The Silent Language of Desire: Representation of Homosexual Longing in “Call Me by Your Name”

By Laurie Legault

Set in the Italian countryside during the 80s, “Call Me by Your Name” is a novel by André Aciman—an Italian-American writer known for his works on memory and identity. The story follows Elio Perlman, a seventeen-year-old boy spending the summer at his family’s villa, as he develops an intense, complex, and even transformative romantic connection with Oliver, an older, intellectually captivating American graduate staying with the family for six weeks. As their bond deepens, Elio struggles with emotions he does not fully comprehend and which eventually manifest themselves physically. Although often criticized for the age gap between the two characters, the narrative examines the deeper meanings and representations of homoerotic desire during a time when such relationships were taboo. Instead of constructing their relationship through a political or social lens, Aciman portrays desire as something personal and universally human. In his novel, homosexual desire is portrayed as a deeply embodied and intuitive form of knowledge—one that bypasses rationality and language, revealing the ways the body “knows” before the mind can speak. This portrayal allows the focus to shift away from how desire is defined or categorized, and instead explores how it is first sensed, felt, and embodied. Elio’s instinctive and numerous corporal reactions during Oliver’s stay are early signs of a desire he cannot fully comprehend because of its complicated emotional intensity and the unfamiliar undertones of adult intimacy. In Call Me by Your Name, desire does not initially emerge through articulation but through embodied responses. With symbolic moments like the peach scene, Oliver and Elio’s physical desire acting as mirrors, and their redirected intimacy with women, the novel illustrates that attraction is grounded in bodily experience first and serves as a way of navigating toward deeper, often unspoken aspects of identity. 

This analysis draws on the unique theoretical frameworks of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s “Phenomenology” and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s “Between Men” to better understand the significance and provenance of physical communication within the context of heterosexual-coded desire. Merleau-Ponty’s theory emphasizes the body as a primary site of knowledge and perception. He believes that sensations and life experience, rather than only thoughts, are the sources of desire. This view helps to better understand Elio’s early indications of desire; before he fully comprehends or articulates his feelings, they manifest as bodily experiences. Sedgwick’s work, meanwhile, explores how homoerotic desire is often mediated through what she calls the “erotic triangle,” where men form deep, homoerotic connections through a shared female figure. Her theory helps uncover the underlying physical and erotic dynamics between Oliver and Elio, which are mediated through triangulated relationships that represent socially acceptable performances of intimacy. 

