some degree, it is one of manyattempts to imitate the behavior of the older more confident graduate student. Only later doesOliver tell Elio that he is in fact not interested in Chiara. Elio is confused

As Elio cannotmake sense of this categorization of manhood, he turns towards a more traditional behavior ofmanhood to befriend Oliver and find common ground with him: the pursuit and discussion ofwomen.

He also thinks rather poorly of himself and often contrastshis shortcomings with the ideal image he created of Oliver:

This instability of language leads to an instability of the self as our discourses areunstable, and meaning has to be rearranged in accordance with dominant ideologies at anygiven time

Thecharacters’ failure to acknowledge the multitude of aspects that make up their identity leads tosecrecy and idealization, which hinders a realistic development of their relationship.

owthoroughly trenchant was his ability to sort contradictory signals, I have nodoubt that he must have already suspected something.

his is like coming home, like cominghome after years away among Trojans and Lestrygonians, like cominghome to a place where everyone is like you, where people know, they justknow—coming home as when everything falls into place and you suddenlyrealize that for seventeen years all you’d been doing was fiddling with thewrong combination. Which was when I decided to convey without budging,without moving a single muscle in my body, that I’d be willing to yield ifyou pushed, that I’d already yielded, was yours, all yours, except that youwere suddenly gone and though it seemed too true to be a dream, yet I wasconvinced that all I wanted from that day onward was for you to do theexact same thing you’d done in my sleep.

So this is who he also is, I said to myself after seeing how he’d flippedfrom ice to sunshine.I might as well have asked: Do I flip back and forth in just the sameway?P.S. We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither areyou.

After I had finished explaining my transcription, I became aware ofthe keenest glance coming from my left. It thrilled and flattered me; he wasobviously interested—he liked me. It hadn’t been as difficult as all that,then. But when, after taking my time, I finally turned to face him and takein his glance, I met a cold and icy glare—something at once hostile andvitrified that bordered on cruelty.

There is a law somewhere that says that when one person is thoroughlysmitten with the other, the other must unavoidably be smitten as well. Amorch’a null’amato amar perdona.

Hesaw through everybody, but he saw through them precisely because the firstthing he looked for in people was the very thing he had seen in himself andmay not have wished others to see

I would have blushed, and blushed because I had blushed, fuddledwith words and ultimately broken down—and then where would I be? Whatwould he say?Better break down now, I thought, than live another day juggling all ofmy implausible resolutions to try again later

Speechless,I would have admitted things I hadn’t mapped out for myself or didn’tknow I had it in me to admit. Speechless, I would have gotten to where mybody longed to go far sooner than with any bon mot prepared hours aheadof time.

I repeated his phrase as if it were a prophetic mantra meant to reflecthow he lived his life and how I was attempting to live mine.

Or making fun of me. Or seeing through me.It stung me when he finally came out with it. Only someone who hadcompletely figured me out would have said it. “If not later, when?”

and these, as I have mentioned in the previous chapter, aresymbolic of Elio himself.

The Ovidian allusions underscore Elio’s double-role as pursuer and pursued.

and I never waited long enough to knowwhether I was even wanted there; look away because I was too scared to stareanyone back; look away because I didn’t want to give anything away

Like Narcissus, each perceives the signs given by the other, but they cannot be sure exactly howto interpret those signs because they do not have any opportunity to talk about the significance oftheir gestures unless they find themselves in a private place. Narcissus notes that his reflection’sgestures mirror his own, but Elio and Oliver do not seem to realize that their signs of love arealmost exactly the same until they have the opportunity to speak about those signs. Nevertheless,in either case, it is the words that are missing: Narcissus needs his reflection to confirm withwords his suspicion that the reflection loves him back, just as Elio and Oliver both need spokenconsent from the other before pursuing their desire for each other.

After the two lovers have at last slept together, we learn that what each perceived as theother’s indifference and dislike had actually been signs of their affection all along. In fact, welearn that the signs they misunderstand are largely signs that each himself uses to conveyaffection, so that they are almost literally in love with their own reflections.

The height of their emotional and physical connection is marked by their exchange andconformity of identity: their love is all about each seeing himself in the other

Elio says that he “repeated his phrase as if it were a prophetic mantra meant to reflecthow he lived his life and how I was attempting to live mine” (Aciman 2007: 51). These examplesfurther highlight Aciman’s theme of repetition which underscores his more potent references tothe myth of Echo and Narcissus.

he channels Echo often in the novel whenhe describes his contemplative repetitions of things Oliver says to him in his dreams or inactuality. He has a dream that Oliver says, “you’ll kill me if you stop,” which happens in hisdreams on various other occasions, and Elio holds onto this phrase until the two of them finallyconsummate their love and Elio repeats the phrase aloud several times

Oliver’s response “hated it?” turns Elio’sstatement into a question, just as Echo turns Narcissus’ question into a statement: dixerat “ecquisadest?” et “adest!” responderat Echo (“He had said, ‘Is anyone here?’ and ‘She is here!’ Echohad responded,” Ov. Met. 6.379)

ndeed, Elio later emphasizes his fear ofspeaking when he likens himself to a knight in a novella he is reading who cannot decidewhether it is better “to speak or to die” in order to resolve his concealed love for a princess(Aciman 2007: 63). We later learn that the knight does decide to speak, but “fudges” and doesnot say everything that he wants to say (Aciman 2007: 68)

Now Elio stares intently at Oliver,but is “fleeing” with the same gesture, playing both the role of the pursuer and the pursued lover.Narcissus, in the same way, conveys both signs of pursuing and being pursued with his gestures,as the reflection of his attempts to court his reflection look to him like gestures appropriate forone being courted

Acimanoften writes summary dialogues between his characters that give us the gist of their conversationwithout including quotation marks.

This sets up Aciman’s thematic comparison of Elio and Oliverwith Alcibiades and Socrates, which I will address in the following chapter.

Through Elio’s espousal of Sappho’s affective language, which is marked as effeminate,his performance of gender subverts our gender expectations

It is notsurprising, then, that his representations of Elio’s relationship with Oliver through references toancient Greek and Roman literature should perform, by themselves, a queer reading of thosetraditional categories of gender and sexual power dynamics.

Aciman has intended for his narrator to resist a single interpretation because Elio is himselfmeant to reflect the condition of people to be dynamic and difficult to categorize.