Week5: Agostino

Hi, everyone. Welcome to my fifth blog! This week I read "Agostino" written by Alberto Moravia. It is a complicated story. I have many thoughts to share with you.

The protagonist is a little boy named Agostino. When I first started reading this book, it reminded me of Proust's Combray. I felt that the protagonists in both books have a strong attachment to their mothers. In Combray, the little boy is attached to his mother's kiss before sleep, while Agostino is infatuated with his mother's companionship. He fears that his mother might be taken away by another man, giving me the impression that he has a kind of "Oedipus complex".

In the novel, when someone comes to talk to his mother, Agostino is very disgusted. Initially, he is happy to go out to sea with his mother, but with the appearance of another man, Agostino becomes quite upset. Consequently, he decides not to go out to sea with his mother anymore, hoping that she will notice his unhappiness. The novel mentions that Agostino's father has passed away, and I believe this is why Agostino has such a strong attachment to his mother. The deficiencies in the family can subtly influence a child's psychological well-being. Growing up without his father's companionship has led him to crave even more for his mother's company, trying to compensate for the companionship he lacked.

Although at the beginning of the novel, I thought Agostino had an Oedipus complex, as I progressed through the latter part of the story, I found his feelings towards his mother to be even more complex. While he harbors an inner dislike for his mother being with other men, when someone vulgarly comments on his mother's dating activities, he steps in to defend her dignity. This made me feel that he also has respect and care for his mother. I remember a passage in the novel "He told himself that when he wasn't around, his mother and that young man must have engaged in the activities Saro and the kids had talked about. This thought did not make him jealous." I feel that his emotions towards his mother might also be influenced by the confusion of adolescence, leading to a different kind of sentiment. He constantly tries to control his emotions because he believes in ethical principles. In his mind, he thinks it is immoral and goes against filial piety to have romantic thoughts about his mother.

But in fact, I think it is understandable for Agostino to have this idea. After all, he lacks the company of his father, and the only woman he is most familiar with is his mother. He does not have a correct understanding of sexual knowledge, which makes him have such thoughts about his mother, so I think it is very important to correctly popularize sexual knowledge to children. What I find most detestable is the group of kids Agostino associates with. Their act of looking at Agostino's mother while she changes clothes is something I find utterly intolerable. Moreover, their casual speculation and judgment about Agostino's mother's private life are unacceptable to me. I can't believe that at their age, they resort to such malicious speculation about others.

Question: What are your thoughts on the Oedipus complex? ​