Elio’s earliest attraction experiences are guided not by conscious thought but by involuntary bodily reactions. Very early on, Elio is already smitten by Oliver’s physique and often fantasizes about it. Elio’s obsession for Oliver is made evident as he daydreams about Oliver coming into his room and being physically intimate with him, fixates on sensory details like smell and touch, exhibits proximity-seeking behaviour like wearing Oliver’s swim shorts, and even experiences his body reacting to Oliver as through pre-cum, bloody nose, and wet dreams: “I was convinced that no one in the world wanted him as physically as I did…No one had studied every bone in his body, ankles, knees, wrists, fingers, and toes, no one lusted after every ripple of muscle, no one took him to bed every night and on spotting him in the morning lying in his heaven by the pool, smiled at him, watched a smile come to his lips, and thought, Did you know I came in your mouth last night?” (Aciman 39) This quote highlights how Elio’s desire is intensely physical and sensory, showing that his attraction begins as a bodily impulse. However, a striking moment where Elio demonstrates his desire in its rawest form is by engaging in physical yearning with a peach. In “Call Me by Your Name”, fruits are deeply symbolic. Not only does it have biblical allusions and is used as a motif for temptation and desire, but it also mirrors T.S Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “Do I dare to eat a peach?” (line 122) The peach represents sensuality and physical pleasure; it is lush, juicy, messy, and indulgent—all things associated with sensual or erotic experience. The poem’s narrator, like Elio, questions whether he can dare to embrace sensuality or vulnerability, even in the smallest act, like that of eating a peach. In Elio’s build-up of sexual desire, he uses the peach, which reminds him of Oliver’s buttocks, as an object through which to redirect and release his longing for him. However, the fruit is also symbolically tied to the awakening of knowledge and shame: after the act, Elio reveals his vulnerability by crying to Oliver. Too young to fully articulate his emotions, Elio’s subconscious takes over, and his shame and confusion manifest physically through tears. This idea aligns closely with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of perception as rooted in embodied knowledge. Merleau-Ponty argues that sexuality is not simply a reflex or a mental idea but rather something that emerges through lived bodily experience shaped by physical engagement and context. In other words, one’s understanding of the world begins with how one inhabits and moves through it physically. This idea is seen in Elio’s journey of desire, which unfolds in a specific time, space, and bodily state; in the heat of summer, under Italian fruit trees, sharing rooms and a daily routine with Oliver. These spatial and sensory details shape Elio’s perception of Oliver and his desire for him. Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that desire arises not from rational thought but from a pre-reflective consciousness in which the body responds instinctively to stimuli. This kind of desire is felt through attraction to physical features, proximity, and unconscious reactions—what he describes as: “an Eros or a Libido which breathes life into an original world, gives sexual value or meaning to external stimuli and outlines for each subject the use he shall make of his objective body” (Merlau-Ponty 180). Likewise, long before Elio can articulate his feelings, his body reaches out—watching, craving, fantasizing—drawn to Oliver by something he feels rather than understands. Thus, Elio’s desire begins as an instinctive, physical reaction to Oliver, a bodily impulse that bypasses conscious thought. This experience will eventually push Elio toward a deeper emotional connection, as seen in his mirrored gestures with Oliver.

The attraction between Elio and Oliver functions as a mirror, where their desires are communicated through physical mimicry. Over time, as the two start to familiarize themselves, Elio begins to mirror Oliver’s behaviour—adopting his expressions, mimicking his walk, and even wearing his clothes—signaling that a deeper emotional and psychological connection is forming. Elio’s unconscious imitation is what signals the reader of his true feelings for Oliver. In fact, their relationship always depended on physical cues to help them navigate their attraction before openly acknowledging their feelings. For example, Oliver’s line, “After tennis once. I touched you. Just as a way of showing I liked you. The way you reacted made me feel I’d almost molested you. I decided to keep my distance” (Aciman 160), shows how nonverbal communication is central to their relationship, especially in its early stages: their desire is not expressed outright but is full of hesitation, relying instead on small gestures and body language like touching feet and brushing hands to convey their interest and to test their boundaries. Their physical interactions become coded language, substituting for what they can not yet say aloud: “I didn’t know myself, but his body gradually began to reciprocate the movement, somewhat absentmindedly, without conviction, no less awkward than mine, as if to say, What else is there to do but to respond in kind when someone touches your toes with his toes?” (Aciman 130). This quote supports the idea that Elio and Oliver use their bodies, and not their words, to reflect one another’s desires. Oliver’s physical response to Elio’s uncertainty—“I didn’t know myself”—demonstrates that they both feel the same connection. The last line also encapsulates the way their bodies speak for them, each subtly expressing the other’s longing in unspoken ways. However, it is their becoming intimate that ultimately marks one of the few times they are seen as equal; age no longer matters because physical longing has been satisfied and love finally becomes allowed: “For a second, it seemed there was absolutely no difference in age between us, just two men kissing, and even this seemed to dissolve, as I began to feel we were not even two men, just two beings. I loved the egalitarianism of the moment” (Aciman 132). As their mirroring deepens, Oliver and Elio begin calling each other by their own names, symbolizing the merging of identities into one. This intimate exchange reflects a longing not just to know the other but to become them—an emotional and physical merging that blurs the line between self and other, between possessing and being possessed; desire is not just about closeness but about dissolving the boundaries of the self. When Elio looks at himself, he also sees a part of Oliver reflected back: each sees in the other a reflection of what they lack or have not yet come to understand in themselves, and in this way, they act as complementary figures. The mirroring becomes a symbol not merely of mimicry but of longing for a connection so deep that what began as mere bodily desires evolves into a merging of identities. However, in the timid process of their connection deepening, Elio becomes confused and often seeks to redirect his desire in a way that reconciles with societal expectations, thus encouraging his relationship with Marzia.

