Call Me By Your Name

At the beginning of Part 4, Elio actively tries to be okay with Oliver’s departure, knowing as he has the whole summer that he and Oliver would not be together forever. Elio tries to live in the moment and revel in the lovely memories of the summer. This is an example of Elio’s character development and maturity. He has already accepted what life has to offer and deliberately avoids sinking into heartbreak. Though it’s not easy to push memories of Oliver away, Elio archives the story of Oliver for future warmth. Elio wants to remember Oliver for the good moments, not for his absence or his leaving.

Therefore, when Elio and his father have a conversation about Oliver, Elio is unprepared for the level of sentiment his father is capable of portraying. The conversation with his father proves how supportive his father is of Elio’s development. For Elio’s father, love is love and should be embraced, no matter what the barriers or risks may be. Elio’s father speaks to his son from the chasm of decades of experience. He knows how easy it is to give up one’s independence and thirst for adventure for a more secure and quieter life. But Elio’s experiences with Oliver are emblematic of the true meaning of life, a life in which people give themselves up to love. Though it can feel wretched, as it often does throughout this novel, love is worth that debased feeling–in short, Love is Both Risky and Wonderful. Elio’s father speaks to how rare it is to find the kind of immersive love Oliver and Elio have for one another. This conversation confirms Elio’s own inklings throughout the novel that his love for Oliver is worth pursuing and giving into, no matter what pain this relationship may produce later. A trope of romantic literature is unveiled here, in which it is better to love and lose love than to never have loved at all. This is a love story that transcends corporeality, understandings of neat sexual boundaries, and self-identification. Such a love story is rare, and the pursuit of happiness and love are, to Elio’s father, the makings of a real life. This conversation helps Elio see that no matter what happens in his future or who he becomes, the summer with Oliver will prove to be formative in how Elio loves himself and others.

But certain types of love necessarily come to an end. Oliver must go back to his originally programmed life, and Elio must move on to bigger adventures. Though Oliver and Elio see each other again, it cannot be the same because the summer in B. was a special time and place. Thus, Aciman reveals that love requires a stroke of luck: to be in the right time, in the right place, in the right circumstances, and with the right people. This emphasizes the special rarity of Elio and Oliver’s relationship. Elio grows up to have other lovers, and his youthful summer with Oliver helps him fully love these lovers and navigate his feelings. Though no one can quite measure up to the depth of need that characterized his relationship with Oliver, Elio is able to love again. This is a crucial part of this love story because it shows that love doesn’t have to be forced into a permanent state in order to be meaningful. The end of love is not a bad thing; it is simply another twist in the unpredictability of life. While Oliver turns towards tradition by creating a heteronormative life, he too sees the relationship with Elio as formative, even decades later. The power of love, then, is not determined by its longevity, but rather by what love teaches the lover.

In Part 4, Aciman explores the Mutability of the Past, Present, and Future. As the decades go by, Elio nurtures his memories of the summer with Oliver but discovers that there is more to learn as he analyzes these memories. When he meets up with Oliver to rehash the past, he is surprised to find that Oliver has slightly different memories of Rome. This shows how difficult it is to truly capture the moment and remember what happened to us. The urge to project who we are in the present to our past selves is a very human quality, but Aciman doesn’t present this as a flaw. Instead, it is yet another layer of pleasure to search through the past with someone who was there as well, comparing notes and swapping favorite moments. This shows that youthful memories are important because they continue to teach us about ourselves as the years go on. The frenzied, adventurous attitude of adolescence may fade, but the memories of youth continue to thrive, adapting to new forms and new understandings of the self. Thus, though the novel ends with Elio as an adult, Aciman demonstrates that the coming-of-age story is never complete. That Elio can spend his life turning over his memories to learn more about himself proves that an experience like falling in love is never truly over.

The novel ends with Elio invoking the title of the novel, hoping that Oliver remembers this layer of their former relationship. Though Oliver says he remembers everything, for Elio, calling Oliver by his own name is a transaction and intimacy that never reoccurred in any other relationship. Therefore, if Oliver cannot remember that quirk of their relationship, then Elio worries that the relationship was more important to him than to Oliver. But this, too, is an example of the mutability of the past. Memories take on different shapes and tones as years go on, and what remains important to Elio doesn’t necessarily mean that Oliver’s failure to remember connotes a lack of care. Like a secret test of the past, Elio wants Oliver to call him by his name because it would prove to Elio that that gesture was as intimate as Elio still feels it is. This is the trouble with relationships; two people often don’t have the same emotional connections to the same triggers. Elio’s story is essentially Elio’s, no matter how important Oliver is to that story. By the end of the novel, Elio returns to his teenage self, anxiously hoping that Oliver can reciprocate the level of passion Elio feels for him. The circular nature of this answers a question teenage Elio wondered in Rome during Part 3 about how much people can change. Elio and Oliver are still essentially the same, implying that whatever inspired their passion for one another also hasn’t changed.