Find Me

Part 4, “Da Capo,” returns to Elio’s first-person point of view. A remarkable shift has occurred in the narrative: Oliver has left his wife after decades of being together and has returned to Italy to be with Elio. There is certain risk and reward in this decision, but ultimately, Aciman has used the first three parts of the novel to show that there wasn’t really a choice—Elio and Oliver must be together. Posing Elio as the narrator in both his sections is an important allusion to Call Me by Your Name, in which Elio is the sole first-person narrator. Part 4 is the happy ending for Call Me by Your Name, so Elio’s perspective is fitting for closing the loop between Aciman’s two novels about their love story.

The setting of Italy is important. Oliver and Elio first met in Samuel’s seaside house in Italy. Returning to that house, the scene where it all began, is a fulfillment of Oliver’s nostalgia for Elio. But for the first time, Aciman challenges setting as a symbolically motivating space for love. Elio and Oliver are awkward in this house precisely because it holds so many shared memories. Rather than symbolizing an intimate space, the house becomes a haunted place, and there are too many complexities with reestablishing a relationship around other people. Oliver and Elio must make new memories in new locations, so they leave the house to tour the Mediterranean. Elio and Oliver have literally found each other, but now they must find each other again in shared intimate spaces.

Ollie is named after Oliver. This is symbolic of the transcendent and unconventional love the Perlmans share with one another and extend to others. Oliver met Elio when he lived with the Perlmans during a summer in which Samuel worked with Oliver on his academic manuscript. Naming Ollie after Oliver proves two important things. The first is that Samuel had his own meaningful connection with Oliver that was significant enough to name his son after him. The second is that Ollie is a product of the unconventional but transcendent love that Samuel and Miranda shared, which was inspired by Elio’s love for Oliver. Samuel may be the father, but it is Elio who teaches his father how to love without boundaries. Beautifully, Oliver and Elio think of Ollie as a pseudo-son to them because he shares Oliver’s name. This idea is also a new layer to Elio and Oliver’s relationship. They never thought before about having children together. Oliver already has two adult sons, and Elio has expressed in previous parts that he doesn’t know if he wants children. That Oliver and Elio can project their unconscious desire to have a child together onto Ollie proves that their relationship is far more special than other relationships they’ve had.

In Part 4, Aciman revisits his theme of The Passing of Time. Time plagues characters in this novel, but they also learn that love frees them from the issue of time. In Part 4, time is both a conflict and a gift. There has been so much time between the chapters of their love story that Oliver and Elio can better appreciate their new reunion. But this time apart has also changed Oliver and Elio in some ways, giving them a lifetime of experience away from each other. There is much to catch up on and much to forget. Elio wants to remember time; he goes back to the memories of his first summer with Oliver. But Oliver wants to move on from time because the memories remind Oliver of all that he’s given up for Elio. Oliver had more responsibilities in his life than Elio did, so their new relationship is more of a sacrifice for Oliver. Though it’s a sacrifice he is willing to make, he wants the beginning of his second chapter with Elio to be new.

Oliver feels a kinship with the Alexandrian Greeks, whom he compares to the ancient Poseidonians. Both microcultures were forced to adapt to and develop different norms and customs from mainland Greece. Like them, Oliver has long lived a fallacy of his own. He has gone through the motions of adapting to a conventional life, though he is himself anything but conventional. Thus, Aciman proposes that adaptation is a type of self-destructive fallacy. Oliver, as a Poseidonian of his own kind, has finally broken free of the fake identity he carried for decades. He has to relearn how to be himself with Elio. In Part 3, Oliver muses that he failed himself by not staying with Elio; now they have ended that cycle. Oliver therefore encapsulates the title Find Me because he has found himself in finding Elio.

The title is emphasized in the final moments of the novel. Elio and Oliver both admit that they waited years for the other to find them. Finding one another is a way of finding their own selves. Elio and Oliver are two parts of one whole, and for decades they have been two broken pieces. Notably, unlike Samuel and Miranda or Michel and Elio, Oliver doesn’t meet Elio in a fortuitously random moment. Oliver makes the decision to seek Elio out—he chooses to find Elio and be with him. Therefore, Elio and Oliver are on a new adventure together, one with the uncharted territory of choice.

Elio and Oliver both state that they wish Samuel were still alive to see them together. Samuel is a symbolic influence over them. He was supportive of the first chapter of their love story, and he was himself inspired by their love to pursue his own love with Miranda. He names his second son after Oliver as a testament to that valuable lesson. The absence of Samuel also emphasizes Aciman’s message that it is important to live authentically in the moment before it is too late.

The title of Part 4, “Da Capo,” is a musical term for repeating from the beginning, perfectly symbolizing Oliver and Elio’s new start. They literally start from the beginning because they must teach one another all over again. They metaphorically start from the beginning because they meet in love again in the same exact setting as their first foray into love and passion. Repeating something from the beginning gives a musician the opportunity to perfect their performance. So too do Oliver and Elio have the opportunity to commit to their love and perfect their connection.

Part 4 of Find Me is a celebration of love across decades and an honoring of the message first expressed in Part 1: that it’s never too late in life to start anew and fall in irrational and inexpressibly beautiful love.