Find Me

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Music

Music is an important motif in Find Me. It is a means of communication and an identity. The medium is established as important throughout all four sections of the novel. Elio in particular is represented through his identity as a musician. He wants to be an artist and is moved by his individual pursuit of art. He meets Michel, a great love, at a chamber-music concert, and his ability to play complex classical music enables him to solve the mystery of Ariel Waldstein, a mystery that has long haunted Michel. Elio’s access to music develops into an access to history and story. He can also express himself through music in intimate ways.

All the lovers in this novel are attracted to one another through gestures and understandings that don’t require words; music also allows for an expression of emotion without words. Oliver is very tied to music as a romantic experience. When Paul plays the piano for him, he is transported back in time to his summer with Elio. Thus, music evokes a sense of memory in the listener that reminds them of what they have and what they’ve lost. Music is therefore an important motif in creating intimate dynamics between characters in this novel.

Shared Homes

In Find Me, the motif of shared homes symbolizes setting as a form of intimacy. Elio’s home in Rome is a shared space between him and his father. Their vigils include strolling around the city to visit the setting of Elio’s favorite, most complex memories. The shared space of Rome represents their close relationship. Samuel extends his home to Miranda after only knowing her for a couple of days. His house by the sea is his long-term home, the place where he’s raised his son with his ex-wife. Inviting Miranda to share this space is an intimate gesture in which, by extension, he invites her to share the many layers of his life. That house is full of memories of his past relationship, but in making it a shared space, he combines two distinct chapters in his life.

Michel also extends his childhood home, full of memories and secrets, to Elio. Sharing it is intimate because it exposes Michel’s past to Elio. In this shared home, Elio discovers the identity of Ariel Waldstein, bringing him and Michel closer together. Oliver also has a shared home, though it is temporary. In the comfort of this space, he is free to fantasize, dream, and remember with the people who surround him.

Oliver and Elio reunite again in the setting of the shared home of their youthful love. In Samuel’s house by the sea, they return to the space in which they first fell in love and tested one another’s boundaries. Now older and more nervous with each other, they find the house too crowded with memories of the past and family members of the present to contain them, so they depart for a shared adventure. In this novel, shared homes are spaces of intimacy and disclosure.

Travel

Travel is another important motif in Find Me, with physical travel acting as a metaphor for major life changes and emotional shifts. Samuel and Miranda meet while on a train to Rome, and by the time their train arrives at its destination, it is not only their physical location that has changed, but the direction of their lives as well.

Elio and Michel’s trip to Michel’s childhood home in the French countryside acts as the impetus for Elio’s journey of curiosity, as he begins to investigate the life of Ariel Waldstein. Elio’s discovery that Ariel was murdered during the Holocaust leaves a significant impression on him. It is also this trip that frames Elio’s declaration that he is planning to tour America and meet up with Oliver after years apart, thus propelling him into another crucial physical and emotional journey.

At the end of the novel, Oliver travels to Italy in order to reunite with Elio. Aciman shows Oliver as traveling a circular route, and he returns to the country of his and Elio’s first love so that they can rekindle their relationship. Physical geography acts as one of the barriers between the two men throughout the narrative, but by finally navigating physical distance, they are able to reconnect on a spiritual and emotional level once again.

Aciman further explores a figurative approach to travel, with characters sometimes becoming so absorbed in their thoughts or memories that they feel a sense of traveling through time and space. For example, in New York City, Oliver travels back through time on the wings of his memories. He fantasizes about his past as though those memories are moments in the present, such as when Paul playing the piano evolves into Elio playing the piano.