Homosexual desire in the novel manifests itself through indirect or symbolic means, mainly through heterosexual detours. Both Elio and Oliver explore heteronormative relationships with the two sisters, Chiara and Marzia. These relationships, however, are coded with homoerotic subtext, especially that of Elio and Marzia. His relationship with Marzia serves as a proxy or even a rehearsal for his desire for Oliver. After sharing a first kiss with Marzia and later, being physically intimate with her, Elio gains the courage to pursue Oliver with more certainty; Elio’s more intimate connections with Marzia occur at the height of his emotional tensions with Oliver, showing that his sexual frustration builds up towards requiring a physical outlet for his desire for the American. Moreover, it is not infrequent that Elio’s thoughts inevitably drift to Oliver when he is with Marzia: “How strange, I thought, how each shadowed and screened the other, without precluding the other. Barely half and hour ago I was asking Oliver to fuck me and now here I was about to make love to Marzia.” (Aciman 145). The phrasing “each shadowed and screened the other” underscores the way these relationships are not oppositional but coexisting expressions of desire—one socially acceptable, the other deeply internal and embodied. However, this relationship dynamic reveals not only Elio’s emotional detachment from Marzia but also reflects Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s concept of heterosexual relationships functioning within a homosocial framework. Sedgwick explores how male-male desire in literature is often mediated through women in what she terms the “erotic triangle,” where two men are linked, not solely through their shared interest in a woman, but through a more profound, unspoken connection to each other (Sedgwick). Though Oliver shows no interest in Marzia and actively discourages Elio from trying to make him interested in Chiara, it is through their presence that a woman becomes a conduit or safe vessel through which homoerotic desire can be redirected or expressed. To Elio, Marzia serves as a socially acceptable detour of affection, allowing him to explore a version of intimacy that masks his genuine longing for Oliver. According to Sedgwick, homosocial desire—bonds between men marked by friendship, rivalry, or admiration—often blur with homosexual desire, especially in environments where queerness is taboo or repressed (Sedgwick). Elio’s interactions with Marzia become a way to test, rehearse, and displace his feelings that are too risky to express directly to Oliver, while preserving a strategic façade of heteronormativity. “If Oliver walked in on me now, I’d let him suck me as he had this morning. If Marzia came, I’d let her help me finish the job” (Aciman 146). This quote not only reveals Elio’s conflicted emotions regarding whom to surrender his desire to, but also demonstrates how Oliver and Marzia operate as extensions of Elio’s confused longing. Nevertheless, despite Elio’s experimentation with heteronormative intimacy, his desire for Oliver is still at the centre.

In “Call Me by Your Name”, André Aciman presents desire as something innate and embodied rather than as something that is precisely defined or expressed. He demonstrates how, long before it can be completely comprehended, longing first emerges through the physical body—through glances, gestures, mimicry, and erotic reactions. The novel follows the arc of homosexual desire as it moves from physical yearning with a peach, to a profound merging of identities where self and other dissolve, to heteronormative detours like Elio’s intimacy with Marzia. Through these elements, Aciman illustrates how homosexual desire often navigates by indirect means, particularly in social settings where it is taboo, and how the body serves as the primary site of knowledge: “In this dream I finally learned what my body must have known from the very first day” (108). Elio and Oliver first communicate with one another through their bodies. They gain an understanding of themselves through that same embodied connection, which eventually reveals desire as something the body comprehends before the mind ever has the courage to label it. What starts out as physical attraction gradually transforms into a kind of self-awareness, where love and homoerotic desire are not only about wanting the other but about discovering—and becoming—something more in oneself.

By Laurie Legault